Narrow Escape Read online

  “What do you mean? It’s Mom’s storage unit.”

  “Un-uncle Tito?” Charity peeked at him from behind Arissa.

  “Hey, squirt.” But Tito only gave her a quick affectionate glance before turning back to Arissa. “What’s going on?”

  At the same time, Nathan demanded, “What’s going on?”

  Arissa held out a hand to help one of them up from the floor, but Nathan’s gaze skittered away from her, so she hauled Tito to his feet.

  Nathan had slowly stood. Arissa tried not to show concern at the pain tightening the skin around his eyes as he steadied himself. She knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t welcome any sign of sympathy from her. “Who is this?” His voice came out as a growl, perhaps from his annoyance, perhaps from the pain.

  “Nathan, this is my cousin Tito—er, Thomas. We call him Tito. Tito—”

  “I know who you are,” Tito said, his voice low. “I recognize you from the newspaper photos.” When Mark had been killed. Next to Nathan, Tito seemed like a slender reed, although he was a good six inches taller than Arissa and he owed his whipcord-lean body to his marathon running. He glanced, confused, at Arissa, then assessed Nathan with hard eyes. He wasn’t quite hostile, but he wasn’t overly friendly, either, because he knew, as her whole family did, about how Nathan had reported Mark to Internal Affairs.

  “Why are you here?” Nathan asked.

  Arissa answered. “The storage unit technically belongs to Tito’s mother, my aunt Desiree. To save money, she rents this large unit and then all our extended family shares it, but most of this stuff belongs to my family because our apartment is so small.”

  Nathan’s gaze at Tito was still hard. Arissa had to admit it was a bit coincidental that he’d show up here right after they’d arrived. “Why are you here, Tito?” she asked.

  “Mom’s Crock-Pot broke. She sent me to pick up her spare, even though I told her I didn’t think it was here. I think she gave it to one of the other aunties.”

  Since Arissa’s numerous aunties shared their kitchen appliances and pans freely among themselves, she had a feeling Tito was right—if he was telling the truth.

  “You’re freaking me out, cuz. What’s going on?” Tito’s brown eyes bored into hers. “Mom tried calling your parents yesterday and the phone kept going straight to voice mail. She’s getting worried.”

  Arissa reached out to touch his wide shoulder, but his muscles bunched at her touch. “They’re fine, I promise.”

  “That’s not a good answer.”

  “That’s all the answer you’re going to get,” Nathan growled, stepping forward.

  Tito shot him a sharp look. “Why are you with her? Haven’t you done enough to her family?”

  It took a second for Arissa to realize Tito was referring to the fact Nathan had reported on Mark to Internal Affairs.

  “Nathan’s the only one who can help us,” Arissa said. “It’s fine, Tito.”

  Her cousin’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed Nathan’s equally suspicious gaze. “This has something to do with Mark. Why do you need to dig up all the old junk? Just leave it.”

  “It won’t leave me,” Arissa said.

  Tito’s attention snapped back to her. “What do you mean?”

  She shouldn’t have said anything. “I can’t talk about it. The less you know, the better. You shouldn’t tell anyone you were here—just borrow a Crock-Pot from one of the other aunties and tell Aunt Desiree you never went to the storage unit.”

  Now her cousin’s expression was anxious for her. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  Charity shifted against her leg, and she reached down to stroke her niece’s head. “Just keep your head down, Tito.” But shouldn’t she warn him? The LSL gang members they grew up with knew Tito was her cousin. “Stay out of the way of the gangs.”

  His neck muscles pulsed. “Gangs? Arissa, you crossed one of them? You know better than that. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Nathan took another step closer to her. “Look, she already said that the less you know the better.”

  The two men exchanged more stiff glances before Tito looked away. “Fine.” He reached out a hand and stroked Charity’s soft cheek. “Watch yourself, cuz. And keep Charity safe, too.”

  “Nathan will keep us safe,” she said.

  At the same time, Nathan said, “She has me to keep them safe.”

  There was an awkward silence, then Tito reached out to give Arissa a buss on the cheek, and he bent to give Charity a smacking kiss, too. “See you.”

  But before he walked away, his eyes slid to the stacks of boxes in the corner that contained her family’s things—and Mark’s things, too.

  Then the door to the storage unit opened and shut, and he was gone.

  Nathan went to make sure he’d left, returning with a grim nod. “Is that typical? Does his mother often send him to the storage unit for things?”

  “Sort of. She sends him to the storage unit a few times a year, but her house is larger than ours and she doesn’t often need anything here. My family comes to the storage unit more often since more of our stuff is here.”

  Nathan gave Charity a careful look before saying, “It seemed odd he’d show up like this.”

  “Tito’s the youngest of his family and he’s still living at home, although he insists on paying rent. His mom sends him on errands all the time. He’s always been a good son.” She paused. “He and Mark weren’t that close, but he’s been good to me since Mark died. And he loves Charity.”

  But Nathan’s face hadn’t lost any of its wariness. She couldn’t blame him. In all her years of going to the storage unit for things for her parents, she’d never run into Tito here. Until today, of all days. Was it really coincidence? But she didn’t want to believe Tito could be involved in this. He couldn’t be.

  Nathan turned away from her. “Let’s hurry and look through Mark’s things.” He hefted the topmost box from the stack she’d pointed out earlier. They dragged out the one box labeled as Mark’s on the bottom, but it ended up being full of Mark’s clothes. Nathan went through each item, but there was nothing, not even pocket change.

  “Internal Affairs went through everything. I doubt there’s anything he left behind that they haven’t examined.” Arissa folded a shirt and placed it back in the box. The scent of her brother, that comforting mix of soap and his cologne, caused a weight against her rib cage.

  Another box wasn’t Mark’s, but it had some old dolls that had probably belonged to one of her cousins. Arissa gratefully gave them to Charity to play with nearby while they continued to search.

  They found a second box filled with Mark’s papers—old tax returns, bills, credit card statements. “Let’s take this with us.” Nathan set it aside.

  Arissa didn’t think they’d find anything. Internal Affairs had gone through all that, too. They found more things, including a box full of random stuff. “This was in the bedside table next to Mark’s bed.”

  Nathan stopped and looked at her. “You said he slept in the bedroom, you slept in the living room?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Yes, on the foldout couch.”

  He looked stunned. “You...you had that fancy condo.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Mark took me by once because he had to give something to you, but you weren’t home, so he left it in your mailbox.” Nathan licked his lips, glanced back at the box. “I know you said you and Mark gave up your apartments after your mom got sick, but it just didn’t register to me, I guess, how cramped it was in your parents’ place.”

  Arissa turned away and watched Charity play with the old dolls. “Mom needed the money,” she said softly. “Mark and I didn’t mind.”

  The silence between them was strained, somehow, so she turned back to the box. “There
isn’t anything else, I think.”

  “Let’s take this with us, too, just in case.” Nathan rose and hefted a box back onto the stack, but his leg trembled from crouching for so long, and the one he held tilted. A few pieces of mail drifted out.

  Arissa picked them up and looked at them. “Are these bills? Why didn’t Dad open these?” She flipped through them, sighing. “This is junk mail. Mom would have a fit. She hates it when Dad stores useless stuff that should be tossed out.”

  But Nathan’s eyes stayed fixed on the envelopes. “Arissa, did Mark get any mail after he died? Anything IA didn’t see?”

  She stilled. She hadn’t thought of that. “Yes, we were always getting things addressed to him. It upset Mom to see the envelopes, so Dad just threw them in a box. Most of it was junk mail, but he wouldn’t throw it away because it was Mark’s—I can kind of understand. I knew about the box and could have thrown it out, but I didn’t want to.”

  “What happened to it?”

  She thought back. The box of unopened junk mail had been tucked inside the bedside table in Mark’s bedroom—now where she and Charity slept. It had sat there for months, but she hadn’t known when her father had taken it away. She had just looked inside the bedside table one day and it was gone. “Dad must have taken it here. It’s got to be somewhere.”

  “What does it look like?” Nathan began taking down boxes and looking through them.

  “It’s a shoe box.” She closed her eyes for a moment to picture it. “Nike. Orange. Mark had bought new running shoes a week before he died. We saw them in the box of his clothes.”

  Nathan nodded.

  “The shoe box was still in Mark’s bedroom, so Dad started throwing his mail into it.”

  They had to go through almost every box, but they eventually found it. She spotted the bright orange color and pulled it out, flipping open the lid. The first envelope was a magazine renewal reminder, addressed to Mark. “This is it.”

  “Let’s bring it with us.” Nathan took the shoe box from her and put it with the box of Mark’s papers.

  They restacked the boxes and Arissa gathered up some of the dolls Charity had been playing with. She figured that whichever cousin they had once belonged to wouldn’t mind, since all her cousins were now past the age to play with them.

  Nathan winced as he bent to pick up one of the boxes, and Arissa knew he’d never admit his leg was paining him. “Why don’t you drive the car around to this side?” She pointed to the roll-up metal door next to them, which was on the opposite side of the unit as the door they’d come in. “I can roll the door up and we can load the boxes easier.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. She thought he might refuse her at first, but she only wanted to help him without making him feel like an invalid. She understood his pride and his frustration, but there was no need for him to deliberately make things harder on himself. The truth was, he’d been injured in the line of duty, and that was honorable. He had nothing to prove, not to her.

  Did he somehow sense her thoughts? He nodded, but it wasn’t a curt, frustrated jerk of the head. Instead, it seemed like he had a softer, grateful look in his green-gray eyes.

  Arissa quickly unlatched the door and pulled it up with a loud rattle that echoed off the concrete walls. Nathan ducked outside and went to his SUV, driving it back to the unit. They loaded the two boxes of Mark’s things into the back and slammed the trunk closed.

  As Arissa reached up to pull the metal rolling door closed again, she caught the growl of a modified car engine. Glancing to the side, she saw a lowered sedan with a custom paint job creep around the far corner of the building.

  She froze. It was too far away for her to see clearly, but something about the man in the driver’s seat seemed familiar. And the souped-up car itself reminded her of the custom rides that the LSL members drove through her neighborhood.

  The driver turned toward her, and the car paused for a moment.

  Arissa stared at him. She couldn’t place him. Was he an LSL gang member? Or was she mistaken? Her heartbeat began to pick up. He was alone. He wouldn’t do anything to them, would he? How would the LSLs know Arissa would be here?

  Then suddenly the muscle car sped off with a roar of its engine, which reverberated off of the concrete and metal of the storage facility.

  “Get in the car, now.” Nathan’s voice was tight.

  “Was that one of the LSL gang?” Arissa grabbed Charity and plunked her in her safety seat. “Did you recognize him?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Nathan started the engine. “But his actions were suspicious. We need to get out of here fast.”

  As they exited the storage facility’s driveway, Arissa looked around at the street. No sign of the custom car or the man. In fact, the street was as quiet as it had been when they arrived.

  Nathan scanned the street, too, but its emptiness didn’t make him relax. He headed out and kept his eyes moving, searching the side streets, examining the cars.

  “Who was he?” Arissa whispered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if he was LSL.”

  “I didn’t get a good look at him, he was too far away. I couldn’t see much, although he seemed young.”

  “He could be a wannabe, hoping to get into the gang.”

  In which case, he might tell the gang what he’d seen, trying to curry favor. “Would he know they’re after me? Would they have told someone who wasn’t in the gang about me?”

  “I doubt it. We don’t know for sure that he’s not an LSL. I haven’t been in Narcotics for three years.”

  There was tightness in his voice, and she dropped the subject.

  They had almost reached the end of the street where it T-junctioned with a busier boulevard when Nathan expelled a breath, almost a laugh. “Look.” He pointed to the street corner.

  Arissa tensed when she saw the custom car parked on the curb, but then she saw the group of women gathered together, and with them was the young driver. What she’d thought was a young man was actually a young woman, not wearing any makeup, her smooth dark hair pulled back in a braid down her back. She wore a sleeveless T-shirt under a dark vest, with piercings and tattoos on her face and one side of her neck, but her figure was unmistakably female and she wore high-heeled leather boots. Her friends, laughing with her, were dressed in leather and studs, and a couple had on chaps. There were a few Harley-Davidsons parked on the street nearby and she guessed some of the women had ridden them to this gathering. The women started making their way toward the door of a bar a few feet away.

  Arissa let out a breath. “I feel stupid.”

  “I feel stupider.” Nathan gave her a side look and a half smile, his face transformed into the adventurous, teasing Nathan she’d known before.

  She couldn’t help smiling back, but then suddenly it was as if his face was a window slammed shut, and he concentrated on driving again.

  Arissa turned to look out the passenger window, not seeing a thing, her teeth digging into her lip. His refusal to share the moment with her was a good reminder. This was the man who had accused her brother, who blamed him for the loss of his career, who seemed to persist in his suspicions even after IA had cleared Mark. This was just another man who had abandoned her, and she had to remember that. Besides, if she and Charity had to disappear, she’d never see him again, so why let him get too close to her?

  Her heart hurt. She held tightly to her pain as they drove out of Los Angeles, determined to never let Nathan hurt her again.

  FIVE

  Nathan tried to focus on the long stretch of road as they drove through central California, heading north. Arissa didn’t say a word.

  When he’d known her before, she hadn’t been a chatterer, but she’d always made him laugh with random comments or funny stories about her work. Her silence now seemed strange
. She’d withdrawn from him.

  He ought to be glad about it. He’d been getting too comfortable with her. He wanted to protect her because she had no one else to help her, and he wanted to know what Mark had been up to that would cause the LSLs to come after her three years following his death, but Nathan also didn’t want to get close to her again. His attraction to her was too strong, and with Charity to take care of, she needed someone whole. Not someone like him.

  But he wanted to hear her talking to him. Her low voice always seemed to touch something inside him that made him feel more at ease, even when she was disagreeing with him.

  “Can you trust Tito?” he blurted. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, even before she turned wide eyes to him, he wanted to give himself a smack upside the head. What was he doing? He knew better than to bring up a difficult topic. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to accuse him of anything—”

  “That would be a first,” she muttered and looked away again.

  He supposed he deserved that. “The fact he showed up at the storage unit is bothering me.”

  Her scowl disappeared, but her lips were still tight. “I thought about that, too.”

  “Would he have joined the LSLs and not told you? Because of Mark?”

  She thought about it for a long moment. “No, I don’t think so. We both know gang members—you can’t avoid it when you grow up in our neighborhood—but Tito never had any interest in joining the gang when he was younger. I can’t see why he’d suddenly want to join them now.”

  “I guess if he was an LSL, he wouldn’t have just walked into the storage unit. He’d have called for someone to meet him there, or he’d have tried to stall us.”

  “What bothered me was that he was so persistent in trying to figure out what had happened to me, almost as if he wanted to know what I was going to do.”

  Nathan had thought Tito seemed pushy, but wasn’t sure if that was his personality. “He isn’t usually like that?”

  “Well...Tito was concerned about me, which might explain it. He’s protective of the people he cares about. He’s a bit like you.” Then her face flushed, and she looked away.