by Shelly Ellis
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I didn’t think you did. I was just saying thanks for making the offer.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied flatly before turning back around to face the doorway.
“Hey, Morgan,” he called after her again.
“What, Dee?” she snapped, now not even masking that she was annoyed.
He took several steps toward her and nervously ran a hand over his dreads. This was the most they had said to one another in weeks. He wasn’t sure if she would lash out, walk away, or just be aloof, but something compelled him to finally try to talk to her again, to talk about what had happened between them.
He drew even closer to her, close enough to whisper. She glared up at him with those arresting green eyes and he wished he could say he didn’t feel any longing for her anymore because he was firmly in love with Melissa, but he did. God help him, he still did.
“Look, I know . . . I know it’s been . . . tough between us after what . . . well, after all that happened.”
She dropped her hand to her hip. The expression on her face radiated No shit, Sherlock, but he pressed onward.
“I know . . . I know you’re pissed at me and you have every right to be, but I don’t want it to—”
Suddenly, his cell phone began to chime and he glanced down at his hip.
“You better get that. I bet it’s the wifey callin’,” Morgan said, sucking her teeth. She then turned on her heel and walked away from him.
Derrick shoved his hand into the pocket of his slacks and tugged out his cell.
Morgan was right; it was “the wifey” calling him. He had been expecting Melissa’s call today, but not at that very moment. She was finally meeting her dad for a coffee date so that they could talk, and she had been nervous at the prospect, had agonized about it all week. Derrick took a deep breath and clicked the green button on the screen to answer.
“Hey, baby!” he said as he watched Morgan stroll into the hallway, feeling like an important moment had just eluded him. “How’d it go?”
“Umm, it went . . . okay.”
“Just okay?” he asked with a frown.
“Well, it went as good as can be expected, I guess. It was weird sitting across the table from him the first few minutes. It felt like I was sitting across the table from a stranger, not my dad. I mean . . . he’s changed so much, Dee.”
“Not that much. He’s still your dad, bae. That part hasn’t changed.”
“He doesn’t even dress the same anymore! He got his damn ear pierced. I told him he kinda looks like a black pirate now.”
“But after you talked for a little bit, you felt better, right?” he asked as he strolled into the hallway. “It felt more natural.”
“Yeah, it did. He started asking me about work and the kids at school and we fell back into a . . . I don’t know . . . rhythm. We were laughing after a while. The next thing I knew we had been talking for almost two hours and Dad had to go because he said he had to meet up with Lucas for something.”
Derrick couldn’t help but smile as he strolled down the empty hall. This was the first time she had referred to Lucas by his actual name and not as “the man my dad is living with now.” The coffee date must have gone better than she’d said. The outcome was certainly better than Derrick had expected.
“I’m glad to hear you guys had a good talk,” he said as he tucked his file folders under his arm and pushed open the steel door that led to the stairwell. “See? It didn’t turn out bad at all. You were worried about nothin’.”
“Well, something happened that I’m a little bit unsure about.”
“What happened?” Derrick asked as he walked up the stairs back to the second floor.
He listened to her loudly exhale on the other end of the line. “Dad invited us over for dinner. Me and you, I mean. He said Lucas would love to cook for us. I told him maybe. I said I had to check with you first.”
“Well, that’s good . . . isn’t it? That he invited us over?”
“Not really. I just got on speaking terms with Dad and now I’m supposed to sit and break bread with him and his man?”
“Lissa,” he began, trying his best to not make it sound like he was lecturing her, “if you’re going to rebuild your relationship with the man, you’re going to have to accept that Lucas is in his life too. He’s a pretty damn big part of his life, in fact.”
“I’m aware of that, Dee,” she replied tightly.
“I know you’re uncomfortable being around them. Hell, sometimes it can get weird for me too, and I don’t have anywhere near the same baggage about their relationship that you have, but it has to be done. They’re a package deal, so to speak. Just think of having dinner with them as a way of getting over your discomfort with their relationship faster. It’s like . . . like pulling off a Band-Aid.”
“Pulling off a Band-Aid?” She sounded incredulous.
“Yep,” he said as he shoved open another steel door, revealing the second floor. “Just rip it off instead of taking it off a little at a time.”
He heard her exhale again as he walked down the hall toward his office. “I hope you’re right, Dee.”
“Of course, I’m right.”
She laughed. “Okay. I’ll tell Dad we can come over. I’ll try to schedule something for next week or the week after. I just hope . . .” Her voice faded.
“You just hope what?”
“I hope I don’t regret this later.”
“I promise you won’t,” he said as he looked up and noticed Rodney, the Institute’s head security officer, standing at the other end of the corridor. “Look, Lissa, let me call you back. I see someone I’ve been meaning to talk to and I finally caught up with him.”
“No problem, baby. I’ll see you when you get home. Okay?”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too,” she replied warmly before hanging up.
Derrick tucked his cell back into his pocket. He had been meaning to talk to Rodney about a complaint one of the instructors had made about one of the newer security officers. Derrick raised his hand to get Rodney’s attention but paused when he noticed a tall, lanky student stroll toward Rodney and tap him on the shoulder. As Derrick drew even closer, he recognized who that student was.
Cole smiled up at the head security guard and began to speak. From this distance, Derrick couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the guard and Cole seemed to be having an animated conversation. They were even laughing with one another.
Ever since Derrick had found the suitcases filled with drugs and money under Cole’s bunk, he had not only been obsessing over the fate of those suitcases and whether they had really been removed from the school like Cole had told him last week, but also wondering how the young man had managed to get the suitcases into the school in the first place. Derrick knew it was possible for other students to have smuggled them in, but considering the three guards and security cameras they had all throughout the facility, he didn’t understand how the students could’ve done it so inconspicuously.
Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they had done it in plain sight because someone in security had willingly turned a blind eye to what they were doing.
Derrick didn’t want to consider that scenario. He didn’t want to believe that the guards who worked there, who were paid to protect the welfare of the staff and students, could be susceptible to bribes. But he didn’t see how it was possible to not consider it.
He watched as Cole and Rodney finished their conversation. Rodney gave Cole a congenial slap on the back and looked in Derrick’s direction. Cole looked up just as Derrick drew near them.
“What’s up, Mr. Derrick?” he asked.
Derrick didn’t respond to him. Instead, he turned to Rodney. “Looks like y’all were having a pretty intense conversation over here.”
“The Mavericks,” Rodney said without hesitation. “This little dude was trying to school me. Told me the Cavaliers were goi
ng to take them out next round, but I told him to lick the milk off his upper lip because he’s too damn young and don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
Derrick continued to stare at them. “Really? That’s all you were talking about.”
Rodney laughed and tucked his thumb in his belt. He squinted. “Yeah, that’s all. What else would we be talkin’ about?”
Derrick didn’t have an answer to that one. He watched as the young man raised his hand and bumped Rodney’s fist. All the while Cole kept his eyes on Derrick. It could have been Derrick’s imagination, but he swore the smug little punk was holding back a smile.
“Nice shootin’ the shit with you,” Cole said as he walked away, carelessly throwing the words over his shoulder at Rodney.
Derrick’s eyes stayed on him until he disappeared down the hall into one of the classrooms.
Chapter 8
Ricky
Ricky stared at his rearview mirror, watching as a woman approached his Mercedes with her hips swaying and her long hair blowing around her shoulders in the gusty February wind. She was a sight to see, drawing appreciative stares from the men she passed on the sidewalk with her open coat, slinky wrap dress, long legs, and buoyant double Ds. One man had even turned around completely, shouted to get her attention, and was rewarded for all his effort with an eye roll from her just before he stumbled into a parking meter and landed face-first on the sidewalk.
Despite his dark mood, Ricky had to chuckle, watching Mariana in action.
The curvy Latina’s physique and attitude had earned her some of the highest tips back when she’d worked for Ricky at Club Majesty. Of course, now that the strip club was closed, thanks to the raids more than two months ago, Mariana didn’t work for him anymore. That didn’t mean she’d stopped exerting a magnetic power on men that made them go mute and stupid. That’s why he’d asked her for her help today.
Ricky watched as Mariana reached his car, pulled the handle to open the passenger-side door, and hopped in, onto the leather seat. When she did, he shifted sideways to look at her. He raised his brows eagerly.
“So? How’d it go?” he asked. “Did the cops tell you anything?”
He hadn’t had any luck in locating Simone, even though he treated it like a job. It was the only thing he did when he wasn’t trying to gather information that the detectives were trying to use against Dolla Dolla.
Simone had shut down her Facebook page and Insta-gram account. Unable to track her online, Ricky had gone to Simone’s empty apartment multiple times to see if she’d come back to pick up something she might have forgotten, since it looked like she’d left in a rush. He’d even tried to pump her neighbors for info, only to be met with silence or outright hostility when he tried to question them.
“I don’t care who you are, honey,” her elderly neighbor had drawled to him dryly when he’d knocked on her door and told her he was friends with the young woman who’d lived in the basement apartment and didn’t know where she had disappeared to. “If that girl wanted you to know where she went, she would’ve told you. Right?”
He’d even gone to the donut shop he knew Simone had frequented with the other cops at her station, hoping to see her strolling through the door for a coffee and a Danish. But he’d had no success there either.
He’d called her police station, asking for her, but the desk cop had told him she wasn’t there and asked if someone else could assist him instead. Ricky had hung up soon after, frustrated and enraged. He had stopped short of going inside the station to look for her himself, tired of playing this stupid game of hide-and-seek with his former lover. But he didn’t go.
Not only did he not like the idea of being back inside a police station so soon after his arrest, but he also didn’t know if any of the cops would recognize him and ask him why he was there. It would be just his luck for Detective Ramsey or Detective Dominguez to show up to say hello to one of their buddies. He couldn’t take the chance. That’s why he’d asked Mariana to do it instead, to take a little trip to the police station for him. If there was anyone who could finesse her way into getting the info that he needed, it would be her.
“I didn’t find out a whole lot even though the pendejo at the front desk talked my damn head off,” Mariana said before tossing her dark hair over her shoulder and settling into her seat. “He told me she don’t work there no more though.”
“She doesn’t work there anymore?” Ricky squinted. “Why the hell not? The police department moved her to another station?”
“No, she don’t work there no more! He said she ain’t a cop. She quit!”
“Quit?”
Ricky hadn’t anticipated that answer. Simone hadn’t quit the force because of him, had she?
No, he thought, she wouldn’t do that. There had to be a backstory here, an element he didn’t know about. Simone had harbored so many secrets, he wouldn’t be surprised if there was an important part of the story he was missing.
“So I asked the dude where she workin’ now,” Mariana continued. “He told me he didn’t know.”
Ricky flopped his head back against the seat cushion, closed his eyes, and exhaled. So he was right back where he’d started.
“The cop said though that he thinks her mom is sick or somethin’. That may have been the reason why she up and quit like that. She might be taking care of her.”
Ricky opened his eyes again. “He told you all that?”
Mariana nodded. “He told me her mama lives out in Lanham too. I don’t know her name but—”
“I know it,” he blurted out, leaning forward in the driver’s seat so that he could reach into his back pocket and pull out his cell phone.
Simone had told him her mother’s name in passing once. He was now grateful that he remembered.
He opened a search engine phone app and began to type furiously, hoping that he could find her mother’s address in an online database.
“So that’s it?” Mariana asked. “That’s all you need?”
He looked up from his phone screen and nodded. “Yeah, you got a lot more out of them than I could. Thank you, Mari.”
He reached into his back pocket again to pull out his wallet and rifle through the bills he had inside, but she stopped him by placing her hand on top of his.
“I told you. You don’t have to pay me.” Her glossy pink lips curled into a smile. “You know I’d do anything to help you, Ricky. I got your back.”
“Thanks, girl.” He leaned forward to brush his lips across her pale cheek, but she twisted her head and went for his lips instead, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him close and plunging her tongue inside his mouth.
The kiss caught him off guard, so much so that he lurched back from her in surprise.
Yes, he and Mariana had had a thing last year and hooked up a few times, but then she’d got a man—a mechanic who lived out in Springfield, Virginia—and he’d met Simone. That had ended their late-night trysts at the club, back in his office.
“What? What’s wrong?” Mariana now asked, frowning up at him.
“Nothin’,” he said, unwinding her hands from around his neck. “I just . . . I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“I used to kiss you all the time when you weren’t expecting it, and you never acted like that before,” she said, eyeing him. “So what you got going on for the rest of the day? You busy?”
He was barely listening to her. He’d already returned his attention to his phone and his internet search.
“I said what you got goin’ on today, Ricky?” she repeated, slapping his shoulder and making him look at her again. “Damn!”
“Not much,” he finally answered.
Since the restaurant and strip club had been shut down, he had been a man of leisure. In fact, he was starting to get a bit stir-crazy, going from juggling two jobs as manager of Reynaud’s and Club Majesty to no job at all. He knew he had to get another job soon or start another hustle to pay his bills. Though he had amassed a large savings, h
e didn’t like the idea of blowing through it so quickly without replenishing his money—years in poverty had taught him that. But for now, he would focus on finding Simone. When his thoughts weren’t occupied by worries about Dolla Dolla discovering he was an informant, his mind was absorbed with that other central task.
“Then why don’t you come by my place,” Mariana whispered, running a nail along his jawline, lowering her long lashes. “Stay for a few hours. Let’s have some fun like we used to.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Your man won’t mind?”
“I broke up with that nigga two weeks ago! Caught him cheatin’ on me with some puta he met at his garage. I don’t have time for that shit! I told him, if he can’t appreciate being with a bad bitch like me,” she said, pointing to her ample bosom, “then there are plenty of other niggas out there who will!” She bit down on her bottom lip. “So what you think? I got a blindfold . . . ice cubes . . . you name it, papí. We can do this.”
It was tempting. A roll in the sheets with Mariana might be just the thing he needed to end the dark mood he’d been in since the raids. But something held him back. Desire was there—but the desire to track down Simone was even stronger. If he was in bed with Mariana he couldn’t ensure that he’d be focused on her, focused on the sex. He didn’t want to waste her time.
“Nah, I can’t. Not today.” He took her hand and kissed the soft knuckles. “Thanks though, baby.”
He then frowned down at his phone screen, seeing three addresses with the name “Nadine Fuller” in the city of Lanham, Maryland. He decided to play it safe and also look up addresses for the last name “Fuller” but only the first initial “N.”
“Is it her?” Mariana asked.
“Is what her?” he answered distractedly, typing again, doing another search.
“The puta you trying to track down,” she said, tapping his screen with her acrylic nail, making him look up at her again. “Is she the reason why you won’t come to my place?”
He slowly shook his head again. “Nah! No, she’s not the reason. I—”