They would not go down that road. Her relationship with Dexter had nothing to do with him, and it wasn’t open for discussion. “You mean a lot to me, Kerry. I want you to be happy.”
“Happy?” he spat. “Have we met?”
Sudden sadness weighed her down, all but knocking her to her butt. It did sound delusional when she said it. Yes, Kerry, I know you’re a reforming criminal, and, yeah, I don’t love you and never will, but I want you to do your best to be a happy camper, y’hear? But she still meant it.
“What can I do for you?” she asked tiredly. Helplessly. “Is there anything I can—”
He stared at her, reproach pouring out of every line of his body and hitting her like water from a fire hose, so powerful she had to look away.
There was a long, heavy silence.
“Why are you here?” she asked finally.
“To let you know I’m leaving town.”
“What?”
“I should have been long gone by now. But I was hoping you—” He trailed off, shrugging.
“Why now?”
Another shrug. “I got a warning—”
“A threat, you mean?” Rising panic cut off her breath. “From who?”
His face was stark, empty except for a twitch of ugly amusement at his lips. “Does it matter? Pick one: One of Kareem’s other associates who’s afraid of what I might tell the feds. One of Kareem’s enemies who’s afraid of what I might tell the feds. The Mexicans. The Russians. Who the fuck knows? I’m just lucky they gave me a warning. And I don’t need to be told twice.”
This had to happen, of course. She knew that. When you made your living on the streets, you retired to either prison or a body bag, and the only question was how long you’d be able to forestall your fate. But this simple fact of life hadn’t stopped her from hoping for Kerry.
Was this the last time she’d ever see him, then? Why did that make her feel so scared and empty? “Where will you go?”
Another shrug. “I need to figure that out.”
“But you’ll call me? Let me know you’re okay?”
He almost managed a smile—affection tinged with exasperation. “You’re a piece of work. You know that?”
Maybe she was, but she didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was Kerry staying alive. The list of Kareem’s casualties was already way too long. She reached out, hesitated, and then, screw it, took his hard face between her palms and stared up into the dark eyes that had meant so much to her.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” There was no way to keep the urgency out of her voice. “And don’t take another drink. Promise me you won’t. You need to keep your head clear.”
A change rippled through him at her touch, a softening that made her sorry—again; always—that she’d hurt this man so badly when all he’d done was care about her.
“Kira.”
He studied her face, touching her brows and her cheeks, imprinting her features. And then, somehow, she was in his arms and he was clinging to her for dear life, his hold so strong she expected to feel her ribs splinter with a sharp crack. Even so, his grip didn’t hurt nearly as much as the hot tears clogging her throat. He felt sweetly familiar, as though she’d opened up a box of treasures from her childhood and experienced that squeeze of nostalgia around her heart when she handled them.
And then, without warning, he gently pushed her aside and headed for the door.
“Kerry,” she began, but stopped when she couldn’t think of anything to say that he’d want to hear.
Pausing, he held her gaze for several long beats, and she thought, I’ll never see him again, and he’ll never forgive me for not loving him, and the despair filled her up from bottom to top.
Then his face eased. Not into a smile, but his eyes crinkled at the corners, revealing something bittersweet but not angry.
Not angry, thank God.
That was enough to relieve the strangling tension in her chest, and if it wasn’t quite peace, it was acceptance. That was enough. So when he slipped through the door without a backward glance, she let him go with only a silent prayer.
Please, God. Keep him safe. He can be a good man if he has the chance.
Chapter 22
Dexter’s brain knew it was a good idea to hang out in the kitchen and decompress for a few minutes. His feet, unfortunately, were already in motion, propelling him into the foyer almost before the front door was finished closing, and he didn’t see any need to pretend he hadn’t heard everything that had passed between the little lovebirds. Fuck that.
Flattened beneath the two-ton anvil that had fallen squarely on his head, he was still able to focus on the crucial issues, and they had nothing to do with the criminal who’d just walked out of here and was probably now packing his bags so he could flee the jurisdiction.
“Are you in love with him?” he asked Kira.
He’d startled her. Quickly turning her head, she swiped at her eyes, as though that clever evasive maneuver would convince him that she hadn’t just been crying over some other man.
“No.”
That was a good start, but his wounded heart needed much more handholding than that. “Were you ever in love with him?”
“No.”
Now some of the pressure was beginning to ease from his chest, allowing him to breathe again, but his heart was still thumping like the bass line at a rap concert. “Do you have unfinished business with him?”
“No.”
Good. Great. Three perfect answers, and everything in his world should be coming up roses, except that she still hadn’t looked him in the eye, and he was still agitated enough to do a Spider-Man and climb the walls by his fingertips.
“If it’s so cut and dried,” he wondered, “why aren’t you looking at me?”
That did it. She turned, spearing him through the heart with those wounded brown eyes. Sparks of indignation all but sizzled on her skin. “I’ve already told you the truth. What more do you want from me? A picture? Dates and times? A pound of my flesh?”
Yes, yes, and yes. He wasn’t proud of it. In fact, he was damn near split down the middle with shame. He worked hard to be a good man, and the kind of man he wanted to be wouldn’t be knotted up inside with this kind of searing jealousy. He’d be circumspect and understanding, not teetering on the edge of smashing everything in sight.
So he tried to dial it back. Rubbing away at the tension in his nape, he worked on leashing his emotions, but that was like trying to stop a rampaging elephant by grabbing its tail.
“I’m just ... going to need a minute with this, Kira.”
“You’re judging me,” she said flatly.
“Kira—”
“I can see it in your eyes because you’re looking at me like you’ve never seen me before. You’re wondering what kind of woman would marry a drug kingpin and then have an affair with his lieutenant. Isn’t that right? And you’re wondering if you should jump ship right now, before this goes any further. Let’s be honest.”
He didn’t want to be honest. Honesty would lead to the admission that he didn’t think there was a bombshell she could drop on him that would make him stop wanting her. Honesty would make him confess that he was in way over his head with this woman, and he couldn’t seem to drown himself in her fast enough.
Honesty, in short, was not his friend.
Evasion was better.
“Don’t try to get inside my head.”
“If you don’t want me inside your head,” she told him, “then you need to work on your poker face.”
This sort of observation did nothing for his mood, which was getting surlier by the second. What did she want? His belated blessing on her relationship with the punk—another punk, actually—who embodied everything he’d spent his career trying to eradicate? Why didn’t she ask for his testicles while she was at it?
Frustration built inside him, making his skin tight and his voice clipped. “Look, Kira. You’re a complicated woman. I get that. You had a life before y
ou laid eyes on me. I get that, too. It’s just that I’m trying to understand—”
“What?” Her lips thinned with bitterness. “How I could be such a slut?”
The word jolted him out of his jealousy and back into his right mind, where he wondered, for the first time, whether Kira was her own harshest critic and whether she was the one who couldn’t get past the choices she’d made.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Of course not. Don’t even think something like that.”
“Don’t you think it?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should.”
Okay. Okay. Something had changed here—something crucial—and he no longer had any idea what they were talking about. All he knew was that he needed to get up to speed, and fast.
Tenderness made his voice gentle as he reached for her. “Kira. Baby. It doesn’t matter what happened before. I thought we were looking forward. Why don’t we work on that?”
“‘Why don’t we work on that?’” Throwing him off, she paced a few steps away and then wheeled back around to aim all that double-barreled fury at him. “Because you’re the high and mighty Dexter Brady, and everything is black and white to you, isn’t it? You can’t relate to the rest of us mere mortals, can you? Your strict moral code requires an explanation about my unfortunate behavior, doesn’t it?”
Shame sparked up his neck and exploded across his face like the lit fuse on one of those sticks of TNT in all the old Looney Tunes cartoons. He knew what the right thing to say was, but it was a bitch getting the words out of his mouth. “You don’t owe me any explanations. And I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
A harsh sound came out of her mouth, some crude bastardization of a laugh. “No, no! You want to talk? Let’s talk! In fact, let’s back up to the beginning. You want to know why I fell for Kareem?”
Yes, goddammit. “No,” he tried.
Another biting laugh. “You’re such a bad liar. Well, here’s the story, since I can see you’re dying to know. I grew up in a really nice house in the suburbs. My dad is a doctor and my mother is an engineer. I came from a good family. We went on Caribbean vacations and had a maid service and took really beautiful Christmas card photos every year. My friends were all green with envy. And you know what?”
She paused, her words thickening with emotion.
Utterly still, he tried to brace himself for whatever was about to nail him straight through the forehead.
Her brown eyes sparkled with tears, which she ignored. “You know what, Dexter? My father, the respected internist, came into my room at night and spent lots of alone time with me. We weren’t reading Dr. Seuss together, in case you were wondering.”
“Christ.” Taking two quick steps, he lowered himself to a sitting position on the stairs before his knees had the pleasure of giving way. He couldn’t breathe suddenly. Couldn’t look at her because he was fairly sure he’d start bawling like a baby, and that wouldn’t do either of them any good. Clearing his throat, he worked on swallowing the bile. “What about—”
“My mother? Oh, you don’t think she believed me when I finally worked up the courage to tell her, do you?”
So much for not being a punk. He rested his elbows on his knees, pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes and let the tears come.
His breakdown didn’t move her. If it had, she’d have stopped talking. “And guess what happened when I was a senior in high school? I met Kareem. Guess where I met him?”
Still choked up, Dexter could only shake his head.
“In church. Guess what he was doing?”
Raising his head, he felt a sick smile twist his lips. “Giving away Thanksgiving turkeys to needy families?”
Kira’s smile was sicker than his. “Close! Ten points for trying! It was Christmas trees.”
“Christmas trees,” he echoed, fighting that nausea again.
“Christmas trees. So you can imagine he looked pretty good to me even though there were rumors about his business dealings. A young, handsome man who was wild about me and told me I was beautiful even though I knew I was ruined on the inside?”
“Kira—”
“I was a goner. I couldn’t marry him and get out of my father’s house fast enough.”
The right thing to say skipped in circles around him, staying just out of view. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he began.
“Oh, save your pity. There’s more.”
“Wonderful,” he muttered, lowering his head into his hands.
“I know it was stupid. I know I was stupid. But I believed in Kareem. I needed something to believe in. Can you understand that?”
Despite his sudden exhaustion, he was able to sit up straight and look her in the eye. “Absolutely.”
She looked dubious. “Really? So can you also understand that I fell apart when Kareem was arrested and found comfort where I could when he was sent to prison?”
Comfort. Was that what they were calling it these days?
“Yes,” he said, and he meant it. He really did. But his heart was wounded and raw, his mind was full of writhing images of Kerry enthusiastically comforting Kira, and his poker face hadn’t gotten any better in the last several minutes.
“That’s what I thought.” Those eyes of hers went as hard, cold, and remote as a North Atlantic glacier. Shoulders squared, she went to the front door and opened it. “Get out of my house.”
“Come on, baby. Time for some chow.”
Kira opened the passenger-side door for Max, grabbed his leash, and waited while he yawned, stretched, and finally hopped out. Maybe, since she didn’t have anything else to do on this fine Saturday evening, she’d give him a bath later. That could be fun, right?
Anything to keep her mind off Dexter.
After their painful parting scene earlier, she and Max had gone for a romp in the dog park, where they’d met a delightful boxer, a talkative husky, and a floppy-eared hound whose baying was so powerful and relentless she had to fight the urge to look around for a chain gang of escaped convicts.
Now she and Max were back home with provisions for the night, which included carryout Thai (her favorite), a half gallon of rainbow sherbet (Max’s favorite), and Best in Show, a mockumentary about the quirky world of dog shows, and one of the funniest movies ever made. She needed the laugh to block out the endless, looping vision of Dexter’s wounded eyes as he walked out.
If they were finished before they even got started, then that was his fault, she reminded herself. His loss, and she would not obsess about his choices. She’d been fine without him for this long, and, despite the yawning ache that had settled in behind her breastbone, she’d be fine again. Because she was a survivor, just like the one in that Gloria Gaynor disco song—“I will survive! I will survive! Hey, hey!”—and just like Oprah, who’d survived rape and incest and was now a woman who could move mountains and a beacon of hope to twisted messes like Kira.
Okay. Enough about Dexter Brady.
“You ready for some chow?”
Max’s answer was a tongue-dangling smile and a wagged tail as he waited for her to grab the bags of food from the backseat. Shutting the door on her little ride, which was perversely still going strong, even though she now had the money to replace it, she started up the walk to the porch.
“Huh? Are you hungry? Is my little Maxie ready for some—”
She froze, the plastic bags and leash sliding out of her boneless hands to the ground, her access to the front door blocked by a stack of five long floral boxes, all of them wrapped with beautiful silk ribbon, and all of them identical to the one she’d received and thrown away a little while ago.
For several long beats, her stunned brain flailed around, considering several possible scenarios to explain the additional flowers, all of them centering on a florist who was either an idiot, a drunk, or grossly incompetent. She even reached for her phone, determined to give the manager or owner of the outfit the verbal foot up the ass, but of course t
hey’d be closed this late in the afternoon on a Saturday.
Why would this happen? Was someone trying to torture her for some sick—
The answer hit her. She realized, in a white-hot flash of anger, both that she was being stalked and the identity of the stalker.
Chapter 23
The apartment building was shabbier than Kira had expected, which was something of a jolt because she hadn’t expected shabby at all. Set on a busy street in an area that, judging by the abundance of pony kegs, checkcashing businesses, and cell phone stores, wasn’t in danger of gentrification anytime soon, the redbrick structure featured a crumbling concrete staircase to the front door, overgrown bushes, and white shutters prone to dangling at odd angles.
The raggedy brass lock on the front door looked as though it hadn’t kept anyone out since the Eisenhower administration, not that it made much difference with a battered volume of the Yellow Pages serving as a prop to keep the door open.
Still fuming, she went inside.
The lobby consisted of a wall of metal mailboxes, a black-and-white linoleum checkerboard floor, and an open elevator that she didn’t dare enter unless she planned to spend the rest of her life stuck between floors.
Number 102 was easy enough to find, situated as it was between the elevator and the fire door leading to the staircase, which had to be the noisiest place in the building. Well, no. Other candidates for noisiest place in the building included number 100, which was vibrating with music, or number 104, where an angry baby screamed over the cooing voice of its mother.
What a dump. After all her years of undying devotion and loyalty, Kareem hadn’t provided for his mother any better than this? Hadn’t he given her, say, a shrinkwrapped block of cash to be used in case of emergency or his untimely demise? What was the world coming to when drug kingpins didn’t leave their mothers nest eggs?
Raising her fist, she pounded, letting her impatience run free, and then, when that didn’t produce an answer within three seconds, pounded again.
The door suddenly swung open. Wanda stood there.
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