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"So why are you here?"
My voice came out a hundred times calmer than I felt. My hands on the verge of shaking, I shoved the book I was holding in the wrong spot and grabbed another. Vision blurring, I pretended I could actually read the numbers at the bottom of its spine.
Reaching across my shoulder, Adrian lifted the book I’d just shelved and moved it one row down. Without saying anything more, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small padded envelope and handed it to me.
I turned it over in my hands, examining it. More than merely being sealed, the envelope was metered with my apartment address and new name of Christine Phelps written in a bold hand. My stomach tightened at the realization that this meeting almost hadn’t happened, that Ramirez had been on the verge of dropping whatever was inside into a mailbox and staying out of my life until the trial.
I broke the seal on the envelope and shook the contents out. My grandmother’s aquamarine pendant necklace fell into my open palm. The last time I saw the necklace, Condor had been shoving it into the pocket of his jeans.
"I didn’t think I’d see it again." My hands trembled, my tears pooling faster than I could hide them. "It was my grandmother’s."
Ramirez lifted the strands of the necklace gingerly, raising the gemstone until it was even with my head. "Did her eyes match the stone, too?"
I nodded, unable to form a single word as he leaned forward, his hands reaching behind me to fasten the chain. He ran his fingers under it, all the way down to the pendant to smooth the kinks from the metal. His hand paused between the valley of my breasts. The rise and fall of his chest slowed before he made a final adjustment to the pendant then stuffed his hands back in his jacket pockets.
He caught my gaze again, seemed content just to hold it while he studied my reaction. I had a million questions to ask him, but only one that mattered.
Had he meant it? Had he really desired me or was it all an act?
Even if I could get the question past my lips, I couldn’t ask it there in the aisle. A library patron was starting down the row, her toddler trailing behind her.
"I need to talk to you." I glanced at the woman then back to Ramirez. "Not here."
He dropped his gaze, the sigh leaving him so reluctant I was certain he would deny me. My cheeks colored with the knowledge I was a hundred shades of foolish. He was here to return the necklace, nothing more. Taking a ragged breath and holding it, I turned back to my cart.
The woman passed us, her little boy looking back to notice the first tear sliding down my cheek. His face grew sad, his small hand creeping up to wave at me.
"Tonight…after sunset." Ramirez pressed something cold and metallic against my palm then he brushed a strand of hair from my cheek. "Your place."
I turned just in time to see him exit the row and make a hard right toward the front door. I looked down at the object in my hand—a silver rooster’s head, its interior hollowed out to slide over the end of a walking stick. Realizing I’d seen it before, I tightened my grip. My other hand darted up to cover the pendant of my grandmother’s necklace as I realized why Adrian had broken protocol to see me. He wanted me to know.
Condor and his boss were dead.
CHAPTER 11
GARNET
I went straight home from the library, my mind racing ahead of my feet. Inside the apartment, I flitted around, my attention drifting time and again to the patio’s sliding glass door and the patch of sky I could see through it as I waited for the sun to sink below the horizon.
With no social life, everything in the apartment was already clean. I made a light dinner but found myself picking at it. My nerves completely in ruin, I gave up trying to eat, bound my hair in a knot and took a shower hoping the heat would ease some of the tension running through me.
Half an hour after sunset, I sat at my small dining table and stared at my front door for at least another thirty minutes until a light knock sounded at last.
"It’s open." I forced my hands into my lap, willing them to fold calmly around each other instead of the constant wringing they’d suffered since I returned home.
The door opened and Adrian stepped through it with a scowl on his face. Shutting it quickly, he turned the deadbolt and threaded the security chain. Seeing the patio door open, his scowl deepened. He cut through the small living/dining room and secured the patio door before drawing its curtains.
A few more steps brought him to the table where he glared down at me. "Don’t do that again."
Stunned by his reaction, I brushed at a wisp of hair before I met his gaze. Tonight was the first night I had left my doors unsecured.
"I didn’t think there was anyone alive to come after me. Was I wrong?"
His face relaxing, Adrian pulled one of the chairs from the table, pointed it in my direction and sat down hard. He brought one leg up, his ankle resting atop the opposite knee as his hand squeezed his shin.
"Not exactly. Every club officer in the Miami chapter is dead. I told them I killed you because you freaked on the drive to Thunder Valley. I had the car staged by the time I got there with the heroin. I insisted we strip and burn the vehicle. I left blood traces on my clothing like I had tried as hard as possible to clean them. When they were pointed out, I burned those, too."
I shifted in my seat, my gaze dancing around the room, meeting his for a second, moving away for a few more before returning. I’d been too shocked seeing him at the library to notice any changes other than his hair being shorter. Now each glance revealed something new. A small line had been gouged into his left cheekbone and another above his brow. Half an inch below the left corner of his mouth, another new scar ran a thin line to disappear under his chin. A certain gauntness hid just below the surface of his muscles and the hollow of his cheeks.
