The landscape was becoming more urban, and the navigation on my phone suddenly chimed in with my next move.
Shane gave a shaky laugh and pulled her hand from mine to wipe her eyes. “Guilt is my least favorite emotion,” she said, finally meeting my eyes again.
I knew she had hit her revelations quota, and I matched her wry smile. “There’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”
Her laughter was genuine this time. “You’re quoting Calvin and Hobbes to me?”
I grinned. “The fact that you could identify the quote speaks volumes about your excellent taste in comics.”
We spent the rest of the drive talking about things that didn’t hurt, and when we arrived at our building, we were laughing.
Shane’s laugh was gorgeous – throaty and full of golden whiskey. I parked the car, then took her hand again and brought her knuckles to my lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Shane, but when you laugh, you’re glorious.”
She looked at me a long moment as the laughter slowly faded from the air but didn’t leave her eyes. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and I knew it wasn’t for the compliment that she thanked me.
“Let’s table all further discussions until after dinner tonight, shall we? I think that great beast of yours has missed you and could use a little time,” I said.
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” she said, and when we grabbed our bags and went inside, she let me keep hold of her hand.
38
Shane
“Well, that escalated quickly.” – Shane, P.I.
The condo Gabriel’s sister shared with her mother and son was near the University of Chicago in graduate student housing. It was a two-bedroom place with a surprising amount of charm given its relatively anonymous architecture.
Spicy scents greeted us when Gabriel ushered me in. A beautiful boy I assumed was Mika jumped up from the blocks he’d been stacking on the living room floor and shouted, “Big Man!”
Gabriel dropped to his knees and threw his arms open. “Small Man!”
Mika barreled into his uncle’s arms, and Gabriel held him so close I wondered at his ability to breathe. But then Mika looked up at me and shouted, “Mama, Big Man’s friend came too!”
Gabriel’s twin laughed as she came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel. “You made it!” she said. She kissed her brother on the cheek and then turned to me with a smile. “And you’re my brother’s partner. It’s nice to meet you, Shane.” She was a couple of inches shorter than me and had the easy grace of a woman comfortable with herself. Her skin tone, like Gabriel’s, was quite dark, and her long hair was streaked with copper highlights.
“Thank you so much for inviting me,” I said, surprised by her automatic warmth.
Kendra waved dismissively. “The rule in this house is you’re only a guest the first time, and you get invited back if you help yourself.”
I grinned and held out the bottles of wine I’d brought, one red and one white. “I like that rule. Which one should I open?”
This time I got an eye-roll to go with the wave. “Both, obviously. Mika will show you to the kitchen while I grill my brother on why you cancelled dinner last night.”
I chuckled at Gabriel’s look of dismay, and the little boy grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come Gran’s been waiting to meet you she says you must be special if Big Man brought you to dinner are you special?” The entire phrase was said in one long, adorable little British-accented phrase, without breath or pause to punctuate, and only because my arm was full of wine bottles did I not drop to the floor and gather the little man in for a hug.
The kitchen was the source of the good smells, and a striking woman standing at the stove was at the heart of it. She wore flowy, wide-legged pants with a pretty white linen tunic top. Her long braids were tied up in a high ponytail, and there was no hint, in either her hair or her skin, that she was old enough to be Gabriel’s and Kendra’s mother.
“Gran! She’s here and Big Man is talking to Mum can I please have a taste?” Mika’s enthusiasm was utterly infectious. Gabriel’s mother winked at me quickly before she dipped a spoon into the pot on the stove and knelt down to hold it out for Mika.
“Slowly, my love. You blow just enough to cool the food, but not so much you cover Gran with it,” she said, holding her other hand out under the spoon. Mika practically quivered with the effort it took to hold still and blow gently, and he gave the task a hundred percent concentration. “Okay, now see how it smells, and then test it with your tongue. Is it cool enough?”
He took a big sniff and then a quick, darting taste. “Yes, Gran.”
The pride in her smile as the spoon disappeared into his mouth was a thing of loveliness. “Mmm,” Mika said reverently, “that’s the best bite I ever tasted.”
She leaned in and sniffed his cheek, then kissed it. “And you’re the best thing I ever tasted.”
Mika flung his arms around his gran for a quick, exuberant hug, then ran out of the room. Gabriel’s mother stood gracefully, dropped the spoon into the sink, and held both her hands out to me in greeting.
“Welcome, Shane. I’m Miriam, but please call me Miri or Mum as my children do.” I put the wine down and took her hands, and she held them as she looked at me. “You are strong, and Gabriel says you’re smart. That’s good.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I can see where your kids got their looks. You’re beautiful.” I promptly turned pink and winced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, I’m not. That was the nicest thing anyone but Mika’s said to me all day. I’ll take it.”
She let me have my hands back and then directed me to the wine opener. “I’ll also take white wine please, but pour mine in something sturdy without a stem. My grandson likes to climb into laps when he’s done eating, and I’m fairly certain his spirit animal is an octopus.”
Miri continued speaking as I cut the foil from both bottles. “I think you like my son. Is that true?”
If I’d been drinking, I would have done a spit-take, but I managed to pull the cork on the first bottle without fumbling it. I looked up to find Gabriel’s mum studying me. My instinct was to prevaricate, and with anyone else, I would have ducked the question or pretended it hadn’t been asked. But I found myself responding to Miri’s forthrightness.
I inhaled for courage and then met her gaze. “I do.” My mouth opened again, because I had much more to say on the topic, but I closed it like a snapping turtle when I realized I had absolutely no idea where to begin, especially when most of the things that came to mind were not at all appropriate to say about a man to his mother.
So instead I said something much, much worse. “He makes me remember who I used to be.”
Miri didn’t flinch in surprise at my words, nor did she kick me out of her kitchen for being a psycho. She just let her gaze rest on me a long moment before she said quietly. “Who were you?”
I let the words go on a breath, almost as if they wore wings. “Strong. Fearless. Indomitable,” and then, after a pause, “Trusting.”
“Who are you now?” she asked softly, her eyes never leaving mine.
My heartbeat felt loud in my ears. “Afraid to trust.”
Miri held a hand out to me, and again, running on pure instinct, I took it. She pulled me to her and held me tightly. I surrendered to this mother’s hug in a way I hadn’t since before my dad and brother had died – since I was sixteen years old. A sob choked my throat and tears gathered behind my eyes, but I held them back by matching my breaths to hers. She held me for a few more moments, then spoke into my hair just before she let me go. “You can be afraid and still strong, still fearless and indomitable. You can be afraid, and you can trust, and then when you’re ready, you can let go of the fear. Fear muffles you. Let it go, and then you can live out loud again like you’re meant to.”
Her words slipped into the quiet spaces in my brai
n and found homes there. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“You can thank me with wine, poppet.” She gave me an extra squeeze and then stepped back to the stove. “Kendra will have white too,” she said as she turned off the burner and removed the stew pot from the heat.
“And I will have red, if you’re pouring,” Gabriel said as he walked into the kitchen, swept the stew pot from his mother’s hands, and kissed her affectionately.
I turned back to the wine so I could compose my expression as I processed Miri’s words and reordered my heart to include them. I was glad to see my hands were steady as I pulled the second cork and bypassed the wine glasses to pull down five superhero juice glasses. Miri’s gentle squeeze as she reached past me for a ladle grounded me, as did Gabriel’s casual hand at my back as I poured red wine into a Batman glass for him. I took Spiderman for myself, then poured white wine into the Wonder Woman and Superman glasses for Miri and Kendra, and by the time I’d added lemonade to a Robin glass for Mika, I remembered that this was what family felt like.
Gabriel raised his glass to me, then raised an eyebrow at Kendra, who had just entered the kitchen. “DC comics, Sister?”
She shrugged. “They had Wonder Woman. And until Marvel comes out with the Black Panther set, she wins.”
I raised my glass to her in a toast. “She always does.”
We spent an entertaining few minutes on the topic of Wonder Woman versus any of the other DC or Marvel comic heroes, and I was very glad to have been properly educated by Sparky on their strengths and weaknesses.
Then Kendra and her brother launched into a discussion about the Black Panther comics, and Miri caught my eye. “They’ll be at this for hours unless we change the subject,” she said in a low tone.
“I kind of love it,” I admitted with a grin.
She returned the smile and handed me a covered pot of rice. “Me too. Let’s move them to the table, then, and continue it there.”
Dinner was an easy affair, with reaches across the table, second helpings of the rice, stew, and roasted vegetables for everyone, and liberal splashes of laughter punctuating the non-stop conversation.
Mika made his way from lap to lap, sampling his uncle’s stew, his mother’s vegetables, and Miri’s rice, before he climbed into my lap and wriggled into position. He finally found the right spot when I moved an arm to support him, and his head leaned back against me as he idly played with the leather wrap bracelet I wore on my wrist. The love in Miri’s eyes as she watched her grandson fall asleep was breathtaking, and I wasn’t even aware that I’d gone quiet until Gabriel looked over.
“Small Man’s out cold,” he whispered.
I nodded and realized I’d stopped talking when I felt him settle in, so that the rumble of my voice didn’t wake him.
Gabriel started to get up to take him from me, but I shook my head. “Let him sleep.” Mika twitched in a dream, and I was transported back to my own childhood. I was six when my brother Kieran was born, and ten when he was Mika’s size. I remembered sitting around the firepit at my parents’ parties when Kieran would find me on a lounge chair, curl up in my lap, and fall asleep to the sounds of our parents’ voices.
I looked down at the top of Mika’s curly head to hide the tears that filled my eyes, and a wave of hope for this little boy’s life filled me. I wanted him to see his eleventh birthday, and then his twenty-first. I wanted him to have the chance to fall in love, and to hold his own child in his lap. After the night of the accident, I never let my mother see me cry for Kieran and my dad again, but every year on Kieran’s birthday, I blew out a candle and sent a wish out to the universe for him.
I wiped the tears away and looked up to find that conversation around me had stopped. Kendra had a look of concern on her face, and Miri cleared her throat and stood to gather dishes. “Kendra, come help me clear the table.”
She hesitated a moment, then filled her hands with plates to join her mother. Gabriel reached out to wipe an errant tear from my cheek.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. “Just remembering when my brother was this small.”
“Do you want your own kids someday?” His voice seemed too blasé for the careful way he watched me, but I was tired of second-guessing everything I said around this man.
“Yeah, I do. I don’t really have a plan for how or when, but I’ve always just kind of assumed it’ll happen.”
He exhaled so slightly I might have missed it if I hadn’t seen his jaw unclench, and I wondered why that question had mattered to him so much.
Kendra came back into the room and over to where I sat. “Thank you for letting him sleep on you, Shane. I’ll take him to bed now.”
My lap felt cold and empty when she lifted her son off me, but I got to see his face before she carried him away, and the sight of long eyelashes against his skin reminded me forcibly of his uncle, who still watched me intently.
I turned to Gabriel. “You have a wonderful family.”
His chair was next to mine, and he reached out for my hand, then brought it to his lips. “Thank you for being here with me. I feel like I got to show off all the special people in my life,” he murmured against my knuckles as he held my gaze.
My heart lurched a little at the thought that I could be one of those special people, but I didn’t have the courage to ask him. His lips glided over the backs of my fingers as he watched me, and my eyes flicked between his gaze, which burned my skin, and his mouth, that I suddenly needed very badly to kiss.
“I think,” I said in a voice that surprised me with its huskiness, “that we should go.”
The low tones of his murmur against my knuckles made my heart hammer. “It’s time.”
My breath left me in a whoosh. It was definitely time.
I hugged Miri and Kendra and vaguely remembered making promises to see them again soon. Gabriel kept my hand in his as we said goodbye, and I was so focused on the heat of his skin that I was barely aware of anything else around me.
He let go of my hand only to help me into the passenger seat of his car and then took it again as he drove. His eyes were locked on the road when he spoke. “You have fascinated me since I first laid eyes on you,” he said quietly. “It’s like I see you in infrared – your head and your heart burn bright white, and your whole heat signature draws me like a moth to a flame.”
“Is that a good thing?” I whispered.
He smiled and pulled my palm up to his mouth to kiss it. “It’s good, but it’s not comfortable. I go to bed craving your heat, and I wake up wanting you next to me so badly my day feels empty until I see you again.”
My skin felt flush, and the fire he described was real as it rushed through my body. We were stopped at the intersection just before our building, and my heart was already pounding in anticipation of what was about to happen between us.
I reached for the door and opened it. Gabriel looked over in surprise, and I met his gaze so he could see my words as well as hear them.
“Give me ten minutes before you come to my place.” And then I bolted from his car and ran to the front door of our building. He didn’t turn down the street toward the parking garage until I was safely inside the lobby, and I took the stairs two at a time up to my place.
Oscar greeted me in typical bouncy-ball fashion, but I didn’t even give him a proper rub before I had his leash on him and was back out the door.
The titanium leg I’d worn to dinner was not so useful for running, but I was fast enough to get us to the park in record time. I wondered if I’d left clothes all over my bed in my what-to-wear-to-dinner wardrobe freak-out and whether I’d have time for a quick shower before Gabriel got there, when Oscar suddenly tensed and let out a low growl.
I spun around just as Dane Quimby stepped out of the trees. He held a gun in one hand, and its aim shifted between my dog and me.
Oscar must have sensed my fear, because at Quimby’s next step, he started barking.
“Shut the dog up,”
Quimby snarled.
“Stop walking and he’ll shut up,” I said in a remarkably calm voice, considering the quaking of my guts.
He froze, but Oscar knew he was a threat and kept barking. “Where’s my money?” Quimby sounded a little unhinged, and I wasn’t quite sure how to play it – calm and “your wife has it,” or nervous and “I don’t know what you mean.”
I studied his posture for clues to his mental balance. He was tense, and Oscar’s barking was making it worse. The hand holding the gun could have been shaking, but he kept shifting his aim up and down, between my dog’s head and my own, so I wasn’t sure.
He was a small man who’d gambled big against someone much smarter than him, and he’d lost. His money was gone, his wife was gone, and his company would be gone soon too. Karpov had something on him, so the only revenge he could possibly get would be against me.
I realized I might not survive this night, and that thought made me mad.
“Shut that dog up!” Quimby yelled.
I jerked hard on Oscar’s leash and made a chhhtt sound to quiet him. If Quimby shot my dog to stop the barking, the gunfire would draw immediate attention, but I didn’t trust him to be sane enough to realize that at the moment.
“She doesn’t have the money, Quimby, your wife does. Drop the gun.”
39
Gabriel
“As a black man, I hope one day I have as many rights as a gun.” – Gabriel Eze
Quimby swung around, gun arm first, to find me in the dark. I was deep in the shadows, grateful I’d worn a black sweater to dinner, and terrified he’d turn back to Shane before she could run.
But she didn’t run. She dropped Oscar’s leash and launched herself forward – at the madman with the gun.
Code of Conduct (Cipher Security Book 1) Page 23
