Yeah, hang on a sec.
I lock my phone and fist my bouncy ball.Drake doesn’t get to use it. “I’ll be back soon.” I tip my chin toward the screen, then down to the notes I’ve written on a yellow pad of paper. “You can keep watching if you want. I found her arriving near the cinema, then her car leaving again about twenty minutes later. Those cameras are straight above, so we don’t see who’s driving. I’ve been following her, but there are gaps in the footage and lots of it is pixelated.”
“Okay.” He sets his hands on his hips, his eyes dropping to the phone fisted in my hand. “I’ll see what I find.”
“Yep.” I turn and whip the door open.
“Malone?”
Fucccccck off.I was so damn close to freedom. Instead, I crush the doorknob in my palm and glare over my shoulder. “What?”
He swallows, his eyes dropping to my phone a second time. But now, Felix’s name flashes on the screen, his impatience as obvious as an over-inflated balloonthisclose to exploding in my face.
Silence hangs between us. Pressure builds. Tension thickens, and my pulse moves just a little quicker.
When I’m at risk of the call ringing out, I answer and bring the phone quickly to my ear. “I’ll call you back in a minute.”
“Bitch! No you won?—”
I hang up and bring my eyes back to Drake. “Something to say about the case?”
“No, I…” His brows furrow heavily above his eyes. “It’s just…”
“You’re taking way too fuckin’ long.”
I already see Minka’s disapproving scowl in the back of my mind. Nevertheless, I stride through the door and slam it behind me, then I stalk across the bullpen and make a beeline for the escalators. It’s bad manners to take a phone call from the mob while inside a police station. Jogging onto the steel stairs and making my way down, Idefinitelydon’t think about the part wheremy wifeis now part of the mob, too. And, well, so am I.
I get so damn pissy when Drake harps on about me being the son of a mafioso and just as dirty, but the fact is, I kinda am. In some ways. Because at the end of the day, I’m a hell of a lot more active in my family’s business now than I was two years ago, and I married one of the women Estefan Cordoza has effectively declared his successor.
Fuck me. Are my feelings hurt because Banks is being unkind? Or because he’s right?
My phone buzzes with another incoming call, so I roll my eyes andanswer on the move. I step off the escalator and head through the glass doors leading onto the sidewalk, then I bring the phone to my ear and find a shady spot to stand so the sun doesn’t burn me to a crisp. “I’m literally at work, fuckface. Ya know,surrounded by cops.Cool your shit and give me a minute to find somewhere to talk.”
He chuckles. So fucking easy. So carefree. “You make these things more complicated than they need to be, Arch. I’m just your big brother calling to gush about his adorable baby girl.”
“You’re… you.” I scan my surroundings and check that no one is close enough to give evidence at my eventual trial. “Your career and mine aren’t entirely copacetic, Lix.”
“Big words,” he teases. “Did you get that picture I sent? Isn’t she adorable?”
“She is.” And it’s true. So ridiculously true. “She’s amazing, Lix. You went and made the most beautiful baby girl this family has ever known.”
“She’s looking like Christabelle more and more every day,” he happily sighs. “Her eyes were kinda dark when she was born, but they’re getting lighter now.”
“Turning green like ours?”
“Nah. Silver, like her momma. What are you doing?”
“Like… today? At work?” I narrow my eyes. “Trying to solve a murder. You?”
He laughs. “Notcommitting a murder, if that’s what you mean. Tell Fletch I said hey and that I love him. He’s still a little testy about that time I kidnapped his kid, so…”
“You love him?” Scoffing, I lean back against the solid brick wall and lift my foot to rest beneath my ass. Squeezing the bouncy ball in my left hand, I keep my eyes tracking the street around me. “I didn’t realize that was the kind of relationship you two shared. But go off, Lix.”
“He doesn’t say it back,” he laughs. “But I text it to him sometimes. And I send him pictures of Zo. I’m bonding with him father to father, since cop to criminal isn’t working out so well.”
“Does he reply?”
“To those texts? No. But he’ll give in someday,” he snickers. “He can’t stay mad forever. Is he there right now? Put him on.”