The wafting smell of strong coffee hit my nose and made it twitch. I had an arm raised up over my eyes and was sprawled uncomfortably on the couch, which is how I typically crashed out. I hadn’t heard anyone come up the stairs and figured the only two people who would venture into my sanctuary were my sister or Bax. I groaned and sat up to stretch out the kink that had formed a solid ball between my shoulder blades and blinked in surprise when I saw that my visitor was neither of the people I would’ve expected. I rubbed hard hands over my hair, which was sticking up everywhere, and yawned so hard my jaw popped.
“What are you doing here, Titus?”
The detective looked enough like my best friend that there was no mistaking they were brothers. Titus was bigger and his eyes were blue instead of midnight black, but he had the same hard, hewn face, the same constantly frowning mouth, and the same black hair. Titus was in his late twenties but he looked a little bit older and he always looked tired. He even had a small white spot of hair growing at his temple that had just appeared after the fateful showdown with Novak. Being a cop in this place was a thankless job, and it was starting to look like it was wearing on those already overburdened shoulders.
“What are you doing here, Race?” he asked.
He walked over from the tiny kitchenette and handed me a mug of steaming coffee. I looked up at him from under my eyebrows and didn’t answer the question.
“Didn’t I just ask you that? How did you get in?”
He snorted and took a seat on the only other piece of furniture that existed in the barren space.
“Bax is good at breaking and entering, but I’m better. Want to tell me that you have papers for every single one of those cars sitting in the garage and on the lot down there?”
I flashed him a grin and slumped back on the couch so I could rest my neck on the cushions.
“Do I need to? Have any of them been reported stolen?”
We stared at each other for a long, tense minute because he knew none of them were. That was the thing about taking a gambler’s ride, my clients were so far in it was easier to just let me have the car than it was to try and get it back. The vice would always win, and I would always break even.
Titus grunted and his eyes narrowed at me a fraction.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, Race? How deep in this are you willing to go? If things go bad, do you think you can do what Bax did? Serve a nickel behind bars, let Dovie be out here on her own? Have you thought about an end game in all of this?”
I took a sip of coffee and shrugged. “Dovie won’t be alone as long as Bax is around, and I learned the hard way that even if I might have a perfect end planned out, the Point always has a different idea. I’m willing to go in as deep as I have to in order to keep someone like Novak from ending back up on top.”
“Doesn’t that mean you run the risk of becoming that man, Race?”
That was something I struggled with every day. How to get elbow-deep in the filth, get my hands dirty, and not let it change the man I was.
“Yes, but it’s a risk I have to take.”
“You know the trial for the rest of Novak’s crew is eventually going to start. What kind of witnesses are you going to make? Bax is still boosting cars, you’re running an entire criminal enterprise, and Nassir is so goddamn slippery that only an idiot would trust him. What happens when Benny and the rest of them get off and want the city back?”
The dig was not lost on me.
“Then they’ll have to take it from us, brick by brick.”
We stared at each other some more and his big chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh.
“Putting Bax in jail fucking sucked, Race, but I did it. I hope you know that if you step wrong—make one mistake—I’ll do the same to you and I won’t feel bad about it.”
I knew it. I counted on it. Knowing that a moral, righteous man had his eyes on me constantly was one of the safeguards I had in place to keep my soul from being tainted by the things I was doing.
“Fair enough. Why are you really here?”
He set the coffee down on the floor by his feet because I wasn’t even civilized enough to have something as basic as an end table or a coffee table in the loft. He rose to his full and impressive height and meandered back into the kitchen area to grab a manila folder that I hadn’t seen before. He tossed it on my lap and pointed at it.
“Recognize either of those guys?”
I looked at him blankly, set my own mug of coffee down between my bare feet, and flipped open the file. A hard shudder racked my body and bile burned up the back of my throat at the first image that was on top of the papers in the folder. A body was broken and twisted. The neck wrenched around at an unnatural angle, the skin mottled blue with bruises and death. I had to blink a couple times to get my head to stop reeling and it took more than one deep breath before I could flip to the second image. Again, the body was abused, treated to a brutal beating, and this time there was a gory and gaping hole right between the sightless, staring eyes. I stared at the photos and tried to decide if it was better to lie or tell the truth. Considering this was Titus, the odds were he already knew the answer to the question he was asking me.