“Hey, do you know I was at Upton Park yesterday?” I said, eyeing Dad and pointing to my forehead. “Not that I expect you to express concern over the fact I’m sporting a bandage or anything.”
Letting his knife and fork clatter onto his plate, he grunted, “I’m sure you’ll survive.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” I answered. It wasn’t so much what I said but the way I said it that caused his brow to furrow.
“Something like that would never have happened if you were working in an appropriate field.”
“An appropriate field like what? Becoming a housewife?” I replied derisively. “Not going to happen.”
“Yes, well, maybe that’s for the better,” said Dad cuttingly as he casually tucked back into his food. “I’d pity the man who took you for a wife.”
“Not all men are like you. Some want a woman who can think for herself,” I threw back.
Dad let out a dark chuckle, going directly for the lowest of blows. “Is that why you’re still single?” What he said didn’t hurt my feelings. My feelings were battle hardened, and we’d had this conversation a hundred times before.
“He’s right, Karla. You really should think about settling down,” Mum put in, oblivious as always. “You’re twenty-eight now. It’s a pity you’re not putting your looks to good use.” Was she serious? I swear, sometimes I thought she might be worse than Dad. The way they both spoke was practically medieval.
I sat back and let out a long sigh, while a mischievous idea entered my mind. “Now that you mention it, I am seeing someone, actually,” I lied.
“Oh.” Mum perked up. “How long has this been going on?”
“It’s fairly recent.”
“Well, both your father and I would love to meet him.”
“Maybe I’ll bring him home sometime.”
“That would be lovely. I could make my special recipe cottage pie.”
I resisted the urge to snicker a laugh. I was never going to do it, but it still pleased me no end to imagine bringing Lee Cross home to meet my parents. Dad narrowed his gaze at me suspiciously, like he knew I was up to something, and it satisfied me to know I’d ruffled his feathers.
***
The next day I was on shift with Steve, which meant I had to drown out most of the conversation to keep from shooting myself in the face. I mean, I really didn’t want to hear about the birds he shagged over the weekend, or how he beat his previous lifting record at the gym. I only started listening again when I heard the name “Cross” come out of his mouth.
“What was that?” I asked, pretending like I’d been concentrating on driving.
“We need to go visit the Cross brothers’ garage. Tony mentioned something about interviewing some of the employees.”
“Yeah, I was, uh, going to go after lunch.”
“Well, let’s get it out of the way now while things are quiet.”
My pulse thrummed at the prospect of seeing Lee yet again. After not running into him for months, his presence in my life was starting to become a daily occurrence. A couple of minutes later we pulled up outside the garage; it had a blue and white sign over the entrance that read “Cross Bros.” I found it curious that it wasn’t “Cross & Sons,” because these sorts of businesses were usually handed down from parents. Given that Lee was only twenty-five, he was quite young to own his own business. Then again, if my suspicions were correct, the place wasn’t all that it seemed.
A youngish guy wearing coveralls was standing outside, having a smoke. The second he saw the patrol car, he stubbed out the butt and hurried inside. We were just approaching the entrance when Stu stepped out, his T-shirt stained with motor oil.
“All right, Karla?” he said, eyeing Steve as he wiped his hands on a dirty rag.
“We’re here to interview your employees about Trevor,” I said, and Stu gestured for us to head inside.
“Yeah, I remember. Lee’s in the office. He said you can use the room for your interviews.”
“You go on ahead,” Steve told me, a sudden look of interest on his face. “I’m just going to take a look around.”
I glanced at him, unsure what he was playing at, but made my way to the office nonetheless. Knocking on the door first, I heard Lee call for me to enter. When I did, I found the room to be small, with a tidy row of filing cabinets along one wall and a desk pushed up against the window. He was on the phone, the short sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up to reveal the full length of his arms. His hair was ruffled and looked like he’d just stepped out of bed, but maybe that was intentional.
I cleared my throat and he glanced up, looking like he’d expected me. Had that guy run in to warn everyone that the police were outside? Lee quickly ended his phone call and stood.
“Um, Stu mentioned you said we could use your office?” I began, uncertain.
“Of course, come on in and take a seat,” he said, shooting me a warm expression. Why did he always have to be so…welcoming? It made it difficult to be cool with him when he acted like that.
“This shouldn’t take long. Standing is fine.”
Lee stared at me a moment, still smiling, then ran a hand over his jaw. “Fine, we’ll play it your way. I’ll send the boys in to speak with you one by one.”
“Thank you.”
He left, and I took a moment to scan the room. Nothing immediately jumped out to me that screamed illegal, but then again, it wouldn’t. Criminals didn’t generally run around advertising what they were. At least, the clever ones didn’t.
A minute or two later the first guy came in, and I quickly asked a couple of questions. There was still no sign of Steve, and I had to wonder what he was up to. Unfortunately, when I’d finished speaking with everyone, all of their stories checked out. Steve still hadn’t shown, so I left the office to go find him.
When I stepped into the main area of the garage, things looked the same as before, just a bunch of young men working on cars. But then I saw Lee, Stu, and Steve having what looked like a heated argument close to the entrance.
“Get the fuck out of here before I do something I regret,” I heard Lee threaten as I approached. He looked seriously pissed off, as did Stu.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked with concern, and all three men turned to face me.
“We’re leaving,” said Steve, before turning and stalking out the door.
Lee eyed me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I nodded and followed him back into his office. His posture was tense, and when I shut the door behind me, he looked ready to break something.
“Lee?” I said in a quiet voice, sensing that anything louder might set him off.
He turned, and his expression was furious as he pointed to the door. “You see your partner out there? He’s bent as fuck.”
“Excuse me?” I replied in surprise.
“Something wrong with your hearing, Snap? I said your little buddy is a dirty fucking cop, and I swear to God, if he ever shows his face around here again, I’ll break it for him.”
Tentatively, I took a step forward. “Calm down for just a second and tell me what happened.”
Lee took a few deep breaths before steadily settling his gaze on me. “The prick came in, started looking around, then went up to Stu and tried shaking him down. He said that if we set him up with two grand every month, he wouldn’t report what he found on our premises.”
“What did he find?” I asked, my tone serious. The news that Steve was dirty didn’t exactly surprise me. I’d always known there was something off about him. However, the fact that he might have found evidence of illegal activity inside the garage put me on alert.
“He didn’t find anything. Nothing that belonged to us, anyway. He claimed there was a bag of coke hidden under some tiles in the bathroom, but it’s bullshit. None of the boys do drugs, and if they did, I wouldn’t allow them on the premises.”
What he said sparked a memory of Steve bragging to me, Tony, and Keira about a coke dealer he’d busted last week. I wouldn’t put
it past him to keep some of the drugs he seized to use in a situation just like this.
“He planted it,” I said as it all fell into place.
A look of surprise crossed Lee’s features. “You believe me?”
I glanced up at him. “Yes, actually, funnily enough, I do.”
“Well,” he said, looking at me differently now. “I’m not giving that fucker two grand. He can go and swing for it.”
“You don’t have to give him anything. I’ll deal with him.”
His expression grew serious. “I don’t want you getting caught up in this. More than likely, the bloke has a whole network of scams going on. The way he spoke, he didn’t strike me as a first-timer.”
I took a moment to absorb that, trying to come up with a plan on how to deal with him. It went without saying that there was no love lost between me and Steve, and if I tried to get in the way of whatever little corrupt network he had running, he wouldn’t hesitate to mess with me and my career. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to blackmail me in exactly the same way he’d tried to blackmail Lee.
I flicked my eyes up to meet his, firming my lips. “Leave it to me. I’ll think of something.”
“Karla,” Lee murmured tenderly as he came to stand directly in front of me. “Don’t get involved. I don’t need your good deeds. And anyway, your boy doesn’t realise who he’s fucking with. The next time he shows his face, I’ll make sure he gets the message.”
It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying, mainly because of the way he called me by my name, but also because of how his smell was infiltrating my senses this close. Finally, his meaning sank in, and I frowned.
“Who is he fucking with?”
Lee didn’t answer, and instead he took a step forward, forcing me to back up if I didn’t want us to collide. The problem with this meant my back hit the wall a moment later.
“You’re so pretty, Snap,” he said, voice low, as he dropped his face to my hair and breathed in.
I wasn’t wearing a hat, and my hair was tied up in a bun. My entire body trembled when he wrapped his arms around my waist, inhaled deeply, and pulled me into a hug. This was a distraction, I knew it, and yet, I let him distract me. I wanted to be distracted, and I was just glad that the blinds in his office had been pulled.
Standing in his embrace for at least a minute with silence all around us, I was unable to move. I liked having Lee close, loved the warmth of him and how he could make feel so…surrounded. Despite all the warning signs, my attraction only grew stronger. There was just something about him that called to me.
“Lee.”
His mouth moved against my hair. “What is it, Karla?”
“Why are you hugging me?”
“You looked like you needed to be held.” His response was low, and the affectionate undertone had me swallowing deeply. At long last I summoned the willpower to break the hug. His arms fell away from me easily, my stomach churning with confusion. What the hell was I doing?
I stared at the floor when I spoke. “I have to go.”
Heading for the door, I paused when he said gently, “Hey, I needed it, too.”
I didn’t turn around, but instead practically ran from the office. Moments later I was strapping myself into the patrol car where Steve had been waiting. My heart hammered at Lee’s words, feelings beginning to stew deep in my belly. He was playing me, he had to be. Blokes like him weren’t romantic. They fucked you and then they left you.
“What took you so long?” Steve asked, eyes narrowed on me with suspicion.
Remembering Lee’s warning for me not to get involved, I lied, “I just had a few more questions I needed to ask.”
A silence elapsed.
“And?” Steve prompted.
“And, uh, all of their stories checked out. Sorry.”
“Huh. They must have been ready for us, then.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Must have been.”
Four
About a week passed, and I didn’t see Lee at all. For a while it felt like he was everywhere, and then he was nowhere. And I’ll admit that every time I went to the gym, I kept my eyes peeled, eager for a glimpse of him.
Yeah, it was just as pathetic as it sounded.
I was driving home late one evening when I passed by a newly constructed office building. It was built in such a way that there were lots of steep stairways and criss-crossed walls surrounding it. The building, however, wasn’t what caught my interest, as I pulled to the side of the road and peeked out the window. There was a group of young men there; all of them looked to be in their late teens or early twenties, and all of them were pulling off some pretty impressive stunts. It was only when I took a closer look that I recognised Trevor Cross.
He was a little bit mesmerising. It was sort of like watching somebody play a video game, where the avatar could effortlessly jump and leap from building to building without injuring themselves. Trevor ran along the edge of a high wall, then leapt several feet through the air to land on the next one.
My eyes caught on another figure, and my breath hitched involuntarily when I saw it was Lee. He wore jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt, and a peaked cap that shielded most of his face. My heart pounded at the sight of him, and my pores began tingling as something electric pulsed inside me. I could watch him from the comfort of my car without him ever knowing I was there.
His shirt fell forward, revealing his stomach, as he balanced his entire body on his hands. He was on the edge of one of the high-up walkways. I saw several of the guys cheer when he dropped one arm, letting it hover in the air as he held his entire weight on one hand. He maintained the hold for several seconds before lowering his hand back down, bracing himself, and then launching into a backflip before making a perfect landing on the ground.
Whoa.
The way he moved was skilful, and I remembered Steve talking about how the brothers were into free running. But he only mentioned the younger ones. Perhaps Lee was more discreet about the things he could do, like Willy Wonka pretending he needed a stick to help him walk.
The official name for the sport was parkour, and it killed me to see how talented he was, while at the same time knowing he was using that talent to lie and steal.
It was with a hopeless sigh that I restarted the engine and pulled away. Tired after my shift, I went home and fell asleep almost instantly. I had two days off, and I planned on making the most of them. I knew I’d overslept when I woke to daylight streaming through my window and scrambled for my phone to check the time. Ten-thirty. I only became aware that somebody was sitting at the end of my bed when I sat up and saw Alexis slumped over, staring at something she was holding in her hands.
“Lexie, what’s wrong?” I asked in a scratchy voice.
She didn’t answer, and all I heard was a sniffle. She’d been crying a lot since King disappeared, so this wasn’t anything too unusual. Sometimes she liked to hide her pain behind humour and sarcasm, but I knew she was hurting badly on the inside.
I got up and went to her, sitting down and throwing my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me, taking the comfort I offered without a word. It was only when I looked down to see the pregnancy test she was holding that I gasped. The little window showed two red lines, and I didn’t need to be a genius to know what they meant.
“You’re pregnant?” I said, my voice airy with disbelief. Just the other week I’d joked about it, but that’s all it had been, a joke. I never actually thought it was true. And, by the looks of it, neither had Alexis. This was a massive shock for her. King had been missing for a while, which meant she had to be at least three or four months gone, and I knew she hadn’t been with anyone else since him.
Her smile was sad. “There was me thinking it was a cake shelf I was sporting,” she said, hand going to her belly, hiding her feelings with humour like always.
I swallowed, trying not to let my own personal feelings affect me right then. When I was a teenager, I’d been in a very bad car accide
nt. My dad had been behind the wheel, my mum in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. Long story short, I’d been injured far worse than my parents, and the damage meant I’d never be able to have kids. It was why I got so angry when I saw people neglecting their own children, but I’d come to terms with the fact a long time ago. Still, a strange, phantom-like pain always passed through me whenever I was reminded of it. Alexis knew all about my accident, but I didn’t think she knew quite how much it hurt me, knowing I’d never have a child of my own.
“It’s King’s, isn’t it?” I finally asked, pushing my own feelings aside.
She nodded and stared at her feet.
“Have you had any luck finding him? Any clues as to where he might be?”
“Nothing,” she croaked. “It’s like he never even existed.” And then the tears began to flow. I sat with her for a long while, just hugging her and letting her cry. Finally I managed to get her to her own room, where she climbed into bed and went to sleep. She’d been up all night, wracked with worry.
I spent the day tidying the flat and hanging out. I even baked a batch of brownies, thinking they might cheer Alexis up. Unfortunately, she was acting completely out of character when she woke and barely even gave the brownies a second glance. Normally, she was the sort of girl to take life’s challenges in stride, so it was disconcerting to see her like this.
I was watching television that evening when she suddenly sat down beside me and asked, “Can we go out tonight?”
“Out where?”
“Anywhere. I need to get away from these four walls before I go insane. We could go to a bar and I could watch you drink. It’ll be fun.” The look on her face told me she was desperately trying to convince herself of that. I didn’t want to upset her, though, so I nodded.
“Sure, just let me grab a quick shower and we’ll head out.”
An hour later we were in a cab, headed for the bar where Alexis used to work before she changed career paths. At the moment she was in between jobs, but she did some modelling every once in a while to pay the bills. I was guessing she might have to take a break from that once she started to show.