Dirty Kiss (24 page)

“Fuck you. I have sense,” he shot back, fighting me to stand up. He wove slightly, shoving my hands away when I reached to support him. “Where is she?”

The cat in question miaowed loudly from the landing, screaming her displeasure at me. Hooking my arm under his, I lifted, letting his weight rest on my shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you upstairs.”

“I can crash on the couch,” Jae said, motioning to the living room. “Neek-neek, come.”

“Can you let me win one argument? Just humor me and let me get you up there.” I was glad to see the cat blissfully ignored him as she did me, sitting down to chew on her toes. “And why the hell aren’t you in the damned hospital? Who let you out at six in the morning?”

“I checked myself out,” he replied, letting me guide him up the stairs. The cat screamed, a demanding beacon. Either she was playing lighthouse or was giving directions to the bed. Whichever it was, she definitely had an opinion about it. “Hospitals are too expensive, Cole.”

The climb up the stairs was tiring his abused lungs, and I stopped at the landing, letting him rest. His black daemon slammed herself into his ankles, and he smiled, an open, bright grin that made my heart stutter. It changed his face, washing away the ice and blooming a warmth over his mouth.

“I told you I’d pay for it.” I didn’t want to let him go, but he bent forward to scoop Neko up. She glared at me from her perch on his shoulder, rubbing her nose on his jaw and peeling her black lips from her fangs.

“You’re crazy. You’ve known me for, what? Three days? Four, maybe? Bad enough I came here.” Jae inhaled hard, getting his breath back. “I can’t afford a hospital. I still send my mother money for my sisters, and I’m not going to make any money for a while until I get the insurance money for my cameras. If they give me money. The police said it looks suspicious.”

“The police came by?” I slung my arm around his waist, letting him settle against me. “When? After I left or before?”

“After.” He shifted the cat, holding her in the crook of his arm. The walk to the bedroom was short, punctuated only by Neko’s mew of protest when she was placed on the mattress. “Those two that were at Jin-Sang’s. They asked where you were. I don’t think they like you.”

“No, they probably don’t,” I conceded. As far as a lot of cops were concerned, I’d asked for what I got. The truth sometimes didn’t matter to the boys in blue. “What did they say?”

“They asked me again what I was doing at Jin-Sang’s and if I thought someone was trying to kill me.” He shrugged as if being questioned by the cops was an everyday thing. “They also asked me if I was sleeping with you.”

“What did you say?” I asked through the open door of the bathroom. There were extra toothbrushes somewhere in the linen closet. They’d apparently gone on safari, and I had to find one for Jae.

“I told them we hadn’t gotten to sleeping yet,” he responded, a teasing lilt in his voice.

“I’m sure that won them over.” I placed the toothbrush package on the nightstand, along with a disposable razor, although I couldn’t see even a shadow on his face. “I mean about Jin-Sang.”

“That I knew Hyun-Shik’s suicide note was really a part of the letter he wrote and that he should talk to you.” Jae scratched at his cat’s belly, a far braver man than I’d ever be to come close to those dainty claws. “They asked me if I saw who shot me, but I told them I didn’t.”

“Did you?”

“What? See who shot me?” He shook his head. “No. Someone came up behind me and the gun went off before I turned around all the way. I told them that before, but I don’t think they believe me.”

“If the shooter was in Jin-Sang’s apartment already, then whoever it was heard you talk about the note,” I said softly. That didn’t bode well for Jae. Someone out there knew he had concrete knowledge of Jin-Sang’s involvement with Hyun-Shik’s death. He blinked like an owl when I told him I thought he was in danger. “Really, Jae. I want you to be careful. It’s why Scarlet and I thought it would be better if you were here with me, where I could watch you.”

“I thought it was because nuna lived with hyung and he can’t afford any more scandal,” he said, pursing his mouth. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or serious. “Scarlet-ah, everyone knows about them, but me? It won’t look good if I stay there with them. Hyung doesn’t need that. Nuna doesn’t either.”

“Probably that too,” I said. There were things going on in the background of this whole mess that I couldn’t wrap my brain around, culturally Korean things that I was ill-equipped to deal with.

“You have no idea who hyungmin is, do you?” Jae laughed at my bemused look. “He is someone big with the Korean embassy. His wife stays in Korea, but Scarlet-ah is who he takes with him wherever he goes. In their lives, the wife is the mistress, and it is nuna that he comes home to. They are all happy with that arrangement.”

“Is that what Hyun-Shik was planning? To turn Victoria into his occasional mistress?”

“Who knows what hyung was doing? I didn’t speak to him much. He was busy with work and his son.” Jae chuffed under the cat’s chin, undulating her disgruntled mews. “She’s complaining about the bed.”

“Don’t listen to her. The bed was fine for her scrawny carcass last night.” Giving her the evil eye back, I held out the sheets for him to get under. There were little bruises on his throat, marks from the flying debris of the explosion. “Lie down, and we’ll talk in a few hours when it’s a reasonable hour. I’ll grab some sheets, then turn off the light so you can get some sleep.”

“Where are you going?” I almost didn’t hear him from the depths of the closet.

“The other bedroom has a Murphy bed. I’ll sleep there.” Tugging at a pillow on a high shelf, I ducked when a barrage of linens fell on top of me, burying my feet. I left the mess there, too tired to care and concerned about the fatigue in Jae’s voice.

Carrying out the lone pillow, I stood by the bed, looking down at his drawn face. Despite the bruised look under his eyes, he took the breath from my lungs. He’d gone past the worrisome point on my radar and shot straight down into hellish trouble.

“Can’t you stay here?” His teeth dimpled his lower lip, eyes large and dark in the low light. “Please? I need you to stay.”

It was a mistake, but I nodded, sliding onto the bed and pulling the sheets over my legs. “Move over a bit.”

Turning the lamp off, I lay back into the pillows, wondering if he could hear the pound of my heart. It seemed very loud to me, nearly reverberating in my eardrums. He stretched out next to me, lying close enough for our bodies to touch. It was a king-sized bed, but the mattress seemed too small, and I felt every movement he made, listening to him breathe.

“Tell me about Rick. What was he like?” Jae murmured, running his fingers along my side. I tensed, unsure about the contact. He traced a ridge of scar under my shirt. Raising the shirt hem, he examined the keloid with his fingers, splaying his palm over the starburst. “If you can.”

I didn’t want to, but Jae deserved to hear the truth. I tried to focus on the facts, numbing the pain in my heart. “What do you want to know?”

“You said he was shot, but that’s all you’ve said.”

“We were having dinner, and I was kissing him goodbye before I had to go back to work. I was a detective then. I worked Vice,” I said, trying not to relive the night. Rick’s grin was a watery screen behind my closed eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing him through tears or time was taking away my memory of his face. “I saw him die before I felt the bullet. He was shot first. Then I was hit and went down.”

“Did they catch who did it?”

The question was so innocent, and I didn’t know how to respond. Of course he’d want to know if the bad guy was caught, but I loved the bad guy as much as I loved Rick. Ben was my best friend, as much of a brother to me as Mike and Bobby.

“My partner, Ben, shot us.” I stumbled over the words, searching for how to talk about losing so much in one night. “He shot Rick in the head first and then me. He emptied his gun out. Later on, another cop found him in our unmarked. He’d killed himself, probably right after he killed Rick.”

“Why? I mean, why did he do it?”

If I had the answer to that, I probably wouldn’t have spent every night since fighting nightmares and sleeplessness. I’d been Ben’s partner longer than I’d known Rick. He’d been a constant in my life, much like Mike. To lose him as well as Rick nearly killed me, and I still had no idea why.

“I don’t know.” Sheila, his wife, had asked me the same question, then walked away when I had no response. I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. I was the godfather to Ben’s oldest daughter. I’d watched their kids on nights when they needed time for their marriage. Sheila cut me out of her life as smoothly as Ben cut Rick out of mine.

“Did he love you?” Jae pushed himself up onto one elbow, dislodging the cat from his leg. “Was Ben in love with you?”

“Baby, Ben didn’t leave us anything. Not a note. Not anything.” Admitting my helplessness was hard. I’d lost three years asking that same question: why. And still was no closer to an answer. “I went nuts for a bit afterwards. Didn’t know up from down. Bobby helped me out. Redoing this place gave me something to do while I tried to figure things out.”

“Then you became an investigator?”

“Gave me something to do. I missed working Vice. I thought it would be a lot of divorce cases,” I admitted. “Finding dead bodies wasn’t on the agenda.”

“I didn’t want to be one of the dead bodies you found.” Jae sighed, pulling my shirt back down. I briefly missed the warmth of his hand. Then he tucked himself against me, hooking his ankle over my shin. I burned under his touch. He was making me crazy with his breath on my neck.

“Jae, why did you ask how Rick died?”

“I didn’t. I asked what Rick was like. I wanted to know why you loved him,” Jae said, nesting into the pillows. “How he lived is more important to me than how he died. Maybe it should be for you too, no?”

Lying
next to Jae was torture. I’d sooner have been able to fall asleep under a water drip than endure the feel of him against me. Every little hitch in his breath jerked me out of my doze, and I turned to check on him, staring down at his prone body until I was sure he was breathing okay. His cat gave me owl eyes from her perch at the end of the bed, and finally I got up and headed downstairs.

“Don’t worry. He’s safe from me right now,” I informed her, sitting on the bottom of the stairs. I tied off my second sneaker when the house phone rang, and I scrambled for it, not wanting the ring to wake Jae up. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Princess.” Bobby laughed at my breathlessness. “What the hell are you doing? Wet dreams at your age?”

“Dick.”

“And a big one too,” he teased back. “What time do you want to head over to the hospital to go stare at your pretty little boy?”

“No need,” I said, wandering into the living room. “The pretty little boy checked himself out of the hospital this morning and came here. I’ve already had a round of why-did-you-do-something-that-stupid with him and lost miserably.”

I left out the discussion about Rick and Ben. Jae’s words were too raw in my brain still, scraping diligently away at bleeding scabs. I didn’t want to admit to missing Ben. Hell, I didn’t want to admit to wanting Jae, but I did that. Under duress.

“Nice.” Bobby whistled under his breath. “What are you doing talking to me?”

“Small thing called smoke inhalation? Oh, and common sense.” I reminded him. “I was going for a run to get the cobwebs out.”

“Want me to go with you? It’ll take me a few minutes, but I can get over there.”

“Nah, I’m okay. Just going around the block a couple of times to work off the edge. Maybe do some thinking.” The rain spat at the window, a gentle patter compared to the deluge earlier. It would be a good time to run, cool enough to push myself into a good sweat. “Come by later if you want. You won’t be interrupting anything.”