Page 103 of Take Her
And we did get a table in the place. “I’m an investor here,” he said, as we were sat down up front, near a hip-height window, with a view out to not much.
That tracked. “Wow, so—how many things do you run at once?” I asked, pretending to be amazed as a bartender made a beeline for our table and handed us menus for exceedingly precise drinks.
While some of them did look good, there was no way I’d drink around Junior—or go against Rhaim’s instructions. “Just water, please,” I told the man before he could walk away.
“So you weren’t kidding about the not drinking?” Junior asked, after ordering something fancy for himself.
“It’s just not my thing.”
“Then what is?”
Being lightly choked by a man who knows he could fuck me but won’t. “I read.”
“An educated girl,” Junior said, giving me a grin, and for a second my memories betrayed me, and I remember being trapped, sitting at a dinner table, my dad yelling at me to have some manners and not to fidget, while an adult who looked very much like him, and who I couldn’t escape, sat across from me and ran the instep of his shoes against my calves.
The third reason I wouldn’t drink tonight was so my nose wouldn’t burn from alcohol if I barfed.
“What kind of stuff?” Junior asked, as I swallowed my panic back down.
“Histories.” I left out the fact they were romances. If he pressed, I could probably talk about Victorian versus Edwardian fashion and hairstyles for an hour, not to mention all the protocols involved in calling on friends. Toss in some flower-meanings and actual naval battles, and I could absolutely skate by—those ladies got their shit right.
“What about you?” I asked as his drink arrived. “What do you do for fun?”
And pretty much like any other man I’d ever met, he wanted to tell me. At length.
44
RHAIM
Igot into my truck as Sable kept me appraised of the Corvo vehicle’s movements—it was driving away from Lia’s now, and I intended to follow. There were enough cameras in the city for her to readily track it, so I stayed back, until it’d parked in an alley by its lonesome. I parked my truck down the street, went through my toolbox to grab some things and a set of gloves, before pulling up the hood of my hoodie up and walking the road parallel to it like I had some place to be.
While standing on the corner, looking both directions like a responsible pedestrian and not someone scouting, I spotted Junior’s friend Bobby inside the car—despite the lack of streetlights in the alley, his face was illuminated by his phone.
I kept walking straight ahead, knowing he hadn’t seen me. I found myself merging with a short line coming out of the front of a bar—and spotted two familiar faces in the window.
I dove into shadows, instantly.
Lia had gone out with Junior in my stead.
I could hardly believe it.
Why?
They were talking with one another. She was smiling at him and while I was ninety-nine percent sure it was a fake smile, the thought of it being even one percent real made my hand close into a fist around the handle of the hammer in my hoodie’s large pocket.
So was Bobby just their driver, waiting patiently?
No, there was no way—no matter how chummy she currently seemed, she would’ve been too smart to get into a car with the both of them. I’d seen how she reacted when they’d come to my office the other day.
I watched the bartender bring Junior a mixed drink and drop off water for Lia.
I knew she was my girl.
She must have had her reasons for being here, and I’d find them out from her later—but for right now, I needed to figure out why Bobby was in the mix.
I circled the block, so I could come up behind his ride.
Can you open that car’s doors in five minutes?