The water continued to cascade down from the ceiling, so there was no use in trying to wipe it out of my eyes or shake it off of my clothes. Titus was shooting every dirty word that existed at the ceiling and I knew we were going to have to hike out of the basement using the stairs because the elevator wouldn’t work if there was a fire.
“What’s going on?”
I asked Chuck the question when he was close enough that I could talk to him without having to shout over the roar of the sprinkler system.
“The cops upstairs were poking around in the ceiling looking for the supposed stash. One of them accidentally hit the valve for the fire prevention system. They can’t figure out how to turn it off. It looks like our little rodent problem might have messed up some of our plumbing. Nasty little fuckers.”
“Shut all the water down in the building before everything gets flooded.”
Chuck shook his head as we reached the metal fire door and pushed through. “Can’t. Fire systems run on a different source, so that even if something happens to the main water supply in the building, they still operate. We’ll have to call out a professional to shut it down and we need the plumber to get his ass back in here.”
I shook my dripping hair out of my eyes and glared at Titus, who was huffing along behind me, his gear making the climb out of the basement slightly more taxing for him than it was for me and Chuck.
“You and your boys cost me another day’s worth of business, cop.”
He whipped his soggy hat off of his head and blinked the onslaught of water out of his eyes.
“You can afford it, and I bet those private rooms you somehow managed to get around the antisolicitation laws are probably due for a good old-fashioned scrub-down.”
His quip made Chuck laugh, but once we got to the main floor and hustled everyone outside, the laughter died in his throat. As the water continued to gush, the sight of half the police force and all of my staff shivering and cold shut down any humor he found in the situation.
I took my sodden suit jacket off and grimaced as rivers of water poured off of it and onto the ground around my feet.
“Expect a dry-cleaning bill.” I muttered the words out of the corner of my mouth to Titus. “And good luck trying to get laid tonight. Your girl is going to be pissed that you kept the raid from her, but she’s gonna be really pissed when she finds out you shut me down for no reason.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him. “Like you said . . . she likes me.”
I thought the big detective was going to lunge at me, but Chuck stepped between us and put a hand on the man’s Kevlar-covered chest.
“Enough. There were no drugs, but you succeeded in ruining the boss’s day, so let’s all consider that a win and head to our separate corners of the city, shall we?”
Titus pointed a finger at me. “One of these days you’re gonna give me a reason I can’t ignore to lock you up, Gates.”
I shrugged my shoulders and then cringed as the motion sent icy water right down the collar of my shirt and along my spine. “Probably.” I mean I was already doing a shit ton of stuff that would mean a jail sentence if he knew about it, but I never had any intention of serving time. My entire life before the Point had been a long, horrific prison sentence, so I’d already done time as far as I was concerned.
I looked at Chuck. “Since we’re dead in the water—literally—I have something else I need to take care of tonight.” I made a face as water squished out of my shoes as I walked toward my new car.
The gold tooth flashed at me. “Do I even want to know?”
I smiled back at him. “I’m going Squirrel hunting.”
His chuckle followed me as I sloshed my way to my SUV. I needed answers. I needed information and I needed a change of clothes. I was going to get my hands on all three and track down whoever this Tyler was and find out why exactly someone so young had it in for me. I wasn’t an easy enemy to have and I couldn’t figure out why the kid had decided to take on someone like me his first time out of the gate.
Chapter 15
Keelyn
I was really starting to hate the words “I have something to take care of.” Whenever Nassir told me that, it meant he was dropping out of contact and was up to his neck in trouble. It was testing all my self-control not to bombard him with questions about what was on his agenda for the night as he changed into a very un-Nassir-looking outfit of black jeans, a black knit sweater, and heavy-looking black boots. There wasn’t a logo or label to be seen, and when he twisted up his long hair into a perfectly coiled man-bun at the back of his head, I knew something was up. He never did anything with his hair, and once it was tied up and out of the way, all I wanted to do was pull it down and mess it up. He kissed me on his way out and told me not to wait up, which made me want to kick him. I believed he would keep me in the loop if it was something I needed to know, something that affected me or the club, but sending him off to do God knew what with God knew who was hard when we were so newly settled into sharing this life together.
I appreciated the fact that he wanted me to be able to claim ignorance about some of the more unsavory parts of his business, but I hated not knowing what exactly he was into and what the chances were of him making it back home in one piece. All that uncertainty and fear was why I had held him off for so long in the first place. The anxiety of what I was going to do if something really did happen to him while he was off doing whatever he did made my skin feel like it was a size too small for my entire body and I couldn’t seem to stay still.
It sucked that the club was flooded because it left me with nothing to do and too much time on my hands. I started to wonder about the girls that had moved from the strip club to the new club. I wondered whether, if someone had offered them a way out, a way all the way out, they’d have taken it. So few people in this city, women especially, were ever offered an opportunity to experience life beyond the hard streets and crumbling economy that kept the Point what it was, and even though Nassir had his own type of escape route in place for the women he protected, he wasn’t offering them anything outside of the city limits. Even after he’d cleaned up Spanky’s and turned it into the Empire, it still amounted to little more than putting lipstick on a pig. There should be a way out for those who wanted it, and I started to wonder if the way I could help my community was by setting free those women that never really had a shot at surviving it.