The Taken

Chapter Nine

It was a relief to get out of the office, and not only because of Kit’s aunt, the haranguer who seemed to know there was more to Grif than met her eagle-eye. Maybe she recognized him in a way Kit couldn’t. She’d lived through more decades, after all-the Age of Aquarius, the end of the Cold War. She’d probably dined as an adult at Windows on the World.

And she was sick, he could see it. Her outline didn’t spark with plasma like those being chased by death, but phosphor was burned around her in a permanent etheric sear, a static etching of how close she’d come to death.

But it was the computers beeping, the printers running, the phones constantly ringing-even in every damned pocket of the people walking by-that was really getting to him. It was nearly more overwhelming than the sensations that accompanied being wrapped in flesh.

What was it about this generation that they needed to be so connected? Wasn’t there something to be said for autonomy? For holding court in your own head? For putting your heel to the sidewalk and lone-wolfing it until you reached your own damned destination?

And now the word-hound he’d somehow found himself yoked to wanted to put the investigation-his destination-on pause so she could put rollers in her hair. God help him, she’d said it helped her think!

At least Marin was going to keep working on a connection between the listed men. Grif had also suggested getting a file going on any of the women Schmidt had busted, going back a couple of years. One of those might be willing to lure a nosy young reporter to her room in return for clemency.

“Here we are! Fleur Fontaine’s Beauty Boutique. The best pin-ups for pinups!”

Jesus, the way this woman could turn a simple sentence into bird chatter. He didn’t want to see her hurt or dying, but her constant need to look on the sunny side of every sullied coin made him want to punch a blue jay in the beak.

“You coming?” she said, poking her head back in the car when he didn’t move.

Grif stared straight ahead. “I ain’t hanging out in no beauty joint.”

“Aw, c’mon. I want to introduce you to Fleur.”

“I’m not going.” He should though. He was responsible for her being alive, which meant he was also responsible for keeping her that way. But since he was also responsible for her fated death, the reminder just made him cranky. He folded his arms over his chest.

“She moonlights as a burlesque dancer,” she said in the blue jay voice. “She can do things with tassels that will make your mouth water. I bet she’d show you if you asked nice.”

“You’re off your rocker, lady.”

Kit tilted her head. “Why are you mad?”

Why aren’t you? Grif thought, brows furrowing, which was when he realized he really was sore. “We’re supposed to be working a case.”

She shrugged. “Nothing to be done until Marin cross-checks those names. Come in where it’s warm.”

“What about Evelyn? You were supposed to help me find out what happened to her.”

“I will,” she said, but her softening expression, a mixture of pity and sympathy, hardened him further.

“When?”

“As soon as I don’t feel like Medusa.”

And at that, Grif climbed from the stupid, foreign, low-slung car and glared at her across the soft hood. “You’re supposed to be some modern-day woman, working hard for justice, doing a man’s job… but you’re going to stop to get your hair done?”

Kit tilted her head, then pursed her bottom lip so it looked like a soft pink pillow. Grif tore his gaze away. “Aw, Grif. You’re cranky again. Need a hug?”

“I’m a P.I.,” Grif replied through gritted teeth. “I need a lead.”

Kit fisted her hands on her bell-shaped hips, another part of her anatomy Grif was trying not to notice. Especially considering the subject matter. “Your Evelyn has been dead for fifty years, Grif. She isn’t gonna mind two more hours.”

But Grif damned well minded.

So he’d turned without another word, and left Kit calling after him on the cracked sidewalk. He wasn’t a patsy and he didn’t wait for women to tame their updos before working a case. Now, five blocks away-give or take five blocks-he was utterly lost. At least he had his map.

“That thing’s upside down, man,” said a young man in baggy pants.

“Mind your own business,” Grif snapped, and stared until the man scurried off. Then he flipped the map around. He needed a place to stay while slumming on the mudflat, and as sore as he was with Kit, with a rogue cop on her trail, she needed one as well. Problem was, fifty years gone meant most people his age were now dying of natural causes, and he hadn’t known all that many to begin with. Not in Vegas.

Though there was someone.

“Question is,” Grif muttered, squinting up at the street sign, “is the old wop still alive?”

Who’s the hottie?”

Fleur was standing at the plate-glass window when Kit entered the salon, and probably had been since Kit pulled her Duetto to a stop at the curb. It was earlier than normal business hours, so they had the place to themselves, the usual chatter and hum of hair dryers missing. Fleur held a steaming cup of coffee out to Kit, cradling a second in perfectly lacquered fingers, tips long and moon-shaped and as red as a stop sign. Her simple, scoop-necked dress matched, though its fishtail hem put Kit in mind of a bullfighter, appropriate as it spoke to Fleur’s Spanish heritage and it was how she faced every day-poised, engaged, and ready for anything.

“I don’t really know,” Kit said, and shook her head. Who was the man who’d saved her from death and, if her gut-check was right, rape? Who was this stranger who dressed like all her other rockabilly friends, in a fedora and loose-fitting suit, but one that fit him so authentically it could have been tailored for him?

Who was Griffin Shaw?

Fleur swung a hip, the bullfighter cape flaring, letting out a whistle as she turned away from the window. “Looks like Handsome and Exciting’s illegitimate love child.”

“More like Terse and Cryptic’s outlaw cousin,” Kit muttered, following.

Fleur raised a brow as she gestured to her chair. “Sounds like your type,” she said, though she didn’t say it like it was a good thing.

Kit made a face, but the tension left her as Fleur swiveled her around to face the mirror. Unfortunately, tension was the fundamental ingredient keeping her upright. Kit met her friend’s eyes in the mirror, and they both fell still. It was only the welling tears, but the mirror seemed like a water wall, reflecting all the grief Kit had dammed up just to keep moving.

“Nic loved this place,” she said, voice breaking.

She had, in fact, been the one to encourage Fleur to open it two years earlier. Fleur had been cutting and coloring their hair since junior high. She’d given Kit her first Middy haircut, and taught her how to do a proper Victory Roll. Making a living was incidental.

“I should pay my clients,” Fleur had protested, when approached by Nic and Kit with the idea of the salon. “They allow me to touch them in an intimate way. Lovers are allowed to touch a person’s hair and head. Parents and children. Other than that, it’s a social taboo.”

But Fleur’s passion for her art made it impossible not to think of her as an intimate friend. Even Marin softened under Fleur’s loving touch. Kit brought her aunt in after chemo turned the stubble from her once-blond hair to gray ash, and Fleur handled the new tufts like priceless china, saying each strand gleamed with wisdom and experience and strength. Marin sailed from her chair like she had wings of silver, and it was that intimacy and touch Kit needed today.

Too bad there wasn’t a way to explain that to Grif.

Leaning forward, Fleur wrapped her arms around Kit, so close to her neck that she tensed for a moment, remembering the violation of the night before. Then she relaxed, the embrace soothing her like a balm. “I didn’t want to bring it up first. You were besties. But, oh, I’m going to miss her.”

Kit rose at that, and they hugged hard. “Nic’s gone, and the whole world is worse for it.”

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, ‘inclined’ 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.”