Magnolia is pissed, but I can tell she’s finally going to concede when she rolls her eyes.
“God save me from overbearing men who think they know best.”
“God ain’t saving you from me, mama. You’re stuck with me.”
I grab her hips and yank them toward me. She crosses her arms over her chest right before she collides with my body and I give her a deep kiss.
“Be pissed at me if you want. I’m keeping you safe, and that’s not negotiable.”
“Fine. But you gotta go by my old house and somehow not be seen by the Feds because Desiree still hasn’t checked in with me. I’m fucking concerned about her too.”
“You got it. We’ll go in through the alley. I’ll tell her not to worry you like that again.”
“I appreciate it,” Magnolia says, but she looks like she’s got a mouth full of sour grapes.
I kiss her again anyway. “We’ll be back in a few hours.” Leaving her always feels like going against the grain, but this time it’s for the best.
“You’d better let me know if you run into any trouble.”
I throw a hand over my heart. “I promise.”
With that, she finally kisses me back, and instead of it being hard and fast, she throws herself into it like it’s the last time she’ll ever kiss me. When she pulls away, I read the apprehension in her eyes.
“Nothing’s gonna happen, mama. It’ll be quick. In and out. We’ll get answers, and be one step closer to putting this bastard in the ground so you never have to worry about him again. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
Famous. Last. Words.
“Someone’s already been here,” I tell Jules as we step into the living room of the apartment.
“How do you know?” he asks, looking around for signs of life, but not finding any.
I have absolutely no concrete reason to sense what I believe to be the truth, but I feel it in my gut. “Call it a hunch.”
We walk through the apartment, which stinks like rotting garbage, and the first thing I notice is what’s not there. No photos. No knickknacks other than knives. Nothing personal. This was either a crash pad, or Ricardo just didn’t give a fuck.
“This guy just ate and drank and collected knives, it looks like,” Jules says from the kitchen. Knowing how focused my right-hand man is on health and fitness, it’s no surprise how much he despises what we see around us.
“I’ll take the bedroom. You dig through the shit in the living room. Maybe he’s got something there we’re missing.”
We split off, and I start searching through the bedroom closet. I don’t give a fuck about the man’s clothes and shoes. I need something from his past. Anything we can use to track down who might have given enough of a fuck about him to be trying to find who killed him. Either someone loved him, or someone needed him for money. So, family or a partner.
I flip the lids off his shoe boxes and only find shoes. At least, until I get to one on the very bottom of the stack in the far back corner.
“Fuck yeah,” I mumble as I find a scattering of pictures on top of a few more knives.
I rummage through the keepsakes until I find a photo with two boys in it. One is a foot taller than the other, but they look enough alike for me to guess they’re related. There’s nothing written on the back, so I can’t be sure, but I’m willing to stake some serious cash on the fact that Ricardo has a brother or a cousin.
I tuck the entire box under my arm and back out of the pigsty of a closet. Quickly, I check the bathroom before returning to Jules. “Any leads?”
He doesn’t seem too excited about anything and waves his hands around. “Got a couple books of matches, partially used, from the same bar. It’s a long shot, but maybe something.”
It’s better than nothing. “Good enough. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Jules looks at the box under my arm. “You find something useful?”
“I sure as fuck hope so.”
At that moment, someone knocks on the door, and Jules and I lock eyes on each other. I point to the slider that leads out to a small ground-floor patio. Jules doesn’t hesitate, knowing the drill, and we move silently, slipping out of the apartment.
As soon as we’re in the SUV, which was parked a block and a half away on a side street, I set the box on the floorboard. “Drive past the front of the apartment. I want to check out who the hell was knocking on the door.”
“You got it, boss.” Jules turns the wheel and takes us past the building.
We wordlessly look at each other when we see a patrol car parked across the street.
“You think someone called the cops on us?”
I shake my head. “Not sure, but I don’t fucking like it. Let’s get the hell out of here, swing by Mags’s old place, and then back to the house. Something about today just doesn’t feel right.”
Thirteen
Magnolia
Moses and Jules don’t return to the house until about an hour after I expected them back. I’ve been helping Trey connect the dots, mapping out what we know of Ricardo’s life. So far, all we’ve got is he had a few fuck buddies, liked to party, ate like shit, and wasn’t a very good criminal.
We found this last bit out by googling all the addresses he’d used his GPS to find.
“So that house reported a foiled break-in, that one reported an attempted robbery, and this guy shot at someone in the dark who got away? Ortiz was the most piss-poor crook I’ve ever heard of.”
“But he did manage to get lucky with this one,” Trey says, reading an article on his screen. “Husband found stabbed to death. Wife was arrested but later released when evidence didn’t support the cops’ theory that she was a suspect.”
“Fucking Ricardo,” I say, checking the time again. I didn’t need to bother because the rumble of the SUV comes through the open slider door a moment later.
Trey and I glance expectantly at each other. “They’re back,” we say in unison.
I jump out of my seat, relieved Moses is finally home, because I’ve felt all sorts of unsettled since the minute he walked out the door. But when he walks in, my stomach twists into a knot at the expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
He closes his eyes for a beat before finally meeting my gaze. “Got some bad news, mama. You’re gonna want to sit down for it.”
My entire body stiffens. “Why? What happened? Just tell me. You’re freaking me out right now.”
Moses comes toward me and pulls me against him. “We went by your old place. The house.”
“What? Is Desiree okay?” My heart thunders in my chest, and I hold my breath. When he just shakes his head, my heart catches in my throat. “Fuck. Fuck. Just tell me, Moses. My brain is going all over the place right now. Whatever you’ve got to say, it can’t be worse than what I’m imagining.”
He dips his head forward, touching his forehead to mine. “It was bad, mama. We got in and out. Called the cops on an anonymous tip line.”
A shudder works through his body, and fear floods my veins.