Leaving Lando

by Mia Madison

  She gives me a look. “I have money, Lando.”

  “You’re here because of me. I’m buying.”

  Bree takes the money without further argument, which is good because I like sparring with her, but I don’t have time for that shit right now. We go in and I send her in one direction while I go in the other, to the booth where Miller’s waiting with her weasel.

  He’s a beady-eyed little guy who looks like he’s strung out on more than one kind of illegal substance. Both hands cradle the cup of coffee he’s nursing, surrounding the mug like he’s cold, even though he’s wearing several layers of clothing.

  Detective Miller’s sitting opposite him with her own mug. The guy sees me coming and looks like he might piss himself. I slide into his side of the booth to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere, and a wave of body odor strong enough to fell an elephant hits me.

  I take shallow breaths while Miller makes the introductions. “Detective Adamo, this is Jeeter. He’s got some information for you.”

  His eyes skitter around the table, the room, landing everywhere but on me. “She said you could help me out.”

  I glance at Miller; she’s got her poker face on. “Help you with what?”

  “My sister said I could come stay with her. But she’s out of state and I’m on parole. I can’t leave.”

  “Who’s your parole officer?”

  “Fetterman.”

  Fetterman’s a hardass if there ever was one. “If your information’s good, I promise I’ll have a word with him.” Jeeter doesn’t answer. “You want something to eat?”

  He huddles over his coffee. “Cold out there.”

  “I’ll get you a room for the night.”

  I get a glance then, just a brief one. His faded blue eyes are watery and bloodshot. Still, he doesn’t speak. Curbing my impatience, I wait.

  The silence does its work on him. “You can’t let this come back to me.”

  Instinct prickles at the back of my neck. “It won’t.”

  “I was with a friend the other night. He told me something.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m tellin’ you everything he said.”

  Maybe so, or maybe he doesn’t want his friend to know he blabbed. I’ll roll with it for now. “Okay.”

  “He knows where Zoma’s headquarters are.”

  My gut clenches with a combination of anticipation and skepticism. Zoma’s the street name for Zachary Oman, a mid-level dealer. He has an organization under him, but he’s not the big fish. Big enough, though, that he probably knows who the head guy is.

  Oman’s slippery as fuck; I’ve been trying to nail him for the better part of a year. Every time we think we’ve got a bead on him, he slips away. Which is why I’m skeptical.

  “How would your friend know that?”

  Once more Jeeter’s eyes dart around the diner. When he speaks again, it’s in a whisper, even though no one is anywhere near us. “It was an accident. He was sleeping in a new place, a box by a vent on 47th. Woke up to some kind of ruckus, peeked out, and saw product being moved — lots of it.”

  “How does he know it had anything to do with Zoma?” If the guy really did see drugs in bulk quantities, then the place is almost certainly under Oman’s control, but that’s a far cry from proving it.

  “Saw the man himself.”

  My eyes narrow. This is sounding more and more like bullshit; no way would Oman put himself on the spot like that. “Your friend knows him by sight?”

  “Never saw him before. But it had to be him. Pulled up in a flash car, you know the kind. And everyone was afraid of him.”

  There’s a tremor in Jeeter’s hand now, and there’s sweat on his upper lip. I look at Miller; is the guy jonesing? She watches him intently for a moment, then says, very softly, “What else did your friend see, Jeeter?”

  “Nothing.” The denial comes too fast, too sharply.

  I lean in a little, keeping my voice equally gentle. “No one knows about this conversation but us three, and we’ll keep it that way. What happened?”

  But he just shakes his head, fast, not looking at either of us. “Come on, Jeeter,” I coax. “You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest. It’s why you waited for me, isn’t it? So you could tell someone.”

  “I gotta go.” He’s panicking, literally trying to crawl over me to get out of the booth. I block him easily, pressing him back into his seat.

  He looks ready to cry. “It’s okay,” I say. “You don’t have to say anything. But tell me where the headquarters are, so I can talk to Fetterman, put in a good word for you. 47th and what?”

  “Between Hudson and Vermont,” he says, his voice shaky. “The old shoe factory.”

  “All right. That’s good, Jeeter.” I give his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll check it out. Let’s go get you a room, okay?”

  “Okay.” He’s trembling. “Okay,” he says again.

  I slide from the booth and tell Miller, “Go on back to the station and try to get authorization to move tonight. I’ll be along as soon as I’ve got him settled.”

  She nods. “I’ll ask the LT to call the captain. He won’t want to wait on this.”

  “Good. See you there.” As we move toward the entrance, I stay close to Jeeter and signal Bree.

  I don’t take Jeeter to any of the motels the department usually uses. Maybe he’s just naturally twitchy, or maybe he’s really spooked. If the latter, the only thing I can think of is that his friend — assuming it was a friend, and not Jeeter himself — witnessed a murder.

  I’ll check with homicide, see if they have any unsolved cases with bodies found in that area. In the meantime, just in case he might be in danger, I want him out of sight.

  He stares at Bree when we all get to the truck. “Is she a cop too?”

  “No.”

  “Too pretty to be a cop,” he mumbles. Brianna smiles and climbs into the back, leaving the front seat by me for Jeeter. Hoping he might open up about what else his friend said, I stay quiet on the drive, but he doesn’t speak.

  “You want any snacks?” I ask finally. “Chips, soda, anything like that?”

  He clears his throat noisily. “I like cheesy puffs. The crunchy kind.”

  I swing into a drugstore parking lot. “Come on. Let’s get you fixed up.”

  Besides a bunch of junk food, I pick up a shaving kit and some deodorant. Brianna finds some cheap sweats and t-shirts, and I grab some of those too, plus socks and underwear. Some of these guys aren’t comfortable staying at the shelters; who knows when he’s last had the chance to be clean, to wear clean clothes?

  At the motel, I pay for a week up front; the clerk gives Jeeter a room around back. Even though no one knows he’s here but me, I’m glad he’s out of sight of the road. Most of my fellow detectives would tell me I’m being paranoid, but I’ve long since learned to trust my gut.

  When he’s in his room, with about a month’s worth of snacks and other stuff sitting in bags on the table, I present him with the final thing I purchased: a prepaid phone, with my number already programmed in. “If you want to talk, or you’re worried about anything, you can call me with this.”

  For a moment, the mists fogging his brain seem to clear. The penetrating look he gives me offers a glimpse of the mind he must have had, once upon a time, before the street wore him down. “Thanks,” he says, and sets the phone carefully on the nightstand.

  “Keep your head down. Miller or I will be in touch. Don’t leave here unless you have to, and let one of us know if you need anything.”

  On my way to the station, I drop Bree at my house. As soon as we kissed tonight, my resistance burned to a cinder. There's no way, now that I've tasted her, felt her response to me, that I can back off and be just friends. Maybe it's a bad idea, but fuck it. The best things in life have some risk attached to them. “I’ll probably be late. Go ahead and go to sleep.”

  “Be safe. Wake me up when you get home.”

 
; “See you soon.” I don’t promise to wake her; she has to get up in the middle of the night to go to work as it is. Not that I wouldn’t love to find her in my bed, soft with slumber, and bury my head between her legs.

  She watches me go, most of her in shadow, those big gray eyes fixed on me. There’s no teasing, no asking to ride along. My guess is she’s picked up on the sense of danger around the whole situation, and knows better than to try.

  I drive fast on the way in, crossing my fingers that Miller’s got clearance for us to move on the tip. She calls when I’m two minutes out. “It’s a go. Leaving in five.”

  “Almost there.” I disconnect and gun the engine. If we can hit Oman’s base of operations, it’ll be the closest we’ve gotten in months of frustrating effort to reaching the heart of the drug trade in this town.

  And then I can go home. To Brianna. And torture myself with her nearness.

  5

  Ordinary Ends

  I’m deep in a sexy dream about Lando where I’m under him, my legs around his waist while he drives into me, when suddenly his big, warm body has shifted to a different position, and he’s just holding me.

  My eyelids flutter open. I’m on my side, my back moulded to Lando’s front. “Time is it?” I mumble.

  “It’s late,” he says quietly. “Go back to sleep.”

  Obeying him should be impossible. We’re finally in the same bed, snuggled close. By rights, I should be jumping him, all systems go.

  But he’s tired; I can hear it in his voice. And something about his body, the way he’s holding me, must be communicating a lack of sexy intentions. Must be, because my eyes drift shut and I fall asleep again.

  He’s still wrapped around me when the alarm on my phone goes off. I reach for it quickly, hoping to silence it before he wakes, but he stirs behind me. “Sorry,” I murmur.

  “S’all right.” His lips graze the sensitive spot behind my ear, and suddenly I’m wide awake and fully aware of his solid muscle against my skin, his heat, the morning wood nestled in the cleft of my ass. It’s the perfect moment to finally have our romp between the sheets.

  Except that I have to go to work. If it were just me, I could fudge the schedule, get a late start. But I can’t leave my sisters hanging, doing my share of the work.

  Responsible adulthood really sucks sometimes.

  Still, I can’t quite bring myself to move and spoil the moment. His hand is curled around my breast; I cover it with mine and allow myself a few precious seconds to savor us being at least a little bit skin to skin.

  When I force myself to disengage, Lando rolls me onto my back before I can climb out of bed. His mouth finds mine in the dark for a slow, thorough kiss, no less devastating for its gentleness. By the time he lifts his head, my panties are drenched and regret lies heavy on my chest.

  I cup his face. “You gotta go to work,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll make coffee while you shower.”

  This guy. He can’t have had more than a couple hours’ sleep. “It’s okay; we have coffee at the bakery.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Go back to sleep; I’ll catch you later.”

  There’s a pause before he says, “How were you planning on getting to work?”

  “Oh. Right.” I feel my face get hot and am thankful for the darkness. “Don’t mind me; I never have any functioning brain cells when I first wake up.”

  “So coffee would be good, then.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I guess so. Thanks.”

  He kisses me again, lightly, then rolls away and snaps on a light. When he slides from under the covers, he’s gloriously naked. My eyes drink in his spectacular backside as he pads from the room.

  Only when he’s out of sight do I force myself to roll out of bed. Moving quickly, I check his dresser. The second drawer down yields boxer briefs, and I smile as I slip a pair out.

  It’s a poor substitute for having Lando against me, but I’ll take it. Remembering I’m wearing these will give me a little boost all day. Closing the drawer again, I hurry into his bathroom.

  In the kitchen, he hands me a mug of coffee and a piece of toast slathered with peanut butter. “Protein,” he says. “Good for your brain.”

  “And so delicious.” I take a bite and savor it. “Maybe I’ll make peanut butter chocolate bars today.”

  “Can’t beat sweet.” His eyes are warm with humor and flirtation. The look in them tugs at me, low in my belly, like a physical touch.

  I study him, memorizing his expression so I can pull the image up later. His slow, smoldering smile lifts a corner of his mouth. “You keep lookin’ at me like that, you’re gonna be late to work.”

  The flesh between my legs twitches. “Look who’s talking,” I retort, relieved to have something to argue with him about. “Did your thing go okay last night?”

  The smile vanishes. “No. We got a tip about a location, but when we got there they’d already skipped out. Not only moved all their gear, but wiped the place down. They were long gone before we even got close.”

  “Hmm. You think the tip was planted to throw you off? Send you chasing your tails?”

  Lando squints at me thoughtfully. “Maybe; can’t rule it out. Something about the witness is itching at the back of my neck, but I don’t know why yet.”

  I wish we could stay here and talk it through; maybe it’d help him figure something out. Blowing out a breath, I pull on my metaphorical big girl panties, which are not nearly as much fun as the very real boxer briefs I’m wearing. “I better get going.”

  He reaches out and cleans a speck of peanut butter from the corner of my mouth with his thumb, then licks it off. My pussy spasms, and it must show on my face because his eyes get darker. For a long moment we watch each other, the pull between us getting stronger until I think we’re going to go at it right here in the kitchen.

  Then Lando pulls out his keys and the moment disintegrates. I follow him to the door and out, sucking in a breath as the frigid night air hits me. Fuck, it’s cold.

  He blasts the heater in his truck again, which I know is primarily for my benefit. I’m reluctant to leave the warmth of the cab by the time we reach the alley behind the bakery. Sucking it up a final time, I say, “Good luck with your case. I hope things go better today.”

  “Yeah, me too. Happy baking.”

  “Always.” I smile at him and open my door before we can have another moment, because I can’t keep resisting them. Scurrying to the door, I unlock it and wave goodbye, then dart inside.

  My sisters are already there. They eye my clothes — the same ones I wore yesterday — and I know I’m in for it. “Morning,” I say, as if it’s any other day, and get straight to work.

  They do too, but as soon as we have a free moment, Quinn says, “Well?”

  No one would guess that she and I are fraternal twins. We don’t have the same coloring, and our personalities are nothing alike either. But we’ve always been close, despite our differences.

  “What happened last night?” Jade says. “I called you back but you didn’t answer. And you weren’t at Carlotta’s this morning when I came to pick you up.”

  I check my phone. Sure enough, there’s a missed call from her. My brain was so busy melting from Lando’s kiss I never even heard it.

  “You didn’t call out the cavalry?” I tease.

  “I heard Lando’s voice, so I knew you were with him.” She takes a tray of croissants from the oven and transfers them to a cooling rack. “He sounded mad.”

  “He was.”

  “What did you do?” Quinn says.

  “Why do you assume it was something I did?”

  “Hello, this is Quinn, your twin sister.”

  I have to laugh. And then I tell them about what happened at Revved, and my idiotic but fortunately brief walk in the cold. Not about the mind-blowing, panty-melting kiss, though. I’m not ready to talk about that yet.

  And I don’t mention the trip to the diner
and hiding a witness away in a motel, either. Not that my sisters aren’t completely trustworthy, because they are. But I want Lando to know that he doesn’t have to worry about what I overhear, or what I see, when I’m around him.

  “You spent the night with him?” Jade says.

  “Yeah, but nothing happened.” Almost nothing. “He had to go do the thing, for the case he’s working on.”

  "So let me get this straight. He's already gone, doing the thing for the case, when one of his cousins calls to tell him you're out walking in the cold. He drops everything, comes to get you, takes you with him to do the thing, then takes you to his place and goes to do the other thing, and now he's brought you to work ... but nothing happened."

  “I was asleep when he got back.”

  “Where were you sleeping?” Quinn.

  “In his bed.”

  She folds her arms. “Did he sleep on the couch?”

  “No.”

  Jade says, “You slept in his bed with him and nothing happened?”

  I squirm. “He might have kissed me.”

  “Might have?” Quinn demands.

  “All right, he kissed me.” Twice. And I came all over his fingers in his truck. “Happy now?”

  They exchange glances. “What?” I demand.

  “Nothing,” they say in unison. I glare at them, but break’s over. We all get back to work.

  A heavy gray dawn has lightened the sky when Lando comes in. We’re in the middle of our morning rush; the bakery is crammed with people getting coffee and pastries on their way to work. I make him his usual coffee order, and he spies the peanut butter chocolate bars and grins. “I’ll have one of those.”

  “Try this first.” I hand him a sliver of heaven on a piece of napkin.

  He looks at it. “Lemon bar?”

  “Just taste it.”

  Popping it in his mouth, he starts to chew … and then he gets The Look on his face. The one that signals we’ve got another hit. He swallows and asks, “What is that?”