Page 18 of Protected
His gaze traveled over Laz, and the way his thick, dark hair was slicked back brought more attention to his olive skin. He no longer sported a ponytail at his nape, but it was still long enough to brush his collar. Both men were similarly dressed. They’d all been fitted with tuxedos years ago specifically for jobs like tonight, but their styles were very different. While Laz’s tux was single-breasted with peak lapels, Parker’s tux was double-breasted with notch lapels. His was more of a slimmer cut andpresented a bolder appearance. Neither of them should have a problem blending in with tonight’s wealthy crowd.
Laz glanced up. “Well, well, well, look who finally got off of punishment.” He moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of flavored waters and set them on the counter. “For a while there, I thought you’d be on front desk duty until you retired.”
“Man, don’t start with that crap. Remember, it’s because of you Mason punished me in the first place. Now that I think about it, I’m always getting into trouble because of you,” Parker said, and greeted his friend with a handshake and a one-armed hug.
Laz chuckled. “I’ll admit I’ve gotten us jammed up a few times, but whatever the hell you did to get on desk duty formonthswas all on you. Come on, dig in so we can talk about what to expect tonight. Egypt said I’m lead on the assignment and there’s been a couple of changes.”
Parker glanced at all the food and grabbed one of the bottled waters. “Not hungry,” he said.
Laz was scooping shrimp fried rice onto his plate, but stopped. “What’s wrong with you? You’re the greediest person on our team. Normally, if you found out there was a spread like this, you would’ve been in here before anyone could tell you what was on the menu.”
Parker snorted at the truth in that statement. He had an active metabolism and had always loved food. He could eat all day and night and never get full. It was like a going joke around the building that his stomach was a bottomless pit.
But since finding out that the media had snapped a photo of him, and breaking up with Chelsey, he hadn’t had much of an appetite.
Parker waved him off. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, if you say so, but these last few months, you haven’t been eating, you’ve been quieter than usual, and clearly you haven’t been sleeping.”
All true statements, and Parker waited for Laz to say more. He didn’t. Instead, he moved over to the long table near the window and dug into his food. The silence between them was almost deafening, and unease crawled through Parker.
Lazarus Dimas going quiet without giving him the third-degree was as unnerving as going to the dentist for a root canal. He and Laz had worked together for years, and Parker knew his friend’s tells. Like when he was thinking about doing something crazy, his hazel-green eyes darkened and looked like the color of a malachite crystal. Or when he was mad, he had several tells, but one was a tick in his left jaw. And when he got angry enough to murder someone, he put a gun to their head. Kind of like Parker had done to Terrance the night before, which still bothered him.
But this eerie silence? Nah, something was up. Laz didn’t just ask a few questions and drop the subject. It wasn’t in his nature. Normally, he’d be giving Parker a hard time about front desk duty, or not eating, or even…
Wait a minute.
Parker carried his bottle of water over to the table and sat across from Laz. “What do you know?” he asked. “And don’t insult my intelligence by sayingnothing.”
Laz’s lips twitched as if trying to hide a smile, and he hesitated before saying, “So your dad’s a gangster, huh?” He stuffed fried rice into his mouth and chewed while shaking his head. “A damn O.G. on the streets. That explains a lot about you.”
Parker narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He wasn’t surprised Laz knew about his past, but he was curious to know just how much he knew. The man was like abloodhound when he wanted information, and he wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted.
“What do you mean bythat explains a lot?”
“Learning your dad is the leader of one of the most notorious crime syndicates on the west coast explained a few things I hadn’t been able to figure out. Like that edginess about you that doesn’t come from just being a cop or a former SWAT officer. I had a feeling you came from the streets despite what we knew about you on the surface.”
Thanks to Mason and a few of his connections, Parker had been given a whole new life. It was a bit unnerving that Laz knew anything about his past.
Parker’s identity had been scrubbed and changed. Mason and his buddies had hooked him up with a plastic surgeon, a psychiatrist, an etiquette specialist, and a few other people who helped him go from street thug to almost cultured. That included him getting his GED, as well as a bachelor’s degree in criminology that he earned online.
Parker had decided to go into law enforcement, determined to be the opposite of everything he’d been raised to be. He was committed to being a better person and upholding the law, not breaking it. Getting thugs off the street and drug dealers behind bars had been paramount, and for years, he helped in that cause. Until Mason recruited him to join his Atlanta’s Finest team.
“It’s the way you carry yourself,” Laz continued while eating. “Your head is always on a swivel, which isn’t unusual in our line of work, but you’re different, man. You have the type of street smarts that can only be learned one way—on the streets.”
Laz would know. He’d been a cop in some of Atlanta’s roughest neighborhoods, a white cop at that, and he’d seen it all. He was one of the coolest dudes Parker knew. He might still be somewhat of a hot head, but being married to a former prosecutor, he had cleaned up his act.
Well…somewhat. He still toed the line between right and wrong, especially when it came to family or protecting people he cared about. Nothing was off limits, even murder. He was a good-bad guy in every sense of the imagination.
“Is that where your street smarts and fearlessness came from, the streets?” Parker asked, even though he was sure he knew the answer. No way Laz could be the way he was without having similar experiences as Parker. Maybe he’d been in a gang, too, or at least hung around gang members growing up.
Laz gave a nonchalant shrug. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”
“How much do you know?” Parker asked. “And how did you find out?”
Laz’s left eyebrow quirked, and his mouth twitched like earlier when he’d been trying to hide a smile. “What makes you think I know anything more than what I told you?”