The Taken (23 page)

But it was on now, and the door ajar, and a feminine humming rose and fell in the air, drawing Kit close. Once again, she looked in, and this time there was a woman in the rocking chair. The humming immediately cut off, and she looked up.

“Curiosity killed the Kit.” The woman smiled.

Kit did not. “What did you say?”

“The cat,” the woman said, putting down the Bible she was reading, resting it on her lap. “I meant the cat.”

“Who are you?” Kit asked, because she was fairly sure this woman wasn’t another guest. She wasn’t dressed for a party, for one, covered instead in unrelieved black, including her skin, her close-cropped hair, and the smoky shades shielding her eyes.

Not a wife, either, Kit was willing to bet. People of color weren’t traditionally a part of the Mormon Church, and while there was still a lot Kit didn’t know about Chambers, she got the feeling that he was extremely traditional in this regard.

“Were you drawn in by my song?” the woman asked, ignoring Kit’s question. “ ‘Amazing Grace.’ You people are supposed to like that.”

So she wasn’t Mormon . . . but thought Kit was? “Are you supposed to be here?”

The woman laughed, so that her lips pulled tightly against her teeth. “Of course not. And neither are you.”

“Well, I—”

“Time to go home.” She rose, thin and taller than Kit initially thought, and crossed to stand before her with an airy grace. Looking down her nose at Kit, she sniffed. “Time for us both to go home.”

For some reason, that made Kit’s heart skip a beat. Then it sped up again and stayed revved. She didn’t like the way this woman was looking at her. Or the way she’d ignored Kit’s question. Or her cryptic words. Yet instead of challenging all of that, as she normally would, Kit just wanted to back away.

“Do you read the Bible?” the woman asked Kit suddenly.

“Um, I have before.”

“Then you might be familiar with the apostle Paul. He argues in Romans, chapters six through eight, that humans have two competing natures. The flesh and the spirit. The pure spirit follows God. But when people allow their fleshly nature to take over, they follow their lower desires. And that is sin.” Her lips thinned in disgust.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I hate sin.” The woman looked down at her body, her flesh, like she hated it, before her attention returned to Kit without altering. “Plus, I don’t want you to be surprised when you see me again . . . though the competition will be over by then.”

“The comp—?” Kit drew back. “You mean, between the flesh and the spirit?”

“Don’t look so alarmed,” the woman said, careful not to touch Kit as she handed her the Bible. “Even when you lose, you’ll still win.”

Kit frowned, dropped the Bible onto the bed, and rushed to follow her from the room. “Hey—”

But the woman was already gone, leaving only an empty hallway again, the notes of “Amazing Grace” still trembling on the air.

Chapter Seventeen

A
promise?” Kit repeated, disbelieving as she and Grif left the Chambers estate’s serpentine two-lane road behind, and the neon outskirts began building up around them. “He made you promise not to tell me about the sexual bacchanal going on in the back of his Mormon palace?”

She shook her head, less bothered by the fact that such events existed than she was by not knowing about them sooner.

Grif stared straight ahead as they entered the city, neon swallowing them up as they headed toward its belly. “Not just you. He’s hiding it from the world at large, and it doesn’t take much to keep the other men silent. There were cameras all over the place. As soon as you walk into that back room you’re part of the club.”

“Which is why he let you in,” Kit guessed. “And I bet some not-so-subtly-applied peer pressure in the personage of one Officer Schmidt ensures everyone stays that way.”

Grif huffed, a sound Kit was starting to anticipate. “I didn’t see Schmidt, but most of the men didn’t look like they needed much convincing.”

“I’ll bet.” They were silent for a bit, the road sluicing easily beneath the trim car’s tires, a sound Kit normally found soothing. Biting her lip, she looked over at Grif. “So what about Nic? What about the Wayfarer?”

He kept his gaze trained forward, but jerked his head. “There’s still no proof that Chambers was involved, Kit. And my gut tells me that’s precisely why he allowed me back there. Not just to find out what I know . . . but to show me we really know nothing.”

“Arrogant jerk.” Squinting out at the road ribboning before her, Kit shook her head. “No, there’s definitely more going on in that house than musical sex-partners. Why else would Anabelle Chambers have to drug herself into a coma?”

“What?”

Kit tightened her fingers around the wheel as they slid onto Industrial Avenue. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you . . .”

Biting her lip, Kit shot Grif an apologetic look in advance, then told him about her foray upstairs. It was only when she mentioned the strange woman with the Bible, however, that he lost it.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t take a simple order, can you?”

She opened her mouth to say orders weren’t hers to take, but he didn’t let her speak.

“If I tell you something, it’s to keep you safe! What’s so hard to understand about that?” He sat forward, back, then forward again. If they hadn’t been driving, she would have sworn he’d have walked away. “I guess it’s just your nature to disobey and do what you want anyway.”

“My nature?” The mysterious woman’s words revisited her in a whisper. “You mean my
fleshly
nature?”

Grif frowned, thinking about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.”

Kit jerked her steering wheel so hard that Grif crashed into the door and cursed. She was glad they were at their destination, Masquerade, because she wasn’t feeling so calm, either. “Griffin Shaw, you’re starting to piss me off!”

“Yeah, well you’re not exactly a peach to be around!” And he started ticking off annoyances on his fingers. “You’re flighty, girly, impossibly cheerful, and you never stop moving or
talking!
”

“Those are not bad things!”

“And you’re stubborn!” he said, trying to name something that was.

“So are you!”

“Don’t insult me,” he said, climbing from the car.

“It was a compliment,” she said, slamming her own door shut. “And what’s your problem? I’m doing my best here!”

“The problem,” he said, edging around the car, “is that I don’t like your cavalier attitude! Not about danger or sex or—”

Kit straightened. “I am
not
cavalier about sex! I take my sex very seriously, thank you . . . not that you’ll ever find out—”

“Good.”

“Because you’re too busy polishing your halo!”

“Hey!”

She took a step forward and got in his face. “Furthermore,
I
am a survivor. I don’t need you to protect me. I’ve gone almost thirty years surviving the death of my parents, the decline of my newspaper, and now there’s a murderer on my trail. But I’ll survive this, too.”

He looked for a moment like he was going to disagree, then tilted his head. “Is that all?”

“No.”

That drew a low growl from him. Good. She didn’t want him calm when she wasn’t. She actually, suddenly, wanted to annoy the shit out of him. So she took another step forward and poked him in the chest. “You. Are not. An. Angel.”

“Fine, honey. I’m not.”

“Those are not wing . . .
lumps
on your back.”

“Wing lumps?” he asked, with one raised brow.

“They’re cysts!” She poked him again, but there was less heat now. She was calming down.

“Just like the bumps on your head.”

“No,” she said, turning away. “Those are extra brains.”

“Of course they are.” And at his exasperated sigh, she felt instantly better.

Looking up at the Masquerade sign, with enough flashing bulbs and faux gold scrollwork to melt even Trump’s iron heart, she calmed her breathing. “Glad we got that settled. Now can we go inside, please? Because a man and a woman arguing outside a strip club in Vegas is such a cliché I want to slap myself in the face.”

“Uh-uh.” Grif grabbed her arm as she reached for the door. “You’re not going in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because you dress like a princess, act like a lady, and are just nosy enough to get us both in trouble.”

“Oh, Grif. You say the sweetest things when you’re being a total sexist pig.” She fluttered her lashes and made a long face. “But I’m scared to death to wait all alone in my conspicuous car in a dark lot of a sketchy part of town with a murderer hot on my trail.”

Grif’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a low blow, even for you.”

“So are you going to walk in with me, or do you want me to grab some tassels and sneak in the back?”

Grif answered by crowding in so close his body heat warmed her through his clothing. “I still don’t like your cavalier attitude.”

But Kit smiled to herself as he held open the door to the club. The argument had invigorated her, and seemed to set them back on solid ground. Besides, she’d seen the look in his eye when she’d stomped her foot and held her ground. He didn’t
like
her cavalier attitude.

He loved it.

T
he DiMartino strip joint was old, practically an institution in the Las Vegas nightclub scene, one Kit claimed got by mostly on its reputation for a management that turned a blind eye to its employees’ “extracurricular” activities. It couldn’t have been anything else, Grif thought, wincing at the music that assaulted them as soon as they walked through the door. It didn’t look like the carpeting had been replaced since he’d been offed, and the only thing recommending the furniture was that it was too dark to show stains. Even the bar was dodgy, a mere frame for the flat-top video poker that stole quarters instead of bills, though he supposed all that mattered was the one thing that
had
been kept up to date. The girls.

It felt wrong to bring Kit here, and he regretted being browbeaten into it as soon as they entered. Yet when he turned to tell her so, he found her bent over, head tilted to the side, staring at the center stage. “Oh, wow. She can do the Helicopter. Do you know what kind of muscle control that takes?”

Grif looked over, actually considered the question, and by the time his attention returned to Kit, she was moving away.

“Go find your friend,” Kit called back, waving him away. “I’ve got to see this up close.”

So while Kit sat front and center, by all appearances trading critiques with a group of college boys at a nearby table, Grif was escorted to an elevated booth at the back of the room. It was flanked by an in-house phone and a small console bearing video images of the adjoining rooms. He was offered a drink, which he accepted, and two lap dances, which he did not, then made to wait another ten minutes before the club’s owner joined him.

In the meantime, he watched the dancer Kit was currently applauding. The woman was certainly flexible, Grif thought, tilting his head the way Kit had until the woman flipped back to her feet. And he supposed she was strong as well. Hard to tell with gals, though. They mostly held their strength inside, like a coiled spring. His Evie had been like that. He’d once watched, shocked, as she hauled off and clocked a man she thought had patted her behind. Grif wouldn’t have thought her capable of it, but that night, when she rose above him in bed like a smooth hot wave, he made a point of testing the muscles beneath her sweet skin. The strength he found there heightened his climax in a way he hadn’t known possible.

He couldn’t imagine Kit popping someone like that. Not because she wasn’t strong, though he didn’t think she’d ever really tested it before, but because in the past few days she’d shown him a different type of resilience. A spirit that refused to be crushed. A heart that seemed to expand when, by all reasonable accounts, it should contract. Even in the parking lot outside, standing toe to toe with him, she had squared up and told him what was what. It was remarkable, damned feminine . . . and uniquely Kit.

Realizing he was smiling, Grif averted his gaze from Kit—currently waving bills at the stage—and immediately spotted the man beelining his way from the other side of the crowded room. Ray DiMartino looked uncannily like his mobster father, though if Grif remembered correctly, it was Theresa DiMartino’s sculpted nose and pointed jaw that made the kid not unhandsome now.

And not a kid, either, Grif reminded himself, doing the math. The last time he’d seen Ray, the kid had been a hair under eight years old, but he was fifty-seven now, and the tousled-haired boy was nowhere to be seen. Still, his bloodshot eyes momentarily lit up when he saw Grif—no doubt thinking there was a striking resemblance to the man he thought was Grif’s grandfather—and the dimples the kid had sported at seven flashed against thick stubble as they shook hands.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Grif said, as Ray slid into the booth. Ray lifted a finger, earning a nod from the waitress, and settled back with a contented sigh.

“Well, a call from Tony Prima was enough to pique my interest. The guy isn’t exactly known for his social skills, know what I mean?” He laughed, a throaty growl that also reminded Grif of Ray’s dad. That man had been a bull, and though there were obvious similarities, the son had a hunched look. This DiMartino had been castrated before he’d even grown horns. “But once he said Griffin Shaw wanted to see me, hey. It was a no-brainer.”

Waiting until the waitress had put down their beers and left, Grif lifted his with both hands and inclined his head. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well your grandpops was real good to me,” Ray said. “The other guys always treated me like some sort of pet, but Shaw took time for me, you know? I remember wishing for a while that he was my real pop, or at least a wise guy, you know? I didn’t know he had a kid, though. You look just like him, man.”

Grif cleared his throat, and changed the subject. “So how’s your aunt Mary?”

Ray’s brows lifted in surprise, before his expression softened. “Of course your grandpop woulda told you about her. My family was out of their mind about her, you know, the way she just disappeared. But he brought her back. She’s still nutso if you ask me, but every family has their oddballs.”

“Well, life didn’t lean easy on her,” Grif said, remembering how mentally frail the girl had been. “Even when she was young. She’d have to work real hard not to look over her shoulder after being kidnapped like that.”

“He tell you all that?” Ray gave him a sidelong look, then turned to watch the girl writhing center-stage, gaze distant, eyes narrowed against the strobing lights. “Well, a lot of the girls here are the same way. Broken homes, abusive fathers. It don’t take a genius to see how they’d start to think this,” he motioned at his flesh, “is their only worth. They’re lucky they have me, actually.”

Grif raised a brow.

“I look after them,” Ray explained. “They come to me if some punk’s pounding on them, you know, if they need a place to stay.” Ray pursed his lips, beetle brows drawing low. “Never really thought about it before, but I guess that’s because of what happened to Mary. Your grandpop protected her; she was lucky. A lot of these girls don’t have any luck in ’em.”

Grif looked at the girls in question, thought of the ones he’d seen at Chambers’s place, and couldn’t argue that.

Lifting his bottle, Ray waved it in Grif’s direction. “You know, Mary still talks about your grandpop. Says he was one of the finest men she ever met. Between you and me, I think she took to him like a baby chick seeing the first being around. Get the feeling she’s been looking for one like him ever since, too. But . . . you know.”

Grif shook his head. “Know what?”

“What everyone else said about him.”

“No. I don’t.”

Ray took a long pull on his beer before answering. “It’s just that your grandpop was married. Once. Obviously before your grandmother.” He glanced over to see if Grif did know, saw his face carefully devoid of expression, and leaned close. “Evelyn Shaw. She died. Was murdered, actually.”