Page 33 of Mensa's Match

I glanced up into his brown eyes. No matter how much he’d warned me last night, feelings were taking hold. I forced myself to replay his words in my head.

This ends once we leave this room.

We’d had our fun, now we were done.

His ‘protective instinct’ spoke volumes, though. He cared, even though I drove him up the wall.

Even if I was the light to his dark. I still had to nip those pesky feelings in the bud. Bad boys weren’t my thing, even if everything Mensa and I did a few hours ago had felt so damned right. Nobody knew what we’d done in that room last night, and it was better to keep it that way.

I clambered on to his bike after him.

Scanning the lot, the detectives weren’t in sight. Seemed Detective Robinson kept Fortner from following us.

Maybe.

Mensa wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust Fortner.

While we idled at the end of the hotel drive, Mensa reached back, grabbed my hand so I had to wrap my arm around him. With that as my cue, I did the same thing with my other arm. Did I hang onto him like this last night? I hadn’t thought so…but then again, I had definitely stuck close while we were being chased. Him making it so I was pressed this close to him certainly sent a mixed signal, but maybe it was another ‘protective instinct.’

In short order, he guided the motorcycle onto I-10 headed back to Biloxi.

Being on Mensa’s bike wasn’t my first time on a motorcycle, but it was the first time I found my mind clear in the past forty-eight hours.

My thoughts of Fortner fell by the wayside as I considered the situation.

I didn’t know Dontrell Barlow well, but over the past fifteen months, we’d developed a friendship. He had four locations, and his seventeen-year-old son worked with him at the Pass Road location that had burned down. He had a younger brother managing his first restaurant because, as Dontrell said, “it ran like a well-oiled machine.” I didn’t know much about the other two shops because we didn’t get to chat much during my visits, since he had other customers.

Small businesses couldn’t afford setbacks of this magnitude.

A tiny voice asked me what Aunt Nadia would do if something like that happened to her. The expense and headache of that kind of loss was one thing, but I wasn’t sure Aunt Nadia would survive the heartache of losing her business. Something told me Dontrell was the same way, even if he operated three other locations.

Then I wondered about the other workers he employed. What would they do without a job? Or would Donny send them to one of the other locations?

That was a silly question. Donny had a heart the size of the Gulf of Mexico. He’d send those workers to the other restaurants.

I recalled what Rod said to Donny last night before pulling his gun.

If Dontrell’s time was up, why pull a gun in the first place? Donny wouldn’t be able to pay if he was dead. It was a helluva risk to open fire inside a bar.

Then again, people did hasty things when they were angry, and plenty of criminals didn’t think before they acted.

We veered off the interstate and headed toward the police station.

This should be standard procedure. Part of me believed Mensa’s insistence that I have a lawyer was over the top. But lawyers served a clear purpose in the system, and a stronger part of me believed Mensa had it right.

Something was wrong, and a good lawyer would help me navigate this situation.

Mensa parked his bike five blocks from the courthouse.

I hopped off the bike and took off his helmet. “Why didn’t you park closer?”

He grabbed the helmet from me. “Parking here is free. The police station is three blocks on the other side of the courthouse, and I do my best to stay away from LEOs. Do I need to drop you at the door, flower?”

My head reared back. “Flower?”

He opened the saddle bag and tucked his helmet inside. “Are you too delicate to walk?”

I shook my head, turned on my heel, and headed off toward the courthouse. No question, what happened at the hotel was over. I twisted my head to call over my shoulder, “Far from it, Ragstone.”

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