Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

engaged her husband in a then-and-now comparison of army idiocies that made all three of us laugh. By the time Phoenix joined us, brushing her fingers across the back of my neck as she sat beside me, Toshiko had sent her husband for another drink. I was almost sure she would sleep without worrying her son was in danger because he associated with a ruffian people wanted to shoot.

The remainder of the evening was uneventful. The food was better than I expected, the speeches shorter, and the mood lighter once Eileen declared there would be no more shop talk. Because we were walking back to her loft, Phoenix and I both had a third drink, as did Toshiko, who leaned against her husband’s shoulder and smiled when the music resumed after dinner. The band shifted from soft sounds to danceable numbers that spanned several decades of popular music. I danced twice with Phoenix, once to a “Harlem Nocturne” that let the tenor saxophonist stand apart from the rest of the band and once to a jazzed-up “Sexual Healing.” Later, as Phoenix flashed me a smile, Eileen invited me onto the floor for “Moon River” and left her cane beside her chair. For a slow song, she explained, it would be easier if I just kept an arm around her waist. We had the first extended conversation of our two-month acquaintance during that dance, and I led her back to her seat with a genuine appreciation of her radiance, wit, and drive. As I pulled out her chair, I realized that the man who saw past her cane was in for a wonderful relationship.

Ophelia and the Chancellors never came to our table. I thought nothing more of them—or more specifically, Glendora—until a few days later.

19

On Sunday morning, eyes closed against gradually increasing sunlight and fingers locked behind my head, I lay on my back beside a still sleeping Phoenix. As I listened to forced hot air fans push heat into the loft and the faint noises of Main Street coming to life eleven floors below, I slipped into what I’d once read was the wisest hour of a person’s day, the unfocused time just after waking.

My mind pinballed through every step I’d taken in my hunt for Keisha in the hope something I’d missed would announce itself. Winslow and Mona couldn’t believe their daughter was a drug user. Neither could Ileana, Carl Williamson, or even Spider Tolliver. Sonny Tyler had sounded genuinely surprised by his ex-girlfriend’s disappearance. Despite Loni Markham’s suggestion, she had hooked up with the wrong crowd, the threatening text LJ found supported the idea Keisha had run for her life after surviving a forced overdose intended to kill her as well as Odell. I was still uncertain who was the intended target and who was collateral damage, but the embedding of non-medical, non-church text in so many unrelated documents in her hard drive suggested Keisha had stumbled upon something worth hiding. What was it and where had she found it? Humanitas? Sermon on the Mount? Odell? Or was there another source not yet on my radar?

The paragraphs I’d read were in business-speak, different from the language of the phone text. Were the two linked? How? Had that text made her run, left her trusting almost no one? The impulse to keep her parents and co-workers safe was understandable, but she hadn’t even gone to the cop wife of one of her best friends. Had she risked trusting Fatimah, who’d lied to me about how often they were in touch? With LJ assembling what was hidden in the Word files into something that might explain Keisha’s actions, three women watching places she might turn up, and two offers to have somebody watch my back, I felt the need to do something myself. But the wisdom of the hour—Melville’s maybe?—suggested I could do nothing but wait.

We had fallen asleep almost at once last night. Now Phoenix stirred and stretched, yawning. Then she snuggled against me. “I know you’re awake. I can hear you thinking.”

I unclasped my hands and slid an arm around her. “Okay, what am I thinking about?”

“That in a little while you’ll make me breakfast—a spinach and cheese omelet, toast, bacon, coffee, and grapefruit.”

“Sounds like what I put in your fridge yesterday, Miss Cleo.”

“Uh-huh.” She walked her fingers through my chest hair. “But first you’re going to light a fire in the fireplace. Then you’ll lead me into the bathroom so we can shower together. After that, you’ll lead me back out here to the throw rug in front of the fireplace.”

“Damn,” I said. “I guess you can see into the future.”

“If you think my second sight is hot, just wait till I practice my braille on you.”

Much later, in our robes and smelling of the grapeseed lotion we had massaged into each other’s skin, we ate in front of the gel fireplace. Our plates were on the coffee table, our backs against the couch’s seat cushions, and sections of the Sunday Buffalo News on the floor between us. This was different from the previous four Sundays we had spent together. The first and third we had awakened in my bed and gone out to breakfast. The second and fourth had been here, but we had eaten at the granite-topped island in the kitchen. After each of those leisurely mornings, we had spent the afternoon out, at stores or movies or last week taking a long car ride. In the evening, after dining in a restaurant or getting take-out, we had come back to one place or another to watch Netflix or HBO. If our relationship continued on its current trajectory, Sunday would likely become both our day and our refuge.

“So what do you want to do today, mister?” Phoenix asked, popping a piece of bacon into her mouth as we swapped the Viewpoints and arts sections.

“Whatever you feel like, counselor.” I opened the arts insert—called Gusto—to the book review pages. “The smartest person in the room