Honor

I scowled when I saw Race’s information on the phone and pulled on a pair of loose cotton pants as I headed down to the living room.

“What?” We were business partners, but that didn’t really mean we had the type of working relationship where we checked up on one another. At least we hadn’t before now. I appreciated the guy’s smarts and his willingness to get his hands dirty after Novak went down, but he was just a little too slick and far too clever for me to really trust him.

“Tell your guard dog to let me in the gate.” He sounded as annoyed as I felt about receiving the early-morning call. I didn’t bother to respond, but I did call down to the guardhouse by the gate and tell them to let him in. Within minutes, the younger blond man was strolling through the front door without bothering to knock.

“You don’t lock your front door? You have someone messing with your new club and someone trying to run you off the road, and you leave your fortress unsecured?”

My head still hurt but it was more of a dull throb than the sharp slashes of pain from yesterday. The stitches felt itchy and tight on my scalp and my shoulder and upper chest were a delightful shade of purple from where the seat belt had kept me in the car at the moment of impact. I ignored Race and made my way into the kitchen to scrounge up a bottle of water and maybe something for breakfast. He followed me still looking put out.

I chugged the entire bottle and put my hands on the island and stared at him.

“What are you doing here, Race?”

He adopted a similar pose on the opposite side of the island and met me glare for glare. “I want to know what you’re going to do about someone messing with the club. It hasn’t even been open for two weeks and you’re already losing money.”

“We’re losing money.”

Race nodded. “Exactly. As much as it galls me to admit it, we are in this together, Nassir. If things are going south I need to know, and maybe I can help stop the slide. If you fail, I fail, and if I fail, this city fails, and I won’t let that happen.”

I lifted a hand and rubbed it across the back of my neck to see if I could release some of the tension there.

“I’m sure Chuck told you about the stuff happening at the club, but how did you know about the car accident last night?”

He snorted and lifted his gold-colored eyebrows up to his hairline. “All the cops were talking about the Bentley getting totaled and how you looked like hammered dog shit but refused medical treatment. Titus overheard and mentioned it to Reeve. Reeve told Booker, and since I can’t keep Karsen away from that guy no matter how hard I try, she overheard it and told me. Which pisses me off. I should’ve heard it from you, asshole.”

Karsen was Race’s girlfriend’s little sister. She was seventeen going on thirty. He had taken them both in, built them an impenetrable castle right in the center of the Point, and was doing his damnedest to keep the teenager from getting her heart broken by the rough ex-con we had put in charge of security at the strip club. The pretty young thing had a crush on the scarred man that wouldn’t seem to quit even though Race did everything in his power to squash it.

“I kicked a couple out of the club and the wife took exception. The Bentley is worse off than I am, and all I wanted to do after the crash was come home and clean myself up. I was asleep when you called, but I would’ve touched base with you when I got up and moving for the day.”

He looked skeptical but relaxed some of the tension in his stance.

“I don’t have the time or the patience to break in a new partner.” He said it flippantly, but underneath his easy charm I could see that he was actually worried about me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“I’m going over every inch of surveillance I can find on the club. I don’t know how the person is getting away with all these little acts of sabotage, but I’ll find out.” I didn’t share my feeling that it all felt like some kind of twisted juvenile retaliation for something.

“It has to be someone on the inside. One of the club members or one of the new staff.”

I nodded a little bit in agreement. “Yeah. But I ran background checks on all of them and nothing popped up.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Want me to have Stark dig a little deeper? His time isn’t cheap, but if there’s anything hiding anywhere, he’ll find it.”

I knew he would. The computer hacker was the one who had tracked Key down in Denver for me after Titus refused to help me pinpoint her exact location. Stark looked like a biker or a professional cage fighter, but he really was just a bulked-up and heavily tattooed computer nerd. He’d ended up on my payroll more than once.

“Yeah. That might be a good place to start. Maybe he can find some kind of connection I missed.” I pushed off the counter and turned to the fridge. My stomach growled at me, letting me know that man could not live on water and mind-blowing sex alone. “You want something to eat?”

Race shook his head. “No. I’m picking the girls up and taking them to look at a couple of colleges out of town. Karsen graduates at the end of the school year and I want her out of this hellhole. I want her to have a shot at a normal life.”

Now it was my turn to shake my head. “You really think she’s going to leave the Point? Her sister is here. Her life is here . . .” I trailed off and he narrowed his eyes at me until they were nothing more than green slits.

“Booker is here.”

I shrugged. “She’s had her sights on him for a long time.”