The Taken

by Vicki Pettersson

  That was the real tragedy, the constant heartbreak that’d remained with Kit in the long night of her undreaming. So they wept in each other’s arms, in lieu of the friend they really wanted to hold, and while they did, Kit couldn’t help thinking it was their duty to fully embrace this life, if only because Nic no longer could.

  And fight for her, too, Kit thought, pulling away and wiping at her face. She sniffled, and looked into Fleur’s no longer so-perfectly-powdered face. She sniffled again. “Nic would hate what I’ve done with my hair.”

  Fleur pursed pinup lips. “Yes. She would.”

  They laughed, without humor, before falling silent, each feeling the moment moving away, but neither wishing to leave Nic’s memory behind. But that was life, wasn’t it? It went on.

  Or, sometimes, it was interrupted by Buddy Holly’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

  Kit wiped her face as she pulled her cell from her leopard-print bag. Fleur leaned over her shoulder, and Kit caught the distaste on her friend’s face in the mirror. “Well, now the ringtone makes sense.”

  Kit shook her head sadly as she sat again, silencing the call and erasing Paul’s accompanying picture at the same time. “I actually used to like that song.”

  She’d picked it for him because it’d annoy him if he ever heard it, a virtual impossibility but a pleasing idea all the same. It also reminded her of the cool, gradual way he’d let Kit—and the rest of the world—know how important he planned to be. Only a few summers ago had they listened to it and other rockabilly songs in what Kit had begun thinking of as the beginning of the end of their relationship. They’d driven down the Strip in her convertible, the hot night whispering against their soft skin, smiling as they ignored the sweat because sweat was what they did back then.

  But by Christmas everything had grown cold, and he was telling stories that rarely included her, and making plans that never did. They drove down the same stretch of asphalt with the top up, and he spent the whole time pointing out the things he intended to leave behind, mostly places and memories they’d shared. Then it was on to talk about a law appointment he felt entitled to, a potential summer internship with a political candidate she already found suspect, and a disdain for her clothing, her alternative lifestyle . . . her.

  Kit knew he thought he was sharing his dreams with her, but by then it could have been anyone riding alongside him in that car.

  “Ah, he loved you,” Fleur said unconvincingly, when Kit shared these thoughts with her.

  “Please,” Kit said, tossing the phone back into her bag. “The only bone in my body he ever loved was his.”

  “Shh. Not so loud.” Fleur held her scissors to the side as she leaned close, voice melodramatic. “Contact shame.”

  “Was he really that bad?” Kit asked, though what she was really wondering was, Was I really that blind?

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Fleur said, scissors flying like she could snip away Kit’s worry along with her split ends. “We’ve all had judgment lapses that had us tiptoeing toward our own personal apocalypse. Besides, Paul started out all right. Then he was tainted by the lure of zeroes in his bank account.”

  “A need for obscene wealth is just a symptom of his disease.”

  “Which is?”

  “A profound lack of self-worth.”

  Fleur snorted. “That’s because deep down he knows he gets through life on white male privilege and looks rivaling Narcissus. I mean, what kind of man looks over his shoulder just to see who’s watching him?”

  Kit thought about the way Grif had walked away from her—back ramrod-straight, steps even and unhurried and sure—never once looking back. “Yeah, well you know Paul. He wants to give the appearance of being ‘fiscally sound.’ ”

  “Fiscally sound?”

  Kit held up her palms. “His words, not mine.”

  “I’m fiscally sound,” Fleur declared after a moment. “I’m a sound thousandaire.”

  Kit snorted. “I’m potentially wealthy, but totally unsound.”

  “And he loved you because of the first part of that sentence.” Fleur smiled through the mirror. “The rest of us love you because of the last.”

  “Unsound is a good adjective. Unfortunately, Paul has other adjectives for me.” Stubborn. Irresponsible. Strange.

  Sensing the serious turn, Fleur cleared her throat. “Enough about Paul. He’s so fake he should have ‘Made in China’ stamped on his ass. Tell me about Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous. Let this old married woman live vicariously through you.”

  Kit rolled her eyes—Fleur was both younger than her and insatiably hot for her rocker husband—but she went with it, spilling everything about the previous night, how she’d been nearly dead on her feet—too sad, exhausted, and outnumbered to do much more than flail when she’d been attacked in her own home. “One guy was a cop, we think. I’m sure he had some part in Nic’s death. I don’t know about the other, but Grif drove both of them away.”

  Fleur, who’d fallen utterly still at the beginning of the telling, came to life, waving her scissors and comb around so wildly she looked homicidal. “But you have to go to the police!”

  “Did you hear the part about my attacker being a policeman?”

  “But your bruises . . .” Fleur touched Kit’s neck gingerly now, like she was breakable. Kit gritted her teeth, and shooed her away.

  “I’m fine. And Grif has promised to protect me.”

  With raised brows, Fleur motioned around the salon, empty but for the two of them.

  “I’m not in any danger right now,” Kit said hurriedly. She hoped. “And I’m sure he’s doing something to further our investigation.” She hoped.

  “Your investigation?” Fleur’s eyes went round, her arms falling slack. “Kit!”

  “You didn’t see him, okay?” Kit said, holding up a hand. “He’s a fighter, and . . . cranky.”

  “Cranky?”

  “I mean, tough, but gentle enough with me. Well, gentle-ish. Plus . . .” She let her words trail off into a mumble.

  “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?” Leaning over the chair, Fleur looked directly into Kit’s eyes. “You saw black wings flare from his back right after he saved your life?”

  Kit pushed her away. “I told you I was tired!”

  Fleur shook her head, catching herself before she ran her hands through her pin curls. “Gee, honey. Project much?”

  “I know, I know.” Kit rolled her eyes. “It was the muscle relaxer. The drink.”

  Fleur winced. “The grief.”

  “Yeah.” Tears threatened to spill again. Besides, if there really were such things as angels, Nic would still be here.

  Fleur lifted her scissors, resumed snipping. “The question now is, how’d this Griffin Shaw get in your house?”

  “Followed the others, I guess.”

  “And hid in the bedroom before them?” Fleur said skeptically.

  “I don’t know,” Kit admitted, because the question had been niggling at her, too.

  “Kit . . .”

  “Don’t give me that look.”

  “The one that says exciting and scary aren’t the same thing? The one that says bad boys have never been good for you?”

  “Yes. That one.”

  “But is he dangerous?”

  Kit bit her lip, then nodded. “He wears it like that suit of his. Loose and roomy, like he’s always on the edge of a punch.”

  “Damn,” she said, then added, “That is hot.”

  “I know.” But Kit also knew that Grif was somehow broken. She’d seen it when he was talking about his grandmother, that Evelyn woman, and in the way his expression shuttered when she teased him. It was strange, but also intriguing.

  “As long as he’s not dangerous to you,” Fleur said, though it was a question.

  “Look, he’s helping me when no one else will, so I’m inclined to trust him,” Kit replied slowly, then shook her head, which Fleur stilled with her palms, before she resumed cutting. “No, ‘in
clined’ isn’t the word.”

  “Compelled?” Fleur offered, knowing how Kit loved precision in her words.

  “Yes.”

  “Moved? Driven? Fated?”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “Which?”

  Kit offered up a lopsided smile. “All of them.”

  “Damn it, Kit.”

  “I know.”

  It was dangerous to overlook the way he’d slipped into her home. And scary.

  And exciting.

  “He’s helping me,” she repeated, more to herself than Fleur. Helping protect her, helping her find out what happened to Nic, helping her get out of bed and keep moving on a day when it would have been easier to just disappear.

  But she’d gone that route once before, after her father’s murder, and she’d take dangerous any day. That’s why she was going to track down Nic’s killer. And why she’d go head-to-head with a crooked cop. And why she needed to get her damned hair done. She needed time to think.

  She was jolted from the thought by her phone, trilling in her lap with the notes from the past. Kit just looked at Fleur, who rolled her eyes.

  “Ah, Paul,” Fleur said, as Kit silenced the phone. “You are a bundle of nerves wrapped in a spray-on tan wrapped in a thousand-dollar suit.”

  “Ah, but he’s fiscally sound.”

  “And a few other adjectives.”

  Chapter Ten

  Anthony “The Cobra” Prima was twenty-four years old at the time of Grif’s death, but had already been a lieutenant in the Chicago outfit of the Las Vegas mob. Despite being on what was essentially opposite sides of the law, he and Grif had hit it off fifty years earlier, due in part to an incident where Grif had crossed sides to deal with a card shark who was also responsible for early-morning stairwell rapes in the city’s most glamorous properties. It was ironic that, of the two of them, Tony was the one to survive the era, but here he was—a spry, if bow-legged, seventy-four-year-old with an irreversible slouch and a bad case of psoriasis.

  Prima’s digs were in a neighborhood aging similarly to Kit’s, with owners clearly obsessed with keeping bygone years alive. The most notable difference was that Tony’s wrought-iron fencing was double-enforced, guarded by two Dobermans, and the home iced over with bulletproof windows overlooking a green where Sinatra had once allegedly sunk a hole in one—though the cart girls had never said which of them it was.

  His security system would pass muster at NASA, and he had phone jacks in every bedroom closet, each of which turned into panic rooms at the touch of a button. Yet as state-of-the-art as his defenses were, they collectively spoke to the one thing that clearly hadn’t changed in the last fifty years: Anthony Prima was as paranoid as ever.

  Thus, it had to be disconcerting for the old coot to hear his bell ringing when the community’s guard hadn’t called, the gate opening when the voice box failed to signal, his perimeter breached when the alarm hadn’t tripped, and a knock on the door almost no one ever touched.

  I am the prodigal son, Grif thought, marveling at the way bolts gave under his touch. Sure, he was undeniably in the celestial doghouse, but for some reason he had a long etheric leash.

  Ringing Prima’s doorbell, listening to chimes that would do Liberace proud, he was just about to knock when a blast from above shattered the melody. Hunching, Grif dodged as the ground erupted beneath his feet. Concrete shrapnel trailed him as he fled, and he dove behind a planter as the unmistakable sound of bullets ricocheted to his left.

  “Goddamn it, Tony!”

  The potted bush in front of him lost its fringe.

  Holding up his hand, he hoped the smooth magic he’d used to calm Kit wasn’t lost in the frantic wave. “Stop firing, Prima!”

  The tommy gun stuttered. Then an equally hesitant voice emerged from the ceiling speaker.

  “Hello?”

  Prima’s voice came through the intercom system, staticky with suspicion and possibly something else. Fear? Excitement? Agita?

  “Open up, Tony.”

  Silence. “Step into the outer foyer so I can see you.”

  Grif hesitated. The tiny rotunda could easily be jerry-rigged for explosives. If so, he might be back in the Everlast sooner than he thought. Straightening, he took a tentative step forward.

  “Take off your hat.”

  Grif removed his stingy brim, and held it in front of him, turning his head up at the camera to give Tony a good, long look.

  “Grif?” The static accentuated the disbelief. “Griffin Shaw?”

  “Hello, Tony.”

  There was the scrape of multiple bolts being thrown, then the door gave way to a squinty blue eye and an errant tuft of wiry gray hair. “I heard you were dead,” Tony said, with his characteristic candor.

  Grif’s stomach clenched. So someone knew he hadn’t just disappeared. “Well, I’m happy to report that as a great exaggeration. Can I come in?”

  Tony scoffed. “You have been gone a long time. Nobody comes in, Grif.”

  “C’mon,” Grif said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Old time’s sake.”

  “The only old times we had together involved beating the shit out of some asshole in a urine-soaked stairwell.”

  “The good old days,” Grif said, undeterred.

  Tony opened the door wider, but left it bolted. “Then you disappeared, never to be seen again.”

  “You see me now,” Grif pointed out.

  “Yeah. You look good, too.” Tony rubbed at his eyes. “Damned cataracts. It’s like you hardly changed at all.”

  “Well, everyone’s pretty well-preserved where I went.”

  “California, huh?” Tony huffed. “They didn’t offer nothing like that to me. Know what they said when I asked about witness protection? Said I might skate on extortion and embezzlement, but I was still going to take a hit for tax evasion. I got two years then house arrest. Can you believe that?”

  Grif just raised his brows. “You gonna let me in, Tony?”

  The sole blue eye narrowed. “How do I know you’re not here to kill me?”

  Because there’s not a hint of plasma around you, Grif thought. “Why would I kill you?”

  Face creasing further, Tony thought about it. “Look, Grif. I know we go back a ways, but some things don’t change. I don’t throw good money after bad. I don’t believe Joe Pesci just plays a made man on TV. And no one ever, ever comes into my home. Got it?”

  Grif nodded. “Well, that’s too bad, Tony. It really is.”

  Tony nodded back. It was.

  Then Grif pulled his housewarming gift from behind his back. “Because I brought this.”

  Tony glanced down and let loose a deluge of Italian curses that would topple the famous tower in Pisa. Chest heaving, he glared at Grif. “All right. But just this once.”

  Grif handed him the bottle of vintage Sangiovese on the way in. “Don’t forget to put out the dogs.”

  Once Tony got over the novelty of having someone in his home, once he stopped marveling over the way his Dobermans inexplicably turned into lapdogs around Grif—“But they don’t like no one!”—and once he opened the bottle of wine and took solitary communion with the first few sips, he actually warmed to Grif’s company.

  Sitting in a living room wrapped in wall-to-wall shag, Grif looked around and decided the place couldn’t be called retro. That was how Kit had referred to hers, but that would imply effort at gathering together items for a space to reflect a bygone era, and from what Grif could tell, the wood paneling and dark stone fireplace and built-in bar had been here from the first. Watching Tony recline on a sofa already molded to his frame, Grif thought of the genie in Aladdin’s lamp, a man locked in luxury and a slave to the same.

  Tony didn’t seem to notice or mind. “Remember that time we set up the unsanctioned fights in the back of Vinnie Covelli’s restaurant?”

  “Vaguely,” Grif said, but he couldn’t fight the smile.

  “Yeah, you remember,” Tony said, pale eyes sparkling. “
You won the whole thing, bare-knuckled.”

  They’d run that racket every weekend for months. It was how Grif had paid off Evie’s diamond. “That was the last time I saw you,” Grif said, smiling lightly.

  Tony’s smile faded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was.”

  Grif leaned forward, casual-like, elbows on his knees. “So you heard I was dead, huh?”

  A bony shoulder lifted and dropped, a slight movement that betrayed the gun beneath his sweater vest. “Just hearsay. Not solid, like with your Evie.” Tony winced when Grif stiffened. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. She was a real gem. Had a way about her. Coulda given that Virginia Hill a run for her money, that’s for sure.”

  Grif swallowed hard. “Yeah, well. It was a long time ago.”

  “Yet here you are,” Tony pointed out. “Snooping around. Stirring the pot all over again.”

  He put up his hands at Grif’s hard look, then reached forward for the pack of sticks in the middle of the giant coffee table.

  “Grandkid?” Grif asked, jerking his head at the world’s largest ceramic ashtray.

  “Would I have anything this ugly in my house otherwise?” Tony lit up, tossed the pack over to Grif. “Listen, I’m not poking at old pains, or telling you to forgive and forget. I mean, look at me.” He waved around the room as if it was an extension of his body. “My kids call this place a glass fishbowl. Say I should start charging people to stand out on the green and gawk at me like I’m in an aquarium. My plaque would read, ‘Dago, in his natural habitat.’ ” He shook his head, his cigarette shaking between knuckles that’d outgrown their fingers. “They tell me the past is over. That it’s a new world. But I know what I know.”

  “And what’s that, Tony?”

  He pointed his fingers at Grif, smoke trailing behind. “It ain’t ever over. You can’t have no future if you don’t have no past, and the past ain’t never done with you.” He leaned back, nodding to himself. “At the end of your life, all you have is what you know.”

  Grif was well past the end of his life, and he knew things Tony couldn’t even imagine. But he was right about fingering old pains. Grif wouldn’t be here if he’d been able to just let it go. Then again, he thought, looking around at the museum Tony called a home, neither would Tony.