by Susan Sey
Erik took the shovel. “I ask again. Why?”
She watched with a glimmer of resentment as he sank the shovel into the impenetrable earth, wiggled the handle and freed up a pitiful root ball without so much as a grunt of effort.
“Why are you huge? Damned if I know. Your mom’s tiny.”
Erik handed back the shovel. “Most people think I look like my dad.”
“Most people don’t look very closely.”
Erik sighed. “Can we please not talk about my mother?”
“Why? I like your mom. Don’t you?”
“It’s complicated. Just please tell me why we’re out here holding a memorial service for dead tree.”
“Mary Jane seemed sad.”
Erik’s gaze sharpened on her face. “Did you make her come to your tree funeral?”
“Again with the effort to be funny. It’s not your strong suit. You should stick to stoic.”
“Nixie.”
She shrugged. “She just seemed sad, okay? About the tree.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She said so.”
Erik lifted a brow. “She said so.”
Nixie nodded. “It’s a little out of character, isn’t it? I mean, even in high school she wasn’t an emoter.”
“Emoter. Is that a word?”
Nixie shrugged. “We’ll call her reserved. So anyway, we’re standing by the door discussing High Noon, and suddenly she starts talking about the tree, how it was too bad, how she’d always kind of liked it. She was clearly very sad about it.”
Nixie nudged the tree with her toe. She couldn’t really feel it, though. Her clogs might be waterproof, but they were more practical indoors. “She must have really, really loved this tree. So I decided to get the remains off the sidewalk so she wouldn’t have to see it every time she walked through the doors.”
Erik sucked his teeth. “What did she say again? Her exact words, this time. Not your interpretation.”
“Her exact words?”
“Yeah.”
Nixie frowned. “I liked that tree. I planted it myself.”
“And from this you diagnosed a raging case of grief?” He shook his head and smiled at her. “That’s...very you.”
“Hey, I just listen. It’s amazing what you hear when you stop pushing your own agenda for a minute and actually listen to people.” She gave him a sweet smile and started rocking from foot to foot. Maybe she should reconsider her decision to work so far from the equator. “You ought to try it sometime.”
Erik took a step closer. Nixie was tall enough that she didn’t look up to many people. At least not this far up. He was radiating energy, as usual, and Nixie’s smile went from saccharine sweet to genuine. It was so nice to be with edgy, energetic people again. People who weren’t worried about either offending her or ingratiating themselves with her. Or proving their importance by dismissing her. People she could provoke and needle and who would provoke and needle her in return. This man’s ego was like flint. He was safe.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He spoke softly, dangerously. The hot rush of pleasure about thawed her toes.
“I know your type, that’s all,” she said. “Guys like you are a dime a dozen where I’m from.”
He took another step. Nixie didn’t back up. He’d left six inches at best between their bodies. She could smell coffee on his clothes, on his breath and the heat from that big body reached out to envelop her.
“Guys like me?” he asked. His mouth was very near hers, and Nixie let herself glance at it. For a guy with a face carved out of stone, his mouth was amazing. Perfect without being pretty.
“Sure.” Nixie smiled up at him. The warmth pumping off him made her want to stretch like a well-fed cat. “Big ideas, teeny-tiny, ah, budget.”
He stepped closer, close enough that she felt as much as heard the low rumble of his voice. “My budget is fine.”
I’ll bet it is, she thought but made herself nod doubtfully. “Then what am I doing here?” she asked.
“Hell if I know. Looks like you’re reading minds and holding memorial services for trees.”
She gave his arm a bracing pat. “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“And just because you feel something doesn’t mean it is.”
She blinked at him, surprised. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Real life is like that, princess. You should get inside before you freeze to death.”
“As soon as I’m done here.”
“Up to you.”
He stepped around her and disappeared into the clinic. Nixie looked after him for a moment, nonplussed. Then she grabbed the poor, mowed-down tree with both hands. It was heavier than it looked, still attached to the frozen earth by a couple stringy roots. She’d just set her heels for some serious yanking when a white coat whistled through the air and thwapped against her head.
“For God’s sake, put that on,” Erik called from the doorway. He stood there, frowning at her.
“What, you’re dressing me now? That’s cool. I sort of miss my entourage,” she shouted back.
“I bet they don’t miss you. Not with your twenty dollar wardrobe budget and your Goodwill habit.” He made a disgusted noise and moved away from the door. “You’re the worst dressed rich woman I’ve ever met in my life.”
Nixie laughed and shoved her arms into the sleeves of his white physician’s coat. She had to roll them up four times before her hands emerged, but the coat was still deliciously warm, probably from his body. Against her better judgment, she sniffed the collar. God, it smelled good. Like soap and shaving cream and hard work. Like him.
Lucky, lucky Mary Jane.
She swiped a sleeve under her nose as if to erase the scent and reached again for the tree. She didn’t need any distractions. Particularly not in the form of a too-ambitious, too-handsome, too-stubborn doctor. She’d had her fill of those. Plus, she had a tree to bury.
A few more ferocious yanks and she was suddenly on her butt on the frozen concrete with the sad little tree in her lap.
“Ha!” She scrambled to her feet and did a quick victory boogie. She was mid-butt-wiggle when she heard it. The distinctive growl of a big American-made engine, gulping gas and pouring out performance. It occurred to Nixie as she watched headlights sail toward her through the night that the only places she heard those engines anymore was in third world countries and here in Anacostia.
The car beached itself on the sidewalk inches from her frozen feet and Nixie dropped the tree. Another bleeding kid was about to roll out of that car and he’d need help. She raced to the car’s back passenger door and yanked it open.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nixie saw only one person in the backseat. He was fully grown, but had the outsized bravado of a teenager only pretending to be a man. He was dressed identically to the kid in the driver’s seat--enormous jeans, white t-shirt and a blue bandana around his head. Nixie patted at him with frantic hands, looking for the injury.
“Easy now,” she said, keeping her voice smooth and low even while her heart thumped around in her chest like a crazy thing. “We’ll take care of you.”
The kid scrambled away from her touch. “What the hell?” He glanced toward the driver, then back to Nixie. “I ain’t hurt, bitch.”
Nixie frowned, the first glimmer of alarm surfacing through her impulse to tend. “You don’t seem to be. What’s going on?”
“Jesus,” the driver said. “Will you just grab her?”
Nixie eased toward the open door at her back, keeping her eyes carefully blank and uncomprehending. “What? Grab who?”
The driver rolled his eyes in the rearview mirror. “I ain’t talking to you, bitch. Damn, dawg, grab her.”
Nixie’s stomach went hot and tight as the kid in the back seat snatched at her wrist with one hand. With the other, he yanked up his t-shirt and showed her the ugly black gun in the waist band of his boxer shorts.
“Get in the car, bitch.”
She shook her head slowly. Carefully. No disrespect, even though her impulse was to grab the gun out of the kid’s shorts and at least engage the safety before he blew his baby maker off.
But she’d seen too many boy soldiers in her line of work to underestimate the danger of her situation. Just because kids didn’t understand death didn’t mean they couldn’t deal it out. She’d often thought that was precisely the reason children were such effective killers. After all, how hard is it to pull the trigger when you don’t fully understand what it means?
She raised her free hand slowly into the air--See? I’m harmless--but kept moving toward the open door at her back. Toward safety.
The kid yanked at Nixie’s wrist again. “Get in here, doc. You got work to do.”
Nixie yanked back. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The driver slouched into his seat. “Just hit her, dawg. Or you’ll be telling Ty how the girl doctor kicked your ass.”
The kid balled his free hand into a fist. Nixie squeezed her eyes shut, sucked in a breath, and released a scream of such startling volume that the kid released her wrist and dropped back against the vinyl seat, his eyes crossed. Nixie snatched back her wrist, satisfied. She’d been the victim of more haphazard kidnappings than she could count, and in her experience, a good, healthy scream derailed a would-be kidnapper far more effectively than pepper spray or some fancy martial arts.
“Jesus!” The driver turned around and grabbed Nixie by the hair. She doubled her volume and poked stiffened fingers toward his windpipe.
“Aaaack,” he said. A surge of victory had her flipping her hair out of his lax fingers and scuttling out of the car like a demented crab. The gun man recovered enough to throw himself after her, and since she was already on her butt on the sidewalk, Nixie pistoned out with both feet to slam the door. He took it square in the face, the window a perfect frame for his stunned, squished expression before he sank out of view onto the floor boards. Nixie wondered for one hysterical moment what the back door of a ’79 Ford LTD must weigh to ring a kid’s bell like that.
The driver cursed--Nixie read his lips; it was an easy one--and opened his own door. Nixie scrambled up to sprint for the building, only to find Mary Jane at her shoulder, an emergency kit in her hand and fury in her face.
“What the hell is this?” she said.
“I’ll explain later,” Nixie said, grabbing for her elbow. “For now, let’s run.” She dragged at the smaller woman’s arm, but it was like trying to haul cinder blocks.
The driver looked back and forth between Nixie and Mary Jane, a hint of uncertainty under the bravado and scorn. “What the hell? There ain’t supposed to be two of them.”
“Two of what?” Mary Jane asked.
Nixie hauled desperately at her arm. “They have a gun, Mary Jane. This is not a good time for conversation.”
“Two lady doctors,” the driver said. “Ty said there was only one.”
Mary Jane’s face went stony. “Ty sent you?”
Nixie frowned. “Who’s Ty?”
The driver gave Nixie a sullen stare and rubbed at his throat while the gun man emerged from the back seat, a little shaky but upright. His gun wavered between Nixie’s liver and Mary Jane’s.
The driver said, “He wants the lady doctor. Now.”
“Fine.” Mary Jane walked to the passenger door, opened it and slid onto the giant bench seat. She drew her seatbelt down, buckled it. “Let’s go.”
“Um, Mary Jane?” Nixie tapped the window as the kids scrambled back into the car. Mary Jane rolled it down.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Some poor kid probably needs stitching up. At least they didn’t toss him out on the sidewalk this time. Tell Erik to cover for me. I’ll be back later.”
The driver stomped the accelerator and the car bucked to life. It jumped the curb and laid a perfect S of rubber on the street as it peeled away. Nixie stumbled back and watched it roar off into the night, taking Mary Jane with it.
“So she got into the car voluntarily?” the cop asked, his uniform starched, a sharpened pencil poised over his flip pad. The four of them were crowded into Mary Jane’s tiny office, Erik, Nixie, and the two cops who’d answered his 911 call. Erik gulped at the Styrofoam cup of coffee he’d brewed. It went down like boiling hot rocket fuel, but what the hell. He doubted he had any stomach lining left anyway. Nixie was killing him.
“They didn’t drag her into the car, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.
“It’s not,” Erik told her. “They’re trying to make it sound like Mary Jane went off with her boyfriend so they don’t have to investigate.”
A second cop turned toward Erik. This one was older, had the bulbous nose of a heavy drinker and the spare tire to match. The comb-over was gratis. “Did you witness the event?”
Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. “No,” he said, weariness and nerves burning in his gut. “Only Nixie did. And she just told you these guys pulled a gun on her and Mary Jane.”
“That’s true,” Nixie put it. “They definitely pointed a gun at us.”
“Did they threaten to shoot you or Ms. Riley?”
“Dr. Riley,” Erik said, his eyes closed.
“Did they threaten to shoot you or Dr. Riley?” the first cop asked, his voice mechanical.
“They never actually said they were going to use the gun, no,” Nixie said.
“And Dr. Riley got into the car of her own free will?” the second cop asked.
Nixie gave Erik an apologetic look that put another cramp in his stomach before turning back to the cop. “Well, yeah,” Nixie said. “She did.”
Pressed Cop looked at Paunchy Cop. “This doesn’t sound like an abduction to me,” he said. Erik could almost see him slam the lid shut on the case and mentally wander into a doughnut shop
“The hell it doesn’t.” Erik was on his feet, his hands fisted by his sides. Both cops touched their firearms in warning.
“You’ll want to take it easy, sir,” said Pressed Cop.
“How the hell am I supposed to take it easy when the woman I--” He broke off when the cops exchanged a smug look. “A woman I work with gets snatched off the street in front of her own clinic by a couple of gang bangers and the cops refuse to classify it as an abduction?”
Paunchy Cop smoothed a hand over his scalp. “Dr. Riley got into the car without coercion after she was told that somebody named Ty had sent for her. She then told Ms. Leighton-Brace that she would be back. I frankly don’t see how we can justify using departmental resources to track down a woman who seems to have simply accepted an invitation from an...um, acquaintance.”
“Accepted an invitation?” Erik shoved his hands into his hair. “I don’t believe this.”
“It sounds to me like you’re having trouble accepting the nature of your relationship with Dr. Riley.”
Erik stared at him. “What?”
Paunchy Cop gave him a greasy smile. “It’s not a crime to choose the gang banger over the doctor, sir. Call us if something illegal happens or if she’s not back within twenty-four hours.”
Erik had never in his life been more tempted to play the do-you-know-who-my-mother-is card. But he’d never played it yet and he wasn’t going to tonight. On the slim possibility that Mary Jane had taken off of her own accord, she would never forgive him for bringing his mother into the situation.
The cops filed out the door, and Erik watched them, his hands clenched into impotent fists. Anger and frustration boiled up inside him and he rounded on the only person left to yell at.
“What the hell, Nixie?” He didn’t bother to disguise his rage. He wanted her to feel it, wanted her as afraid as he was. “What the hell was that? Are you trying to get Mary Jane killed?”
He caught her mid-yawn. She tried to bite it off, but was apparently too far into it. She finished up with a jaw-cracking yah! and pushed one of those long, elegant hands into her hair.
&n
bsp; “Oh, sorry, am I keeping you awake?” he asked. “Is Mary Jane’s abduction interfering with your beauty rest?”
“Sorry. It’s a stress thing. The body trying to get extra oxygen to boost performance.” She tried a smile. “Like dogs do?”
“Dogs. Right.” He shook his head. “What’s the matter with you, Nixie? You deliberately let the police assume Mary Jane went with those kids voluntarily.”
Nixie frowned at him. “She did.”
He shoved his fists into his pockets. It was either that or strangle her. “She’s a doctor. Of course she went. She thought there was an injured kid somewhere. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t go at gunpoint. That doesn’t mean she isn’t in danger.”
“It sounded to me like she knew this Ty person.” Nixie hiked herself up onto the reception desk, let those ugly clogs dangle from her toes.
Erik rolled his head side to side, trying work out the headache. “Everybody knows Ty. Of him, at least.”
“Why? Does he run the...what is it? The Dog crew?”
“No. That would be Marcus P. Ty is the money man.” He smiled at this, though he wasn’t amused. “Legend has it he’s a homeboy made good. Had an MBA and a closet full of two thousand dollar suits until he took a knuckle-rapping courtesy of a little post-Enron crackdown. Got lucky, you ask me. Martha Stewart went to jail.”
“Martha Stewart went to Camp Cupcake,” Nixie said.
“Ty didn’t even get that. They just suspended his broker’s license.”
“Ah.” Nixie nodded slowly. “Legitimate employment was off the table, so he went under the table instead?”
“Right. Gangs are businesses, after all. Even a drug lord needs profit and loss reports. And then, of course, he’d need some sage advice on where to launder--oh, excuse me, invest--said profits. So maybe Marcus P runs the gang, but Tyrese Jones runs the money. And that, Nixie, makes him the most powerful man in this neighborhood. An invitation from him isn’t exactly a request.”
Nixie frowned, her brows coming together in a perfect little furrow that should have had a cartoon caption: thinking!
“Well how was I supposed to know that?” She slid off the desk and started pacing.
