Page 44 of Heart and Soul
Her voice is ice cold. “You shouldn’t.”
I cringe, but for some reason mysterious to me, Russo responds to her rejection with a serene smile. When Hillerman stomps inside, he follows her.
“Your partner has a death wish,” I say to Jay.
He’s grinning. “You have no idea. He wouldn’t shut up about her all morning.”
“Really? C’mon…forher?”
“I’m telling you, I’ve never seen him like this. I think he might be…”
“Shut up, he is not.”
He looks deep into my eyes. “You think I don’t know what it looks like?”
His emerald eyes twinkle through his pain, like the last rays of an afternoon sun lighting the bottoms of storm clouds. Shimmering snowflakes drift between our faces. Some of them melt right there in the heat of our breath. I raise to my tiptoes and kiss him. “You sure you’re all right?”
He grunts. “Don’t worry, it feels much worse than it looks. I…” He stops short.
“What?”
“The car bomb was close, Shayne. I mean, just a few feet away.”
“I don’t understand. Then how are you…”
“How am I still here? Because of Nick Gorgeous. He was working the scene for the Agency. He saw guys running away from the car, knew something was up. He threw himself in front of me just in time. You know Gorgeous. For him, this was nothing. He barely felt it.”
Okay, scratch that part about me being able to protect Jay better than Nick Gorgeous. If I had jumped in front of that bomb, both Jay and I would be dead. A heaviness falls over us.
“I thanked him, of course,” Jay continues. “But he seemed…I don’t know, annoyed.”
“Well, yeah, he’d just been blown up.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he agrees with everyone else in the underworld, except you, and wishes I’d just go back to the kids’ table already.”
He starts us up the stairs. I pull away. “You go on. I have to call in.”
I don’t call in. I decide to text instead. At first, I start in with a long-winded gush full of superlatives. I don’t like it. Doesn’t sound right to me. But sayingthank youto Nick Gorgeous is not me, so how’s it supposed to sound? I delete the long message. Maybe for me, being brief is like the ultimate superlative. So I send: Gorgeous…I owe you.
And, naturally, my rare moment of genuine emotional communication is met with a slap in the face.
Nick: Take my advice, Shayne. Cut him loose, and now. Send him as far from Detroit as possible.
I stare at the phone, not caring that snowflakes are melting on the screen. After those tantalizing blinking dots, a final note pops in.
Nick: For both your sakes.
I want to throw the phone as far as I can. I want to crush it to bits and stomp on it. I quickly peck out an entire line of middle finger emojis.
I don’t send it. After working with him these last few months, I’ve learned that Nick is not nearly as gruff as he pretends to be. He’s not trying to bust my chops. He’s only trying to help, in his tough-love way. Silence would be the mature response.
Meh. I go ahead and send the middle fingers.
The Old Wayne County building is a hundred and twenty years old. Although some fancy investment company spent millions restoring it a few years ago, the building is still vacant. There’s definitely no secret masquerade going on. We walk empty corridors of marble and stone, our voices booming.
“It looks the part,” Jay says. “Marble columns and steps out front. That old government building look—what did he call it, Shayne?”
“Shit, don’t ask me.”
