Page 19 of Sinner's Secret

“You really want to beat the shit out of someone right now, don’t you?”

She bared her teeth. “I’m trying to look scared not angry.”

He pretended to sip his coffee again. “You’re succeeding, from a distance. It’s only when I’m close enough to study your face, your eyes, that it shows.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment as she fussed with the salt and pepper shakers, and sugar jar on his table. “There was significant pushback from up the chain of command to my suggestion that we need to rethink the operation.”

He smiled at her, as if he were a regular, nonpredatory diner. “Why? It’s just one operation out of many? Isn’t it?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “The Mayor’s office—some kind of campaign promise.”

“That almost sounds credible,” he said, reaching for his wallet. He pulled out a twenty and put it on the table.

She tore his receipt off her pad and put it on the table too. “Almost,” she agreed. She took a step away from the table, then stopped and said with enough volume that anyone in the nearest tables to his would be able to hear her. “No need to rush, take your time and finish your coffee.”

He lifted his cup in salute and pretended to take another sip.

After a moment, he took out his phone and scrolled through the news. Blah, blah, blah. Same shit, different day. For a supposedly intelligent species, human beings did not learn well from their past mistakes. Sometimes they were willfully ignorant of the lessons they should have learned. Sometimes the lesson was lost because everyone involved died off. Either quick or slow, the result was the same. Some asshole went ahead and did stupid shit because they thought they were special, immune, or they just didn’t care who they hurt on their way to get what they wanted.

He’d been that asshole a long time ago and he’d paid for it with two things more important to him than his own life: the lives of his wife and son. He then allowed revenge to take him over and he’d become worse than the animals who had murdered his family.

Now, someone was in New York working very hard to be an asshole of the same magnitude.

They picked the wrong neighborhood to steal from.

A few minutes later, Nika came out of the back of the restaurant wearing a sweater and carrying her purse.

She approached him and he stood. “Ride home?” he asked.

“Thank you,” she said, keeping her gaze mostly on the floor.

He led the way out the front door of the diner, then walked next to her, putting his body between hers and the street.

The guy in the other yellow cab opened his door and stepped out. “Ma’am,” he said to Nika. “I’m here to take you home.”

“She’s going home with me,” Baz said to him with a nasty smile.

“You can’t do that. I was here first,” the other driver said taking a couple of steps toward them. “I’ll report you to dispatch.”

“She’s a personal friend of mine, dickface,” Baz said. “I’m off the clock, and according to dispatch, you’re off the clock too.”

The other driver’s face smoothed out, going cold, whatever emotion he’d been trying to project sucked back inside him like it never existed. He watched Baz open the passenger door for Nika, then get inside the driver’s side. He continued to watch as Baz pulled away. He was still watching as they turned a corner.

“That was weird,” Nika said, a frown on her face.

“That was a threat.”

“He didn’t say anything threatening.”

“He didn’t have to use words; his body language did the job for him.” Baz sighed. “Things are going to get interesting.”

“He didn’t look happy, but he also didn’t look all that dangerous to me.”

Baz glanced at her. “That’s all you saw?”

She frowned at him. “I’ve been trained to read body language, and while he was angry, he shut up when you proved you could legitimately give me a ride.”

“But he didn’t back away,” Baz said. “He went cold and quiet and maintained eye contact until it was no longer possible. That implied the threat.”

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