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“You two together now?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
He narrowed his eyes at me in a look that lasted a full three beats, then stepped back. The door swung shut. Ridley caught it mid-swing and we went inside.
The man had disappeared.
Ridley locked the door. The boarded-up windows blocked most of the sunlight, but enough leaked in around the edges for me to make out a ratty maroon rug, navy-blue couch and two mismatched chairs. In the kitchen, someone was cooking—tacos or maybe chili.
Ridley saw me glance in the kitchen’s direction. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
We’d eaten dinner on the jet from Paris, but airplane food was airplane food. Besides, my body was still healing; it craved energy. Basically, I’d reverted to a teenage boy, shoveling anything I could into my mouth, and then two hours later I was starving again.
Ridley glanced at her phone. Dismay flashed across her face, dismay and a touch of fear.
I frowned. “What is it?”
She shook her head and went to put the phone back in her pocket. I snatched it from her hand.
It was a text from someone called Crow. Cryptic as hell, of course.
PK knows. Be on guard.
“Who’s PK? And what do they know?”
Ridley grabbed the phone from me and texted something back. Then she deleted the text and shoved the phone back into her pants pocket. “You wanna eat or not?”
I narrowed my eyes but allowed her to divert me. For now. “Sure.”
She nodded at the kitchen. “Dex is a chef. If I give him a twenty, he’ll cook us dinner.”
Dex was a broad-shouldered man with a torso like a tree trunk and dreadlocks halfway down his back. He wrapped his big arms around ‘Tina.’
I waited for Ridley to pull a blade on him, or at the very least, shove him away. To my surprise, she hugged him back with equal enthusiasm. “It’s good to see you.”
Dex released her. “Where the hell have you been? And who’s this?” He looked me up and down.
“A friend. Kevin.”
“Your friend, huh?” He relaxed—and grinned.
Ridley crossed her arms and jutted her pointed chin. “Yeah.”
I stuck out my hand. “Good to meet you, Dex.”
We shook hands, then he had me take a seat at the scarred plank table. “You hungry?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He was cooking something called Chimi burgers, ground beef which had been sliced and grilled, then served on a pita-bread-like sandwich with cabbage and what he said was his abuela’s secret sauce. We washed it all down with Cokes.
My sandwich was fucking amazing, and I told him so.
He gave a regal nod, an artist accepting his due. “I got the recipe from my abuela. Every family has its own recipe, but my abuela’s is the best, of course.” He grinned.
“Dex is from the Dominican Republic,” Ridley said.
