Chapter 19
“Where could they be?” Darius asked when we were on the trolley speeding toward his condo.
“I don’t know. Maybe she brought them back to her place.” I was tired, pissed off, and confused. I’d been so sure all the jewels would be in that tunnel. I guess there was some comfort in being half-right.
I pulled out my phone to reexamine her path from the day before. Meredith traveled from the club, through the tunnel, to the trolley, and then to campus after making the necessary connections.
But nowhere along her travels did I see somewhere she could have hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gems.
“You’re tired, love. You need some sleep before you can figure it out. I’ll help.” Darius pulled me into his arms, his hot body warming me. I hadn’t even realized I’d been cold.
We swayed a few minutes, our bodies following the trolley’s start and stops as naturally as if we were on the high seas standing on a yacht.
“But what if they take her away before I’ve found them? They could be lost forever,” I asked, voicing my innermost fears. The trolley riders around us never even hearing me for they were too busy with their own worries to care what we were doing.
“You could ask them to delay for awhile until you figure it out,” he suggested, his voice just as quiet, but penetrating the din well.
“They aren’t going to listen to me,” I said, fighting to keep my eyelids open. “They could have already taken her after the trade. Who knows what’s happened.”
“You asked them to let you know when they’d taken her. Have you gotten an email?” he asked.
I tapped on my phone for a few minutes before answering. “No, though I did get an email confirmation that he’d received my information.”
“So, they haven’t done anything yet.”
The trolley stopped and we got off. “No they haven’t. But what excuse am I supposed to give to have them delay? It’s not like they owe me anything. In fact, I’m the one who brought up the idea of getting rid of her. They’ll think I’m getting cold feet or that I was just playing with them.”
“To what ends?” Darius asked, looking confused. “It’s not like they sent you any money. You got nothing out of the deal. They did. If nothing else, you might get some idea as to how long you have until they grab her. If they’re doing it today, then we’ll have to move fast. But if they’re not going to move on this for a month, you can be a little bit more methodical.”
He was right. It couldn’t hurt to ask them the question. It’s not like they’d be able to do anything if they didn’t like me asking.
“I’ll do it. You’re right. I have nothing to lose by asking.”
“You’re right I’m right. You should –” Darius stopped midsentence and suddenly pulled me toward him, spun me around, and pushed me into the brick wall which had been behind him. Darius was right in front of me, his nose mere inches from mine, his arms boxing me in.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, suddenly feeling both angry and confused at the same time.
“Building entrance. Mafia thugs. No, don’t look!” Darius ordered, looking very stressed.
“How am I supposed to see anything if I don’t look?” I asked, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. I didn’t think Darius would joke about something like this, but he did have a weird sense of humor at times.
Darius huffed. “Look, but don’t be obvious.”
I wanted to smack him upside the head, but I didn’t. Instead, I lifted my free hand and threaded it though his hair, pushing it out of his face as a lover would. Giving it a tiny yank, I said, “I am the queen of subtle.”
My hand still playing in his hair, I lazily turned my head so I was looking toward his building. Past the busy professionals and the kids on hoverboards, I saw three very large, very thuggish looking men talking to the doorman. They looked like extras for the famous mafia melodrama on tv everyone was infatuated with and couldn’t get enough of. You’d think having a real mafia presence in real life would be enough for these people, but evidently not because the drama ‘The Chien Crime Family’ brought in not only the viewers, but the big bucks.
Next to the extras was the taller man I’d seen at the club last night. The man I’d thought was more likely Latens and not Atrox because I didn’t picture Atrox as lighthearted. That lightheartedness I’d perceived to see while they stood on the front steps of Custodela seemed to have disappeared.
“Definitely mafia,” I said, smiling brightly into Darius’ face. I wanted anyone looking at us to think we were just young lovers engrossed in each other. No reason to look twice at us. “I recognize one of them from last night.”
“Damn. What are they doing here? Could they have followed you to my place?” Darius asked, starting to sound panicked. This was just what I didn’t need. A panicked Darius was a sloppy Darius and when he was sloppy, he was capable of making more mistakes than a drunken accountant. His mistakes would lead them right to me and I couldn’t let that happened. I needed to make a plan, quick, and calm him down or else he’d get me found out.
And being found out by the mafia was so far down on my to do list that it didn’t even make the cut for the top thousand things I wanted to do in my lifetime.
“Anything’s possible.” I put the briefcase into my other hand and slipped my hand into his, tugging him down the street, away from his building. “Come on, honey, we don’t want to be late, do we?”
“Of course not,” Darius said, his voice tight. “Where are we going to go?”
“My place. It’s safe. You can try going back to your place later,” I said, trying to come up with some idea of how I was going to keep Darius from freaking out about the mafia being after him. This was like his worst nightmare come to life.
(Literally. He’d once told me about a reoccurring nightmare he’d had just after Ozi’s grizzly death. It involved him being tracked down by the same mafia thugs who’d killed Ozi coming after him at his home and gutting him like a fish. It had taken him months of internet therapy to get the nightmares down to about twice a month. I could just imagine how these events would bring them back with a vengeance.)
“The wolves are at my door and you want me to go back?” Darius sounded incredulous and his disbelief made me want to scream.
Now I really wanted to smack him in the back of the head. “Grow a backbone and suck it up. They’re probably there on some other business or it could be a coincidence. Either way, you have to go back sooner or later because you are not staying at my place for more than a day or two. I don’t do roommates,” I said jokingly as possible even though it was true.
“When did you get so pushy?” he asked, his mood lightening a little. I didn’t mind being called pushy. In fact, if he’d called me a pushover, I’d have been insulted, but being pushy meant I was doing something right.
“When I started being around spineless wimps who think they’re so big and mean. Don’t worry, dear, it’s not just you. It’s most of the men in our profession. They appear to the world to be the kind of men who always know best and must certainly be in charge of everything in every situation, but behind closed doors, they are racked with self-doubt and crippled with indecision.
“But the women I’ve meet, they really take charge and make the critically important decisions without a second thought. They don’t crumble when the pressures on or when nobody’s looking,” I said, what to the world would have been a very huge rant to a man who’d dropped everything for me. Most people, men in particular, at this point would have been stark raving mad, wanting blood and revenge.
Darius just laughed tiredly, his face lighting up. This was a long standing byplay between the two of us and he knew that while I meant ever word I said, I didn’t mean it in a mean way. At least not toward him. Other men, however, were another matter.
“And how would you know if they did crumble when nobody’s looking? Nobody’s looking at her,” he asked, playing his p
art in our game of words.
I elbowed him. “Hardy har har. Let’s get going. We need some sleep before we figure out what the heck I’m going to do.”
“What we’re going to do. We’re in this together, love,” he said, giving me a side hug, which warmed me to the core.
I smiled, feeling as if the whole day was brighter than it had been just a few minutes ago. “Yeah, sure we are.”