When I open the top box, I see it is indeed pepperoni. And it’s mostly gone, which means they didn’t wait for me. I pull a slice onto my plate.
“There’s cheese and ‘the works’ in the other boxes. I didn’t know what you like,” she tells me.
“This is fine,” I say, lifting my slice.
“Your personal chef will be back tomorrow,” Cooper says, and my heart skips.
“Blake?” I’m embarrassed when my voice comes out squeaky.
He fixes me in his scowl. “Unless you have someone else who cooks for you?”
“He’s . . . okay?”
He nods. “He called while you were playing Malibu Barbie,” he says with a jut of his chin at the window. “There are some things happening in the case, so he’s at the office, but he said he’d explain everything when he sees you tomorrow.”
The knot in my chest eases. Blake is coming home. I didn’t scare him off.
I sink into the chair and focus all my attention on my pizza slice, because otherwise I’m going to get up and do a happy dance around the room. And I don’t want to have to explain that to Cooper.
Chapter Thirty
WHEN I STUMBLE out of my room, shorts and a tank top over my swimsuit, it’s after ten and Cooper is just pulling a pair of Eggo waffles out of the toaster.
“Morning, Jezebel,” he says when he sees me.
“I thought I was Pork Chop now.”
He shrugs.
I go to the kitchen and pour my coffee, but just as I take my first sip, I hear the telltale clank and rattle of the elevator. I spin, sloshing my coffee onto the floor, as the door slides open. My breathing goes a little shaky as Blake steps out, wondering how this is going to go.
But then he smiles.
The tiniest of whimpers escapes my throat with the flood of relief.
“Tell me that Cooper didn’t feed you Eggos,” he says, glaring at him.
“Cooper didn’t feed her anything,” he says from the armchair through a mouthful of waffle. “Figured she was all grown up and could feed herself.”
Something sparks in Blake’s eyes as he moves toward me, where I’m busy holding up the kitchen counter. “That she is,” he murmurs with a secret smile as he brushes past me.
His touch leaves me vibrating.
He pulls a carton of eggs out of the fridge, then rolls up his sleeves and washes his hands. “Omelet?”
“Um . . . yeah. That sounds good.”
Cooper comes back to the kitchen and hands his empty plate over the counter to me. “I guess my job here is done. I’ll grab my stuff and get home to the missus.”
He disappears down the stairs, and I look at Blake, wondering if we’re going to talk about what happened before he left. He’s cracking eggs into a bowl, and before I can think how to start that conversation, I hear Cooper on the stairs.
I take my coffee into the living room and try to figure out how I should be acting right now. But I end up just standing here in my daze.
“So . . . if everything’s under control,” Cooper says, splitting a glance between Blake and me, “I’ll be on my way.”
“Goodbye, Cooper,” Blake says without looking up from his work.
Cooper shoots him a scowl from the elevator as the door slides shut.
I move to the coffeepot, directly behind where Blake is working, and lean on the counter. “Where were you?”
“At the office, mostly,” he says without turning.
“Are we . . . okay?”
He stops working and gives me a slow nod. “Arroyo’s accountant turned.”
“What?”
His eyes brighten as he turns to face me, and a smile breaks over his face. “It’s almost over, Sam. Arroyo’s screwed seven ways to Sunday. We came up with blood trace in the hall, where you say his goon threw the towel, and now we’ve got his accountant. The coroner puts the time of death in the window when you saw him in Arroyo’s office, and your testimony will put Arroyo in the room as his guy was exiting with blood on his hands, so that’s a lock. But even if he somehow manages to walk on the murder charge, we’ll get him on racketeering.”
There’s a second where I don’t even really hear what he’s saying, because, in his excitement, he’s so stunningly beautiful. And when he scoops me into his arms, lifting me clean off my feet and spinning us in a circle, I go dizzy with the feel of him and the smell of him . . . and the fact that he just spun me in a circle. My head swims and I wobble a little as he sets me on my feet and smiles down at me. He steadies me with firm hands on my shaking shoulders as I get my bearings.
I blink and give my head a shake. “So, is it done? I can go home?”
His glow fades a little. “I’m sorry. No. Not yet.”
“Why?” I ask, confused. “If you’ve got his accountant?”
He lets go of me and his mouth presses into a tight line. “We’re still going with the murder charge first. Arroyo knows it will be your testimony that puts him and Weber together in his office at the time of death. He’s not going to back down.”
“What about that girl? Does the accountant know what happened to her?”
He gives his head a small shake. “We haven’t been able to get enough from the records to even determine if Arroyo was responsible. I had Nichols pull together some more pictures I need you to look at.”
Any relief I was feeling about Ben’s accountant is instantly gone. “Anything,” I say. “Whatever you need.” My chest aches as I take my coffee to the living room and settle onto the sofa.
He goes to his messenger bag and pulls out a file, then sits on the sofa next to me. “These are FBI profile pics on people they’re tracking for human trafficking who are known to have been in California in the last year. It’s a long shot, but we have reason to believe Arroyo might have brought in a buyer to . . .” His jaw grinds tight with barely contained loathing. “. . . look at you. If any of them look at all familiar, that will at least give us a place to start.”
He spreads five glossy black and white photos on the coffee table, and I feel my face scrunch in disgust immediately. Because the one in the middle is Creepy Asian Guy.
“That one,” I tell Blake. “Nora called him Mr. Chang. Said he was some VIP or something. He wanted me to take my top off.”
Alarm flashes in Blake’s eyes.
“I didn’t,” I say when it’s clear that’s what he’s thinking. “I walked out.”
“Did he say anything else?”
I shake my head. “No. He was gross and I left.”
“When did you see him? Do you remember which night?”
I rest my forehead in my hand and try to think, but separating one night from the next is hard. They’re all measured in degrees of Blake . . . whether he was there or not, whether he touched me. “It was . . . I think it was the first night you came back to the club after we . . .” I rub my eyes so I don’t have to lift my head and look at him. “No . . . it was the second night. The night before you arrested me. He was my private right before you.”
He plucks the photo up and pulls out his phone. “She says Sayavong was at the club . . . it would have been . . . May ninth, I’m pretty sure.” There’s a pause as he studies the picture. “Yep, and a current whereabouts. He’s Laotian, but he has residences in Central America and the U.S.” He sinks back into the sofa. “And if you can pass the info along to Morgan over at the Bureau and get him on it . . .” He trails off and listens. “Thanks, Coop.”
When he lowers the phone, his gaze is intense. “I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if we hadn’t gotten you out of there when we did.”
That hadn’t occurred to me. I feel sick at the thought. I remember the way Creepy Asian Guy looked at me, how it made my skin crawl, and what Ben said to him. Let’s get this done before you sail. If Benny’s hadn’t gotten raided the next night, what would have happened?