Madame Chen said something in Chinese, her voice soft and frightened. Her hand was shaking as she set a cup on three square inches of desktop not covered in paperwork. She lowered herself to her chair. Jace could see her gathering her composure, trying to come up with a strategy for a situation completely beyond her experience.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
Jace tried to take a deep breath and let it out. His body reminded him not to do that. He had gone round and round in his mind trying to decide what to tell her, what not to tell her, what would be safer for her, for Tyler.
“You might hear some things about me,” he said. “Bad things. I want you to know they aren’t true.”
She arched a brow. “You think so little of my loyalty that you would say this to me? You are like a son to me.”
If her son was living a secret life under half a dozen aliases. If her son was wanted for murder and assault. If her son had someone trying to kill him.
Madame Chen had no children. Maybe she stuck with him because of that, Jace thought. She had no frame of reference.
“The attorney I was delivering a package for last night was found murdered after I’d been in his office. The police are looking for me.”
“Bah! They are crazy! You would never kill a man!” she said emphatically, offended at the idea. “You did not kill him. They cannot put you in jail for something you didn’t do. I will call my attorney. Everything will be fine.”
“It’s not that simple, Madame Chen. They probably have my fingerprints from the office.” And I was caught in the victim’s daughter’s ransacked apartment, he added mentally. I had a conversation with her. She can identify me. She’ll say I attacked her. . . .
“Why would the police think you would kill this man?” she asked, calmer. “What motive would you have to do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was robbed or something.”
“An innocent man has nothing to hide. You have to go to the police, tell them what you know.”
Jace was shaking his head halfway through the last sentence. “No. If they have evidence, if they can make an easy case against me, they will.”
“But you aren’t guilty—”
“But I look guilty.”
She sighed and reached for the phone. “Let me call the attorney—”
“No!” Jace came up out of his seat, reached across the desk, and pushed the receiver back down in the cradle with more force than he wished he had. For a second, Madame Chen looked at him as if she had never seen him before.
“I can’t go to the police,” he said quietly, sinking back down. “Please understand. I can’t take that chance.”
He started to rub a hand over his face and winced as he brushed the cut where the broken glass of Abby Lowell’s mirror had sliced his cheek open. He probably needed stitches, but he wouldn’t be getting them.
“If I go to the police,” he said, “then it’s all over.”
“Your life is not over—”
“I’ll go to jail. Even if I eventually get off, I’ll go to jail first. It takes months for cases to go to trial. What happens to Tyler? If Children and Family Services find out about Tyler, they take him. He goes to foster care—”
“I would never allow that to happen!” Madame Chen said, angry he would consider the possibility. “Tyler belongs with us. His home is here.”
“CFS won’t see it that way. They’ll take him, and they sure as hell won’t ever give him back to me.”
“There is no need for foster care.”
“That doesn’t matter to them,” Jace said bitterly, his mother’s warnings branded in his head, along with the cautionary stories he’d heard on the street, read in the paper. “They’re all about rules and regulations, and laws made by people who never have to deal with them. They’ll look at you and see someone who isn’t in their system, who hasn’t filled out their paperwork. They’ll look at you and say, what’s this Chinese woman doing with a motherless little white kid who isn’t in any of their files.”
“You exaggerate—”
“No,” Jace said angrily. “I don’t. They’ll give him to people who take kids in just to get the check, and they won’t tell anyone where he is. They could lose track of him—that happens, you know. Jesus, for all I know, you might even be in trouble for having him here in the first place. You could be fined, or charged with something. Then what?”
“Let me talk to the attorney.”
Jace shook his head vehemently, more afraid of the prospect of losing Tyler to the system than he had been of getting killed in Abby Lowell’s bathroom.
“I can’t take that chance,” he said again. “I won’t. I want him to be safe. I’d rather leave him here with you. He’d be safer with you, but I’ll take him if I have to. I’ll take him and we’ll just go. Now. Tonight.”
“You talk crazy!” Madame Chen argued. “You can’t take him! You can’t go!”
“I can’t stay!” Jace argued back. His voice was shaking. He tried to pull himself together, lowered his voice, tried to sound rational. “I can’t stay here. I can’t come back until it’s over. I don’t want you in danger, Madame Chen, or your father-in-law. I don’t want Tyler in danger, but I can’t leave him if I have to worry he won’t be here when I come back.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Jace couldn’t bring himself to look at this woman who had been kind enough to take the Damon brothers in, give them a home, treat Tyler like family. Treat him as family. He wished he hadn’t told her. He should have followed his instincts, just plucked his brother out of bed in the dead of night and vanished.
God, what a mess. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.
If he went to the police and they took him into custody, that news would make the papers. Reporters would want to know more. If they found Tyler and the Chens, Predator could find Tyler and the Chens.
If he got rid of the evidence or gave it back somehow, or gave it to Abby Lowell, he had still seen the negatives. They hadn’t meant anything to him, but he had seen them, and Predator wasn’t going to leave a loose end that might come back and hang him. He wouldn’t leave witnesses.
“I’m so sorry I’m dragging you into this,” he said softly, aching in a way that had nothing to do with the beatings he had taken. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you, but I don’t see a way around it. If someone comes here looking for me . . . if the police come . . . You deserve to know why. I owe you that. I owe you more—”
One sharp knock warned them a split second before Chi opened the office door and stuck his head inside. He gave Jace a hard look.
“What happened to you?” he asked bluntly.
Jace’s eyelids went to half-mast. He wondered how long Chi had been standing outside that door. “I fell,” he said.
“You didn’t total my aunt’s car? It was gone so long, I thought it was stolen. I was ready to call the police.”
Jace didn’t answer. He didn’t like or trust Chi. His show of caring for his aunt, of looking out for her interests, was just a veneer. Chi would always do whatever would most benefit Chi. He had himself first in line to take over the business.
Chi glanced at Madame Chen and said something in Chinese.
Her face was like iron, her back straight. “If you have something to say, Chi, speak English. Have more respect than to be rude in my presence.”
Chi’s dark eyes were like cold stones as he looked at Jace. He didn’t apologize. “I was wondering if all my help will be here in the morning, or if I get left in the lurch again because some people are unreliable.”