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“Look, I don’t have time for this,” I said. I didn’t want to be missing for too long and risk Erwin’s wrath again. “Meet me later and tell me whatever it is. Right now, I’m going to head back to work before I get fired, and neither of us gets any money.
Before I could take a step, he grabbed me from behind and leaned in to whisper, “You better watch your pretty behind, girl. I’ll be watching you.”
I elbowed him in the ribs so he’d let me go and then attempted to rush back into the restaurant.
Only to bump right into my neighbor on the way there.
SIX
EZRA
I heard her first.
The waitress, I mean. Tillie. The name didn’t suit her. It sounded very young and innocent, and I got the impression that she hadn’t been innocent for a long time.
“What are you doing here?” I could hear her hiss from behind the wall. “We agreed we wouldn’t meet in public.”
“I know,” a deep male voice responded. “Just thought I would stop by and see if you’d make good on our deal.”
“Don’t I always?” She sounded agitated and frustrated at the same time. But also tired. Bonewearingly so. She sounded like she was reaching the end of her rope. “You didn’t have to come here to make sure.”
“What, are you ashamed of me?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Now, what do you want?”
“I want what you owe me, little girl.” There was a distinct lascivious note in his voice.
“Boss?” came a tentative voice in my ear. “Are you still there?”
“Listening,” was all I said, trying to pull my attention back to the phone call I’d stepped out to answer. After all, that was what was important, and whatever was going on between the waitress and her new flavor of the week was none of my business.
Before I’d gotten distracted, Yaya was giving me the rundown of the week’s activities, including several meetings I was supposed to attend. I told her that I doubted I would be able to make it. Much of my weekend was spent trying to find out what had happened to Max, and I still had no clues.
It wasn’t just that the man had died. It was more like he never existed.
But I wasn’t going to abandon his memory and his family either, so I was stuck here until I could figure out what the fuck was going on.
I relayed as much, though not in so many words, to Yaya, and she whistled. “The Mayor’s not gonna like that answer. He really wanted to meet with you.”
“Too damn bad,” I said. I didn’t care if he was the most important man in the fucking world. He didn’t come before my team. “If he wants some extra security detail for his daughter, just have Lance evaluate and approve it as need be.”
“Oh yeah, about that….” her voice trailed off, hesitating. I could almost see the words twisting around in her head while she figured out the right way to say them.
“Spit it out,” I ordered.
“Lance hasn’t been to work in four days,” she announced, and she seemed to be braced for an explosion.
I raised an eyebrow, even though she wouldn’t be able to see it. “Why?”
“I’m not sure. The last time he was here, he got into it big with Kuzo, and it almost came to blows. Then, he left and never came back. Some people are saying he wants to leave the company.”
I sighed, rubbing my eyes in irritation. Fucking children. I couldn’t even be gone for one week before they started messing around, wanting to destabilize everything we’d built. I needed to hire them a fucking babysitter. “What was the fight about?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a power struggle because of what Lance did with the kidnappers. Kuzo kinda got on his ass for that, and maybe it escalated from there. It’s either that or there’s just too much testosterone in the building.” She sighed. “I told you to hire more females, but you didn’t listen.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. Like that was the answer to the problem. Then they’d just get into dick-measuring contests.
“Why hasn’t either of them told me about this?” I asked, getting back on topic.
