Was she deaf? “I’m looking for a friend.”
Another swayed her shoulders side to side and made a sound of disbelief. “I have to say, you ain’t my type, but if the price is right ...”
Stay cool. “No, I’m not looking for sex,” CJ explained. “I’m looking for Celeste Martin. She’s a friend of mine and I need to give her back that twenty I borrowed from her the other day.”
“Here, girl,” the largest of the skinny group said as she held out her hand, “I’ll give it to her.”
The ladies stopped puffing their smokes long enough to laugh at their friend’s joke.
“Seriously,” CJ interrupted, maybe a little more firmly than she’d intended judging by the glares aimed in her direction, “I need to find Celeste.”
Dead silence echoed beneath the bridge. The emptiness punctuated by the rhythmic flow of that endless traffic.
The big girl stepped forward, stuck her finger in CJ’s face. “You listen up. I don’t know why you out here slumming, or why you calling Celeste your friend, but you best mind your own damned business or you be wishing you was back on that mountain or wherever the hell you came from.”
“If you really knew Celeste,” another accused, “you’d know she won’t be coming back here.”
“You got that right,” one of the ladies confirmed.
“Hell no, she won’t be back,” another chimed in.
“She done shit in her nest good,” the big girl added.
“Is she in trouble?” CJ was relatively certain she wouldn’t get an answer, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
All eyes settled on CJ. Some were filled with frustration and disbelief that she had to ask; others showed the same fear she’d seen in the eyes of the lady at the house on Beacon Street where Celeste lived.
“What she probably is,” said Big Girl, who seemed to be the leader of the pack, “is dead.”
“If she didn’t get the hell outta here fast enough, she definitely is,” another agreed.
“Now get on outta here before you draw the po-po,” Big Girl scolded. “They be thinking we kidnapped your rich ass.”
“Thank you.” CJ hesitated long enough to garner another collective glare from the group before cutting back across the street, her heart thumping so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. This was her fault. If Celeste was dead ...
God, she didn’t want to believe she’d caused this, but there was no other explanation.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
If CJ hadn’t been so caught up in obsessing about what she’d done, she might have paid more attention to the vehicle parked next to hers. Or the men loitering around it.
But she hadn’t been paying attention.
She never even looked until she was almost there and then it was too late.
She stalled. The rear passenger door of the fancy black SUV opened and Tyrone Nash emerged.
Fear coiled around CJ’s throat, squeezing off the ability to breathe. She was in a public place, though it was closed. Traffic was steady just a few yards away, but no one would notice the drama playing out beyond their field of vision.
Tall, thin, relatively handsome for a scumbag, Tyrone glared at her. The scar on his cheek stood out against his otherwise smooth skin. Clips from that night—his brute strength, her sheer desperation—whizzed through her head like a drunken bee.
“Dr. Patterson, I presume,” he said in that silky voice that he’d refined over the years. He could talk the talk with the most sophisticated in the city when he chose. But most of the time he talked the same trash as those hoodlums serving as his bodyguards.
CJ restrained any reaction. She stared at him, hoped he saw the hatred in her eyes. This scumbag was responsible for the suffering of so very many women, including her sister.
The silk shirt and trousers and gaudy leather shoes likely cost more than his girls earned in a month or maybe two. The expensive sunglasses he wore, even at night, reflected her vulnerable position.
She truly was a fool, running around out here in the dark.
