Smoke & Metal (New York Crime Kings Book 3) (2 page)

Kitten’s Place

Jai

She jumps as I place my hand on the back of her slender calf. It feels incredibly small and weak in my hand, sending a pang of guilt through my stomach. My body is built for high intensity situations. Hers isn’t.

“You okay up there?” I ask, leaning closer to peak out through the roof.

“Uh, yeah,” She glances down at me, her face skewed by shadow. “Sorry. I zoned out for a second.”

I keep my hand on the warm skin of her leg. Under my palm, her muscles tremble and spasm. I bet they hurt like hell—though I doubt she’s the kind of woman to admit the pain. Emily is a strong girl, stronger than she looks, but she’s not invincible. That’s for damn sure.

Her calf slides out from underneath my hand as she pulls herself up and out of the sunroof. I follow, ignoring the scream of my own muscles as they tighten and relax, threatening to seize up with a painful cramp.

Sharp twigs dig into my skin and pierce the surface in some places. Ahead, Emily curses under her breath as she slides off the trunk of the car and pushes her way through the broken shrubbery I forced the car through. If the police do a lap and come back in this direction they’ll see the car. Ideally, we’ll need to be on the thruway before then. We have to be far enough ahead to ditch the second car with ease. If they catch us…we’re done.

I slide off the back of the car and—
shit—
I fall back against the vehicle, catching myself with my elbows on the trunk. Against the firm ground my legs feel like jelly. Boneless and weak.

“Jai?” Emily calls through the bush with a light, curious tone.

I need to get my shit together before she finds me like this. I know she looks to me for reassurance and comfort. I have to appear strong on the outside even when I’m deteriorating on the inside.

“Yeah.” Hanging my head back, I inhale a lungful of air and roughly expel it before pushing off the car. “I’m coming.”

Walking is a piece of cake once I get used to using my legs for something other than resting against a gas pedal. Sitting down, even for that short period of time, caused my muscles to cramp up. They’re bruised. I can feel it. It’s as if someone has taken a meat mallet to my body. It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as running from Skull does. I don’t think my pride will ever let me live that one down. I should have put a bullet between his eyes.
Fuck
. I wish I did. It’s all I’ve thought about since breaking out of the tunnels. I had the chance…I had a hot, smoking gun in my hand and it was pointed right at his ugly face.

Squeeze.

Bang
.

That’s all it would have taken. I could’ve ended it. I could’ve cut my losses and dealt with the consequences after the fact.

But I didn’t…

The sidewalk moves quickly under our feet as we walk in the direction of Emily’s apartment. The bottoms of my feet are raw and blistered. Every step is like bare feet to a plate of hot coals. To be honest, I’m surprised my skin isn’t worn down to the bone.

The street is void of any cars or people. Across the road and twenty feet ahead, a skinny, black cat crouches beside two overfilled bins. It watches us with its head pulled into its shoulders and its back arched in defense. When we’re ten feet away I hear it growl and hiss. I smirk. The alley cat is about as intimidating as Emily was when I met her.

Fear. That’s all it is.

Feeling a pulse of sympathy tug at my heart strings, I step off the edge of the sidewalk and onto the road only to have Emily’s hand snag the underside of my bicep in an attempt to pull me back.

“Are you crazy? Don’t go near that thing.”

The cat retreats behind a metal bin and refuses to come back out. Not even for a curious peek.

“Why?”

“It’s an alley cat and obviously not a nice one. You’ll need a shot if it scratches you.”

I frown as she smiles a tired smile.

“It’s just a cat.” I say. “How much damage could it really do?”

“Wow. You’re really not from this side of town, are you? I hate to break it to you,
Precious
, but the animals around here are anything but friendly. You give them a chance and they’ll rip your flesh from your bones.”

I laugh, surprised I even manage it. “Jesus Christ. You’re so dark.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Have you ever stopped to think for a second that maybe,
maybe,
if you give them a moment of your time, sided with a little compassion and a handful of food, they wouldn’t be so feral?”

She snorts. “That’s the silver spoon talking.”

I stop walking. It could be because I’m exhausted therefore making me extra irritable, but her words hit me wrong. Silver spoon? Bullshit.

“Oh, I forgot. Being born into a wealthy family means I know jack shit about the ‘real’ world, right?”

Emily turns to face me, confused. “No—”

“—I’m a police officer in New York City, Kitten. I’ve seen shit you can’t even imagine.” I gesture around us. “This place—
your
area—it’s a fucking haven compared to some of the places I’ve been.” I pause then scoff. “A silver spoon. That’s some real bullshit. That cat would be a walk in the park. Try being chased by a jacked up Rottweiler as foam spills from its mouth.”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, I did mean it like that, but I didn’t mean it like
that
.”

I roll my eyes.
Yeah, like that makes any sense.

She continues down the sidewalk. “All I’m trying to say is; it’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t approach feral animals. It’s dangerous, not to mention hazardous for your health.”

I smile at the irony of it. Emily coaching
me
on things that are hazardous to my health? What are the odds? That girl is a magnet for disaster.

“An interesting piece of advice you’ve chosen to give me.” I say as I follow closely behind her. “If you listened to it yourself you’d have never been trapped underground.”

Her lips quirk and all evidence of our argument disintegrates. “Yeah, well, I’m no good at following advice—even my own.”

She peers sideways at me and I almost falter in my steps. I’ll be damned. The murky street lights barely light her features, but even so, the girl is pretty. She’s pushed herself to the brink of complete exhaustion and still her big, pretty eyes and hollow cheeks squeeze my stomach in the strangest of ways.

“Besides, I’m glad I followed you…” She drops her stare back to the concrete. “I’d hate for you to do this on your own.”

I’m beginning to wonder if I could’ve done it on my own. The thought of not having Emily down there with me seems…I don’t know…impossible.

“Here we are.” She sighs, pushing on a wire gate that hangs by a quarter of a hinge. It screeches and squeals as it opens and it’s enough to make me reach for my ears to block its sharp sound from piercing my brain.

“This is your place, huh?” Lowering my hands, I glance around. There’s not much to say about it. It’s not the worse place I’ve seen, but once this is over, she’s definitely moving out. There’s no safety, no security—not even a proper fence. Nope. It’s not good enough.

Emily leads me through the building with ease. She’s comfortable with the cracked paint on the walls and the occasional missing tile on the floor. As we walk, I peer down the stark empty halls and blink every time a light bulb flickers. There’s no one to stop us, no one to ask for identification or to find out where we’re going. It sets me on edge. What if we were murderers—of the bad kind? I shudder at the thought. Are there children in this building? If there are, what about them? There are no yards to play in —no grass or wood chipped play spaces.

“You look really disturbed.” Emily comments, pulling me from my own head.

She glances over her shoulder just as I manage to pull my stare from a forensic notice on the door we passed a second ago. I keep my hand tucked firmly against my body as we climb the stairs. I’d rather lick the handrail of the moving sidewalk at the airport than touch this one.

“I am a little.” I admit, peering over the railing of the stairs we climb. I’m not even kidding. There’s pile of rubbish at the bottom “What kind of place is this?”

I don’t want to make her feel bad about where she lives, but come on. This isn’t a home. It’s a fucking dump—no, it’s worse than a dump. It’s a fucking atrocity that needs to be bulldozed.

“It’s home.” She states, her feet slapping the concrete stairs—yes,
concrete
stairs.
Inside
a building—with slight aggression. “It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s the only place I have so…be nice.”

I purse my lips. As the saying goes; ‘
if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.’

At the top of the sixth floor, Emily stalks toward a thin, mahogany plywood door. Taped to the middle of it is an eviction notice. It doesn’t take me much to realize the door is the entrance to her place.

With a heavy exhale and a slump of her shoulders, she exhales. “I guess I should’ve seen this coming. Sorry, Sue.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Sue?”

“She’s the original occupant—my roommate, I guess. She died after I moved in.”

“That sucks.” I scrunch my nose. “She’s not still in there, is she?”

Emily snorts as she tears the paper from the door and scrunches it into a ball. “No.”

“Did you throw her over the railing?”

She sneers at me as her eyes suddenly glow playfully. “I’ll throw
you
over the railing if you keep making fun of where I live.”

Fair enough. I flash her my palms in defeat. “I won’t say another word about it. Promise.”

Leaning back against the railing, I watch as she shakes the door handle and pushes on the door. It didn’t occur to me until now that we can’t get into her apartment without a key.
Shit
. I drop my face into my palm and rub at my eyes. I walked all those damn stairs for nothing.

“Have a little faith, Stone.” Emily states with a laugh. “I can get us in.”

I lift my stare in time to see her twist and pull on the handle right before giving the bottom left corner of the door a hard kick. Just like that, the door shoots open and crashes into the wall. Over her shoulder she smirks at me. It’d be extremely sexy if I wasn’t so damn appalled.

“Well?”

“Well, I don’t know if should be impressed that you managed to get the door open or disturbed you lived here in the first place. Christ.” I push off the railing and saunter toward her. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

“I’m tougher than I look.” Emily states as she enters her apartment.

Despite myself, I follow closely behind her and I freeze once I’m inside. Instant regret. I’m standing in the kitchen
and
the bathroom at the same time. Less than four feet away from me is the toilet and no more than ten feet away is a brown raggedy couch, covered in a hideous pink throw rug. The usual ‘girly’ things litter the tiny space. Pink lip gloss tubes and hair pins are scattered over the tiny kitchen bench, an unopened packet of cigarettes sit freely in a busted fruit bowl, and clothes sit in folded piles on the floor in front of the couch.

“Strangely, it doesn’t feel like home anymore.” Emily mutters, her eyes flicking over her belongings.

“Did it in the first place?”

I put my hands on my hips as my gaze settles on an opened box of condoms sitting by the smallest fridge I’ve ever seen. I ignore the dark cloud forming under my ribs. What she does—or
did
—is none of my business. I look back to Emily as her dark gaze flicks from the packet, then to me, and then to the door behind me.

“You wanna wait—”

“—outside?” I exhale a rush of air I didn’t know I was holding. “Yeah. I’ll give you ten minutes. Then we have to go.”

She nods and I turn and leave the room. Outside her little shoe box I slide down the wall and sit. Though my back complains and my chest aches, my legs burn with relief. I want to stop. I can’t push myself any further. I close my eyes for the briefest second and that’s all my body needs for it to pull me under without a fight.