Love Kills (Lilah Love 4)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The ride is short and silent.

The driver drops us at the door, where there are barriers and security set up, because, Jesus, there’s press everywhere. We enter the building to find Kit behind the desk, but he’s also got about ten people around him. Clearly, the tenants aren’t happy. I’m sure they expect the building management to assure them no one dies here. Some people have really unrealistic expectations.

I, for one, just want out of the lobby and into the privacy of our apartment. Kane seems to feel the same way; his strides are as long as mine. We aren’t holding hands. We don’t do the hand holding thing in public. Okay, there are moments, but, right now, we’re both all about getting the fuck into the elevator and up to the seventeenth floor.

We step into the car, and Kit is suddenly holding the door. He hands me a CD. “That’s the security footage for the building. I’ve watched it ten times. The sister, Katy, comes in and out of the building several times in forty-eight hours. No one else. I have thoughts on that I don’t want to say here where we’re on camera.” He backs up and lets the door shut.

I shove the CD in my bag, and my mind goes where I think his did. Karen, our soap opera star, killed her sister and then left, only to be killed herself. But how would Umbrella Man make her kill her sister? Who would she want to save more than her sister? It makes no sense, and yet, it feels like that’s the only way this happened. Unless Karen didn’t think the drug would kill her. That has to be it.

The car starts to move, and Kane glances over at me. He’s going where I’m going. I see it in his eyes. This building’s secure. Umbrella Man had to use the sister to kill the other sister in order to pull this off. We’re secure here, and that makes me think about why he’s not at work. He came for me to bring me back here. I’m back to the thought I forgot—the driver got out of the car. Kane came to protect me, I believe that, maybe, he just came to convince me to go home. But there was something else, something he wanted to say to me, something he thought would convince me to go home with him.

Or, maybe it was just the fucking rain.

We’re being conditioned to fear the rain.

Even the fierce Kane Mendez.

A few beats later, we exit the car, and after a brief walk, we step to our door, the door that was once ours and is now ours again. We live together, and I’m done, really done, with regrets. The agency can’t come at Kane forever. They’re after him now because he dared to sue them. Because he dared to back them off. I have thoughts on that, thoughts on how the agency clearly wants to use Kane, but for now, I set them aside. Kane’s opened the door, and I walk inside the foyer.

I’m just entering the main apartment when the doorbell rings behind us. My cellphone rings as well, and the two of us share a frustrated look. We divide, him heading to the door and me heading further into the apartment, snaking my phone from my bag as I do, to find Tic Tac’s number. “What do you have for me?” I ask, heading up the stairs.

“Your email is locked and loaded,” he says. “I’ve sent you a small library of documents, but I’ve included a summary of my findings and what I think you might want to look at first.” He covers the phone, but I hear. “This is my job. Don’t do this right now.”

“Oh hell,” I say, dropping my bag on the floor by my nightstand and sitting down on the unmade bed, the storm darkening the room and forcing me to flip on the light. “I don’t care how hot your new boyfriend is, if he’s already bitching about your job, he’s gotta go. Because, you know, he’ll bitch and then cheat and blame your work. Then you’ll be crying. You won’t be able to do your job. Murphy will fire you. I’ll have to train someone new to work my way.”

“Jesus, Lilah. Really?”

“Just saving the world two people at a time. That’s you and me, Tic Tac.”

“I’d hang up, but you’ll punish me in some Lilah Love way, and I also have more to say.”

“More to say. Well, by all means, say more.”

“Melanie Carmichael. She’s from a stable family, three siblings—two sisters who are both family doctors in Jersey. They’re in practice together. She was married for fifteen years, but her husband died of a heart attack. The interesting part is that her brother is a surgeon who works at NYC General. He donated to your father’s campaign. He also attended several campaign events with Pocher. Based on the guest lists, Houston and Roger have been at some of the same events.”

And Roger was used to get me to the first crime scene. The minute I came back to New York and became a problem again, they decided to use my history with him, to pull me into this case and get rid of me. “I need a list of everyone who was at any event Roger was at.”

“You got it. And Murphy wants you to call him.”

“Murphy can call me if he needs me.” My phone beeps with a message. I glance at it.

“It’s Murphy, right?” Tic Tac asks.

“Yes, smartass.” I disconnect and make the call. “Director Murphy.”

“The mayor called me.”

“And?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s a familiar problem, a cloak and dagger situation.”

“Them,” he says, and I know he means the Society.

“Yes. Them. I’m handling it. I have resources. That’s why you hired me, right?” I’m talking about Kane.

He knows, too. He doesn’t miss a beat. “I hired you for you, Lilah. But remember this. They are everywhere. One falls, another rises. Finesse. Fuck them, but with finesse. That’s all for now.” He hangs up.

Kane enters the room, a large envelope in his hand. He crosses toward me, and I stand to face him. He stops in front of me and hands it to me. “What is it?”

“The delivery that just came for me. Look inside.”

I open it and eye three disposable phones. I glance up at him, the question I don’t ask in my eyes. “Was there a note?”

“There doesn’t need to be a note. I put the word out that I wanted to reach Ghost. He expected it after last night, which is why he reacted quickly. This was his answer. He’ll call.”

Ice radiates down my spine. “Ghost,” I repeat, that empty spot where I should keep all those emotions I do not, filling up. “What are you going to do?”

“Give him a new job.”

He means kill Pocher. “Murphy said when one falls, another rises. I know you know that or you would have done this before now.”

“I’ve shown extreme restraint by not killing him thus far. It’s time everyone in the damn Society knows when one falls, another can fall.”

“And if Ghost has an agreement with Pocher, too?”

“Ghost know

s I’ll double any offer. Ghost knows I have his back. That’s why he saved you.”

He has the back of an assassin. It’s one of those moments when I should be appalled, but I’m not. I toss the envelope on the bed and grab his tie, yanking him toward me. “I don’t trust him, Kane.”

“You’ve said that. You’re going to have to trust me.”

“Have to? I don’t fucking have to do anything.”

“You don’t trust me, Lilah?”

“Don’t twist the meaning of my words to justify your cavalier actions. To be clear, I trust you, but I think you forget that you’re human.”

“I told you. I’ve got this.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I do. Let it go. Let me—”

“Let me make this clear, Kane Mendez of the Mendez family, if you think the wrath of your family is bad, you don’t know me. If this goes wrong. If he kills you, I’ll live just to kill him. It’ll come down to him and me. Do you want it to come down to him and me?”

His hands slide under my hair, and he drags me to him. “It will always come down to you and me, Lilah. Always.”

His mouth closes down on mine, and if I wanted emotion, I have emotion. I have too many emotions. I can’t escape them. For right now, I don’t want to escape them. I’m angry at Kane. I’m afraid of him dying, and I don’t feel fear. And the only way I have to deal with those things is with him.

CHAPTER THIRTY

My anger is in my kiss, in the way I shove at his jacket. It’s in every movement that lands us naked and on the bed, but there is more to what I feel. There is unfamiliar desperation. I can’t touch him enough. I can’t get him inside me fast enough. When he finally is, I press him to the mattress, and I’m on top, wanting to bend him to my will like that is even possible with this man. I want to make him be rational. I want to make him stay, but some part of me can’t make that clawing sensation go away.

Kane rolls me to my back and presses my hands to the mattress on either side of me. “Stop fucking kissing me like this is goodbye, woman. It’s never goodbye for us. Never again. Never, Lilah.”