Page 38 of Live Love Steal
This time, when he pulled my hand to his lips, he ran his teeth over my knuckle.
A sound escaped me. One he’d probably heard at least twice... today.
“That’s my good girl.”
Ah… my kryptonite. Danger! “You shouldn’t flirt with me in a stolen car filled with drugs.”
He dropped my hand and put both hands on the wheel.
I slowly let my tension escape. Which was probably a mistake. I recognized the area. My sister’s ex lived about eight blocks away. Which meant my plates had been somewhere else while I backed into his car. “I’ve been driving for two weeks without plates.”
Sketch made a noise that was suspiciously close to a snort.
“Asshole.”
“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t steal your plates.”
“Your friends did.”
There was no comment on that because it was true. But I had to know exactly what his role in all this was. “Did you steal this car?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
He shrugged and pulled into an alley. “I welded the fake panels in the trunk so that they look like they belong there, but they don’t if you catch my meaning.”
Ah, a smuggler’s trick. I slept with the modern equivalent of a pirate.
Which wasn’t a good thing, right? Somehow, my libido thought it was most excellent. I was more like my sister than I thought. Was it genetic? If so, how had our normal parents fucked up so badly? Who in our family tree was related to Blackbeard?
He pulled into a parking space behind a run-down house that stood in a long row of run-down houses. My car was parked in the dirt to our right. Seeing it further drove home how fucked up this whole day was. And, it made it all too real. I swallowed. “You don’t really kill snitches, do you?”
“Personally? Not yet.”
That was not comforting. “Would you?”
He had his hand on the door latch, but stopped to study me. His eyes were in shadow, but a catch of light from a street light or maybe the reflection of someone’s bedroom lamp glittered an amber-red. “Don’t snitch, and we’ll never find out.”
Sketch meant that. “Why? Why would you do that?”
He took his hand off the handle and stretched in the seat. His hand landed on my hair and slid down until it settled on the back of my neck. “You’ve seen my son’s picture. He’s a good kid. I wasn’t. I was an awful bastard. I ran the streets from age five to fifteen. When Mom finally lit off, I…” He shook his head, lost in thought. “Well... with her gone, I was homeless. I broke into the garage where I live. It was empty. No one had been there for years. It wasn’t much, but there was no one trying to lock me up there. So, I made it my home. I almost died several times in the four years before I started prospecting for the Destroyers. Once that happened, I had something, a family, finally. I wasn’t dying every day. That’s why I will do anything for them that keeps that family safe, and why I’ll do what it takes to keep Noah safe. Anything it takes.”
His head dropped as he could not look me in the eye.
There was a lot in that confession. “Do you think his mother is going to turn out like yours?”
His sharp glance confirmed my theory.
“You found someone like her, didn’t you?”
Sketch frowned. “Probably. Sharon isn’t as bad as she was, but…”
“She’s a gold digger. Probably a narcissist, too.” I dealt with a boss who had the same issues. Money and ego were the only things that mattered.
“You’ve never even met her, and you’re making assumptions like that?”
It was my turn to send a scathing glare toward him. “I heard that phone call. And her asking for money didn’t sound like it was a one-time thing.”
