my world, Lilith.” It hit him then, what he’d been trying to do, to make her keep the distance between them, because he wasn’t sure he could. He didn’t want to keep doing it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “I know a lot of people in Chino. Gangsters I ran with. Gangsters I ran against. A couple of them are there because they killed my little sister in a drive-by.”
She looked at him just long enough to remove her next words from the category of automatic platitude. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, wishing he’d never started this. He hurried her along then, knowing it was going to eat up some of their two-hour window for her to stop and change clothes. But it would give him a chance to look at the scene of this morning’s incident, something he wanted to do as soon as possible anyway.
He was surprised when she directed him to a condominium building that looked as if it had once been apartments. It was well kept, and nicely landscaped, but definitely older than the high-rise style buildings that were popping up in the area.
“Twice the space for half the money,” she explained, as if she’d read his mind.
So despite her background, she had a practical streak, Tony thought as they started up the stairs to her front door.
“Who cut the wire?” he asked, gesturing to where the ends of the thin silver line were still wrapped around both newel posts of the stairway. He pushed out of his mind the thought of what a miracle it was that she hadn’t taken that full tumble, and focused on the evidence left behind.
“I did. My neighbor is seventy-five years old. A fall like that could seriously injure, even kill her.”
And a tumble down that flight of concrete stairs could have killed you, he thought.
He crouched to look more closely at the posts as she went inside to change. She was right. A fall like that would have been devastating for her older neighbor.
As if his thoughts had conjured her up, a woman who had to be Mrs. Tilly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and he realized she must have gotten off the community Dial-A-Ride van that had just pulled out. She had a small bag of groceries and a handful of mail in addition to a capacious black leather purse slung over her right shoulder.
“Is this because of that wire?” the woman asked as she came up the stairs, very spryly for a woman her age, he noted. But she was having trouble with the groceries and the purse slipping off her shoulder, so he instinctively did what he would have done with his mother, who was about the same age; he took the bag. “Let me get that for you.”
She looked at him with a touch of wariness he appreciated. “It’s all right,” he said gently. “I’m not a threat.”
“I didn’t think you were, or Lilith wouldn’t allow you around.”
So she knew Lilith well enough to make that assumption. He barely managed to stop himself from probing that knowledge, knowing asking questions would probably have the woman running to Lilith to warn her off.
She let him carry the grocery bag across the landing to her door, where she dug out her keys, opened it, set her purse and the mail inside, then turned back to him and took the bag; she might not be afraid, but she was still cautious. “Are you a policeman or something? Are you here because of what happened?”
“Or something,” he said.
“I think it was that little scamp who lives downstairs.”
“Lilith told me.”
The woman looked thoughtful. “If it wasn’t him, who could it have been?”
“I was going to ask you. Did you see anyone around in the morning?”
“Just the gardener,” she said. “Although come to think of it, it was a new man, not Jose, who’s been here for years.”
“You talked to this man?”
“Yes. He said Jose was his cousin, or something like that. And he had all the equipment.” She wrinkled her nose. “And tattoos. I don’t care for those.”
If you only knew, he thought, but managed not to smile. “So he was Hispanic?”
She gave him a wary look, as if she thought he was setting her up to insult him. “Yes,” she finally said, and left him standing there on the landing as she went inside.
He was pondering the possible significance of an unknown Hispanic with tattoos when Lilith returned. She’d exchanged those jeans he’d admired for a pair of black twill pants that were almost as distracting, and a crisp, white blouse.
“Here,” she said, holding something out to him.
It was a plastic baggie holding a coiled length of silver wire that matched the remnants he’d been looking at.
“Not sure why I saved it. It looks like something you could buy at any hardware store, but there it is.”
“Good.” He took the bag. “Can’t hurt.”
He pulled the small, red-handled pocketknife he usually carried out of his left front pocket and made quick work of freeing the two tied ends of the wire. He noticed there were flattened spots on the one end, as if the person tying them had used a tool of some kind, likely pliers, to tighten the wire. He added the ends to the baggie and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. He could have Sam verify whether wire had been sold to any of Lilith’s neighbors, at least eliminate that possibility. Sam would love it, tied to a desk as she was…
They headed back down to where his car was parked at the base of the stairs. She didn’t go with any more noticeable care than anyone would, clearly not about to let the incident make her afraid of every step. And again he thought of determination.
By the time they were on the freeway headed north, he was realizing the drive wasn’t going to be quite the ordeal he’d thought. Whatever her reservations about him had been to begin with, she seemed to either be over them, or at least ignoring them for the moment. She seemed more than willing to just chat amiably.
Or maybe she’s just looking for a distraction from having to face her brutal ex, he told himself.
He was still having a bit of trouble absorbing what she’d told him. He realized now how stupid he’d been, thinking that things like that didn’t touch her world, but still, it was nearly impossible for him to think of this elegant, classy woman as a victim of such brutality.
And when he did, when he pictured her frightened and in that kind of danger, when he thought of her hurt and bleeding and alone, a rage he hadn’t felt since his days on the street welled up in him. The kind of rage that had gotten him into far too much trouble in his life.
Only this time he’d asked for it. Hell, he’d demanded it, demanded to be the one to help her, even knowing it would mean time like this, alone in her company, fighting his tangled feelings every step of the way.
Great.
Masochist didn’t even begin to describe it.
“I think,” Lilith said when the conversation turned, as it inevitably did between people who had their particular boss in common, “you have to have the most amazing ‘How
