“Exactly why he’s in my garage, Agent Love,” he says, as if that should absolutely make it all right. “He followed you. That was a threat, and I wasn’t giving him time to act on those murders and go after you.”
My eyes go wide. “Did you kill his men, behead his men, because he followed me?”
“No,” he says without so much as a blink. “But I should have. Our women are off-limits. Always.”
“I’m not your woman, Kane. Not for two years. And I thought you didn’t chop off heads like your father?”
“Beautiful, I can still smell you on my skin. Taste you on my lips if I try hard enough.”
“I fucked you, Kane. You owed me that after showing up on the beach where it happened. But it was just a fuck and an escape. If that makes me yours, then I’d say Samantha, my brother’s woman that you fucked, is yours and his, too.” His eyes glint with anger, and I seize it, pushing him for an admission of guilt, repeating, “And I thought you didn’t chop off heads like your father?”
“I didn’t kill Romano’s people or order them killed,” he bites out, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if Romano did it himself.”
“Why would he do it himself?” I ask, aware that he’s avoided the entire topic of chopping off heads.
“To turn the attention onto me and it worked,” he says.
“And his motivation?” I ask. “Outside of the everyday conflict between two patriarchs?”
“There’s the question,” he says, ignoring my inference that he is the old man’s equal when he claims it’s his uncle. “Is it to distract everyone, us included, from something else? Or is it to try to tie my hands, weaken me before a blow?”
It could be either or both, I think, because he’s right. The attention is on him. My brother, the police chief, is breathing down his neck, and no doubt rallying my father, the mayor, behind him. Rich, my other ex and fellow FBI agent, who was already in a damn cockfight with Kane, sees the X on the target that is my other ex. And the list goes on. But if any of them think that Kane’s hands are tied, they’re wrong, and so I circle back to what feels important right now, to a question asked and answered but I need answered again. “I waded through blood to examine those bodies, Kane,” I say. “They sat in chairs facing the TV, their heads in their laps.”
His eyes narrow. “What was playing on the TV?” he asks.
And there’s the contradiction that is Kane, the man who would kill for me but accepts what no one else in my life accepts: dead bodies don’t freak me out. The problem is that he understands this because they don’t freak him out. Which is exactly why the Yale-graduate attorney and criminal businessman in him has analyzed the scene the way I did and asked the same question I would ask—did ask.
In other words—was there a message left for him or me on or near that TV? And there was: an old video in an ancient video player that ties back to the case I was working the night I was raped. But even if I was at liberty to share that information, which I’m not, I don’t like that Kane Mendez gets that from me. So for right now, I go to my question that I still need answered. “Did you kill, or order the killing of, those people?”
“You’re dodging my question about what was on the TV.”
“Crime scene details of any type are confidential law enforcement information,” I say.
“You’ve already shared details,” he points out.
“And that’s the last time you’re getting lucky tonight. Back to my question. The one you seem to be dodging.”
“Your question has been asked and answered,” he says, repeating my thoughts, “but I’ll answer again. No. I did not kill them, nor did I order those people beheaded. You know me. I’d hit closer to his home. And you didn’t have to ask two times, let alone three. I don’t lie to you, Lilah.”
I know him. He’d hit closer to home.
In other words, he believes that no matter how many times he tells me that he’s not his father, I know he’s got his father in him. I set that bitter pill aside, not ready to swallow it, but because I’m apparently a masochist, I decide to choose another. “No lies?” I challenge. “The tattoos, Kane. I saw your face when I showed you the photo in the chopper of the victim’s tattoo. I know you know more than you’re telling me.”
“About the tattoos, Lilah-fucking-Love.” He steps closer to me, and I have that same urge I had to back up as I did in his office the other night. But this time, there isn’t an opposing urge to kiss him before I bite the fuck out of his tongue. The scent of blood from my crime scene still lingering in my nostrils, and the head of a crime family tied up one room over, tamps down at least some of my urges. “I told you,” he bites out, “to leave them the fuck alone.”
“That doesn’t work for me anymore,” I say. “The tattoo artist—”
“You think that I haven’t been to every tattoo parlor in the area and beyond, Lilah? Do you really think that I don’t relive seeing that man on top of you and need vengeance for you?”
“And yet you were silent for two years,” I say. “You didn’t find answers. That’s too long. That artist—”
“Says he’s religious and the Virgin Mary inspires him, thus the tattoos,” he says. “I spoke to him personally, in depth. I have that parlor being watched. I have him being watched. It’s time for you to leave now.”
“Leave? You have a man tied up in your garage that you think killed your father. I’m not leaving while you kill him.”
“Despite the fact that the world would be a better place without that bastard, I have an alliance with him, a truce that invokes peace in my territory that I intend to keep in place. I won’t kill him unless he leaves me no option.”
“That’s how you treat people who you have truces with?”
“He killed my father and he followed you, Lilah, which I repeat, was a threat. You bet the fuck that’s how I treat him.”
“You think he killed your father, and I don’t think it was a threat. He gave me a clue that led me someplace that I don’t quite understand. But there’s an answer there. I need to talk to him.”
“What clue? What answer and to what question?”
“I’ll talk to him,” I insist.
“Is that how you want to play this? You want to be complicit in his kidnapping and whatever comes next?”
“Now you’re protecting my honor? I just made that man think that I came over here to play a sex game with you.”
“Because it was the right decision. No matter who or what we are in private, to that man you’re my woman, and if he touches you, he dies. That’s the message you needed to send.”
“No. What I needed to do was arrest you both.”
“On what charges, Lilah?”
“Kidnapping for you,” I say.
“He wouldn’t press charges. There’s no crime here. Walk away.”
Now I step back, my badge the invisible line between us. “If he ends up dead, I will arrest you. Do you understand? I’ll have to.”
“I told you. I won’t kill him unless I have to.”
“Spoken like the true patriarch of the Mendez Cartel.”
“I am what I have to be for reasons I hope you never have to understand. And as for arresting me, everything we’re saying is being recorded, Agent Love.”
“Now you’re threatening me?”
“I’m still protecting you,” he says. “I’m setting you free. Now you don’t have to question your decision to walk away. I made it for you.”
“Fuck you, Kane.”
“Later, Lilah. What did the old man tell you?”
“I’ll talk to him myself. You’re recording me. I have nothing else to lose by staying.”
“You’re leaving and when you wake up tomorrow morning, remember two things: you were never here, and I did what I had to do to protect you.”
The way he says those words, cold and calculated, sends a chill down my spine. “What does that mean, Kane?”
“You’re going to leave now, Lilah.”
Tho
se words are a proverbial slammed door. He’s shut me out. I see it. I feel it, and since I’m the only person on this planet who has ever influenced him, that’s dangerous for everyone he intends to punish. “On one condition,” I barter.
“Sorry, beautiful. As much as I enjoy the challenge of your conditions, not this time.” His hand comes down on mine on the counter. I pull back, but not before I feel the pinprick, which might be nothing, except that this is Kane, and just as he says nothing without purpose, his actions follow the same rules.
“Holy fuck,” I hiss, the room starting to spin. “What did you just do to me?”
“Gave you the gift of deniability.”
I sway and he catches me and my fingers close around his shirt, anger surviving the haze overwhelming me. “I’m going to … fuck you, Kane.” The stupidity of how those words have come together is the last thing I remember before everything goes dark.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Teresa Lee
Lisa Renee Jones is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the highly acclaimed Inside Out series, as well as the Dirty Money series; the White Lies duet; the Tall, Dark, and Deadly series; and The Secret Life of Amy Benson series. Murder Notes is the first book in the Lilah Love series. Visit her at www.lisareneejones.com.
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