I peered at the picture of the older Asian man, and then I read the name. The guy who was about to lose his hand because of a machete attack was Frank Liu.
For a few minutes, I toyed with the idea that it could be a different Frank Liu, but then I looked at the address. Nope. It was my grandmother’s Frank Liu. That was the address of the house I’d been to in the Pocket. At least he wasn’t missing anymore. I thought about calling Ted to let him know his missing persons case was no longer that, but I figured that news of a machete attack would probably reach his ears soon enough.
Plus, I needed to figure out what this meant. I hadn’t even figured out why Frank had gone missing. Now he was back, or at least most of him was. I winced again as I thought about what Doreen had said about Liu’s hand.
I had no doubt he was headed into surgery now. Maybe I’d be able to talk to him before my shift ended, to ask a few questions that didn’t necessarily have to do with his insurance coverage.
AT THE END OF MY SHIFT, I SLIPPED QUIETLY INTO FRANK LIU’S hospital room. Throughout the course of the night, I’d been keeping tabs on him via the hospital’s computer system. His surgery had been short, which was either a very good sign or a very bad one. His stay in recovery had been brief. Chances were, he wouldn’t remember it. Most people don’t. Blessed be modern pharmaceuticals and their memory-erasing properties. He’d been transferred to a semiprivate room on the fifth floor about an hour ago. I figured he’d be all settled in now and the nurses would be done poking him and prodding him for the moment.
The room was dim but not dark. Hospital rooms almost never are. There’s always light from the hallway seeping in somewhere, and all the different machines cast their own spectral glow. I glanced at the screen displaying Frank Liu’s vital signs. At least to a layperson’s eyes, he was looking okay. His oxygen saturation was ninety-eight percent, and his heart rate was steady and regular.
He looked small in the bed and very, very still. Not quite as small as Maricela but still way smaller than I thought he should.
There was someone in the chair next to the bed. My first reaction was that I was glad that Frank wasn’t alone. The second was a little bit of panic when the person raised his head from where it rested on the bed and asked, “What are you doing here?”
I felt I could easily ask George, the priest from the Bok Kai Temple, the same question. What indeed was he doing here?
“I, uh, just wanted to check on Mr. Liu,” I stammered instead. I don’t know why I’m so bad at conversational confrontation. Really, if he’d jumped up and aimed a roundhouse kick at my head, I would have known exactly what to do, how to deflect it, how to set up my own attack. This talky-talky stuff? I suck at it. I recover faster from a fist strike to the jaw than someone saying something mean to me.
“He’ll survive,” the priest said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “They made sure of that.”
I took another step into the room. “Who are they? What do they want?”
George rose up in his chair. “You need to leave. You’ve done enough damage already.”
Me? What had I done? “I assure you, I had nothing to do with what’s happened to Mr. Liu.”
George snorted. “Really? Then exactly whom was he sent here to warn? It wasn’t me. I’ve had warnings enough. I don’t need any others.”
“He was sent here? Like a message?” Who would do that to a person to send a message? And why to me? I didn’t even know anything, although I’m not sure I’d ever seen a clearer indicator that I was close to learning something important than the very still body of the man under the bed sheets.
“Of course he was. That’s why they made sure he’d stay alive. A dead man is only a warning for a little while. People forget him after awhile. A living maimed man? He acts as a warning for a long, long time. Now, please, miss, whoever you are . . . whatever you are . . . go away and don’t come back.”
I squinted at George. What exactly did he mean by
whatever you are
? Did he have an inkling that I wasn’t quite what I seemed? “How can you be sure this is a warning to me when you don’t even know my name?”
He shook his head slowly. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that you’re the only one who’s been poking around the temple and that you happen to work in the very hospital where they dumped Mr. Liu’s body?”
When he put it like that, it did seem like a heck of a mash-up. “Okay. So they’re trying to warn me. What are they trying to warn me about, and who are they?”
He stood and advanced toward me. “You don’t need to know any of that. All you need to know is that it’s time for you to mind your own business.”
I left the room, wondering if he knew how much I wanted to do precisely that.
OFFICER TED GOODNIGHT WAS LEANING AGAINST MY GRANDMOTHER’S Buick, long legs crossed at the ankle in front of him and arms crossed over his chest, looking very unofficer-like, when I walked into the employee parking garage. He had on faded blue jeans and a King Crimson T-shirt with an unbuttoned chambray shirt over it that did little to disguise the bulge of his biceps or the muscles across his chest. My heart did an embarrassing little flip-flop that reminded me way too much of the first time I’d seen Leonardo Di-Caprio in
Titanic
. I think Aunt Kitty and I went to that movie about seven times, despite my brother yelling after us on our way out the door that, in the end, the boat was still going to sink. Boys. They don’t understand anything.
Then I noticed that the chambray shirt didn’t fully hide the shoulder holster and sidearm underneath it. I’m not a big fan of guns. I don’t understand them, so they make me a little nervous. “How’d you know which car was mine?” I asked, stopping a few feet away from him.
He smiled when he saw me, and little crinkles formed at the corners of his cornflower blue eyes. My heart did the flip-flop thing again. Maybe I needed to have an EKG. That couldn’t possibly be normal. “I have make, model and license plate on the police report from the first night you called in the gang fight. Not too many Buicks of this vintage parked around here. It didn’t take long to find it.”
Cute and resourceful, too, but a warning bell sounded in the back of my mind. Police report. He was still a cop and I still needed to tread carefully. I was playing with fire here. Plus, did he say first night I called in the gang fight? Did he know about the second one? Before I could ask a question, however, he said, “Do you want to leave your car here? Or should I follow you home and we can leave from there?” He stood up and jammed his hands in his pockets.
I decided on the latter. I had no desire to come back to the hospital until I had to come back for my shift at eleven. I had no desire to see Frank Liu’s way-too-still body or the very pissed-off priest who was keeping guard at his bedside. If Frank Liu was indeed some kind of warning message from someone to yours truly, it didn’t seem so terrible to have a police escort home either. I found a parking spot relatively close to my place, hopped out of the Buick and into his pickup truck. “Nice,” I said as I looked around the inside.
“It’s not fancy, but it gets me from place to place.” He sounded nonchalant, but I saw a little blush on his cheeks.
This was bad, very bad. Not only was he a cop, but he was sweet. He blushed when I complimented his ride. I had a terrible feeling that he would be the kind of guy who took off his suit jacket and put it around a girl’s shoulders on a cold night, the kind of guy who would remember Valentine’s Day, the kind of guy that I used to watch in movies and sigh over until I realized that no guy like that would ever be able to withstand dating a girl whose schedule was regularly interrupted by elves, goblins, werewolves and fairies.
I almost asked him to turn the car around right there, but my stomach growled and I decided I’d stay for the free pancakes.
Really. He held no other interest for me whatsoever.
IN THE END, I DIDN’T ORDER PANCAKES. WE WENT TO THE TOWER Café and frankly, there’s no point in having breakfast there if you aren’t having the custard-soaked French toast with a side of crispy bacon and lots of hot black coffee. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.
Ted waited until I was in a custard-and-carbohydrate-induced state of nirvana before he asked, “So where exactly is the grow house?”
I choked.
It’s not that I didn’t expect him to ask. I knew he would ask. I just expected he would sidle up to it and sneak it in, not give it to me bold-faced like that.
An episode of back-slapping and several sips of water later, I gasped out, “What grow house?”
“Whatever one you saw yesterday.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled at me as if it were the most innocuous of questions, like maybe he was asking where I bought my earrings or what kind of movies I liked. For the record, the answers are craft fairs and romantic comedies.
“Hypothetical, remember?” I croaked, setting down my fork. This is where hanging out with cops gets tricky. He knew I was lying. Contrary to what one sees on TV, cops are not stupid, they won’t sell their souls for a bear claw and a lot of them have learned how to spot a liar faster than they can pull their weapons.
“Melina,” he said, reaching across the table to take my hand.
His touch sent an instant warmth racing up my arm. I squinted at him. Had I missed something? Was there something about him from another realm? Was he an itsy bit ’Cane? No matter how hard I looked, I saw nothing but man. I’d been spending way too much time hobnobbing with hobgoblins. I couldn’t even recognize normal when it was holding my hand.
“You don’t have to be afraid. I can protect you,” he said.
Wow. A girl could get used to this. Someone to protect me? I couldn’t remember the last time anyone even offered. Sadly, it was pointless anyway. He had no idea what he was up against and could no more protect me from the
kiang shi
than my grandmother could. Grandma Rosie could balance the hell out of a Rising Crane position, but I didn’t think she had the skills to contain those killing machines. “Why do you think I need protecting?”
He looked incredulous. “Do you remember how we met, Melina?”
Oh yeah, we met over me witnessing the brutal slaying of several gang members. “I told you. I was just driving by. I wanted to be a good citizen.” I all but batted my eyes at him.
He let go of my hand and looked down at his coffee. “Okay. You don’t want to tell me what’s going on. We haven’t known each other that long, and maybe you’re still trying to decide if you can trust me or not. I get that. I can wait. But, Melina, please don’t wait too long. I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, but I do know it’s got you brushing up against some pretty unpleasant people. I can help. Remember that. I want to help. No judgments.”
The sincerity in his voice almost broke me. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him exactly where those grow houses were and let him take care of it. I desperately wanted to tell someone about Frank Liu, too. It almost made sense to tell him. He was a cop. He’d have the resources to find out who owned those houses and investigate them more quickly and more thoroughly than I would.
But how to explain the other part? The pesky part that dealt with undead Asians marauding through the most gang-afflicted portions of Sacramento. Could I explain one piece without the other? I didn’t see how, but I owed him something, especially for that part about no judgments.
“I’ll think about it.” I reached my hand across the table for his this time. He lifted it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. I damn near slid off my chair. Instead, I said, “They found Frank Liu.”
TED WALKED ME TO THE DOOR OF MY APARTMENT AND STOOD behind me, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, while I undid the locks. I opened the door and turned around. “I’d invite you in for a cup of coffee, but we just drank about a gallon of the stuff.”
He laughed. “That’s okay. I know this is probably your only time to sleep, and my shift starts soon. I should get going.” He took a step closer to me and looked down into my eyes.
“Thanks for breakfast. It was great.” My voice came out a little bit squeaky. I swallowed and tried to clear my throat.
“Yeah, it was.” His gaze had traveled down to my lips. He took another step closer. “We should do it again sometime.”
“Sure,” I said. Now my voice was all breathy. Fabulous. I was becoming Betty Boopenstein.
He slid his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. My hands settled on his chest. I mean, what else was I supposed to do with them? But it set off some kind of reaction in him, because the muscles under my hands rippled and he pulled me even closer.
“Soon,” he said, his voice a husky whisper.
“Uh-huh” was all I managed to get out this time, but that was okay, because then he was kissing me.
I’d known he was going to kiss me from the second his gaze had focused on my mouth. I’m not exactly Paris Hilton, but this isn’t my first rodeo either. I’d thought I was prepared. Hoo, boy, did I have that wrong.
His lips claimed mine, warm and smooth and sweet. His hands slid lower, pulling our bodies closer, leaving me without the slightest doubt that he was very happy to see me. His tongue swept against mine, probing and teasing, then slipped away as he sucked my lower lip between his teeth.
He lifted his head and looked down into my eyes, and I wanted it all again, the warmth of his mouth, the scrape of his beard against my cheek, his hard body pressed into my softness, his heat against my heat.
“You taste like maple syrup,” he said, a smile quirking at the corner of his lips.
“You taste like cinnamon and vanilla,” I replied.
