No sign of her at the shelter. Worse, he almost threw up when he got out of his car. A thick sheen of sweat ran from his hairline into his eyes. After a quick look around, during which he could barely see, Kevin returned to his car and checked his phone. No calls, from her or anyone else. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to blink away the moisture from his eyes. The world stayed smeary and streaky so he gave up. He reached into the glove box for the spare glasses and contact case he kept there then quickly switched out.
He felt like a sitting duck, the car parked not far from where he was attacked. Driving around was better than staying so he started the car and left.
Plenty was written about gang crime in the Point Sable Herald, the city’s last major daily paper, but none of it contained really useful information. A lot of general pronouncements, mostly, with an obvious lack of names, dates, places, and other details. It was considered a South Side problem, and therefore not of much interest to the majority of the paper’s dwindling readership.
But Kevin did know a few things. Lincoln Heights was Russian mob territory. They were involved in just about everything such an organization would be expected to have ties to: drugs, guns, prostitution, protection rackets, gambling. If it was illegal and profitable, they had some level of involvement.
They didn’t hesitate to kill. The murder rate in Lincoln Heights was crazy high. And that was just the bodies that were found.
Why would she want an address in Lincoln Heights checked out? Just how much trouble was she in? Because if she was in that neighborhood, she was definitely in trouble.
It might not be the kind of trouble his money could sweep away.
Even if he could help her, was he obligated? Yes, she’d saved his life, but did that mean he was obligated to possibly risk his? If she was in trouble with the Russian mob, her life was in danger and if he helped her, his would be too.
Driving usually helped soothe his nerves but not tonight. He went past crumbling tenements, trash can fires, groups of kids huddled together on corners and in alleys. Girls in cheap vinyl and tottering heels catcalled him at red lights, hoping to score a rich john in a fancy car. Liquor stores and strip clubs and corner dealers. Thumping music and angry shouts and sparkling laughter. There was plenty of life here, it just scared the hell out of him. It made him ashamed to admit it, even just to himself.
When his lawyer called about changing his community service to a safer location, Kevin almost accepted. He’d never been so badly hurt before, his pride and his sense of security, and yes, his manhood, so thoroughly ground down into almost nothing. Being saved by a woman wasn’t the source of his shame. It was his inability to protect himself that shamed him. He’d barely been able to fight back. No amount of reminding himself how many attackers there had been did any good. He still felt…useless. Incapable. In truth, he’d never felt more like the worthless playboy everyone saw him as. And he hated that.
Kevin didn’t want to add feeling like a coward to all that, so he’d told the lawyer he would continue his service at the shelter. Now as he considered how far to go to help the woman who’d saved his life, he thought maybe he was a coward after all.
Shit. He would keep an eye on the phone, check the shelter again tomorrow. For now, he would go home. He cued up some house music on the sound system and headed north.
Until he got to a turn-off that would take him into Lincoln Heights. He idled at the stop sign, considering things. Before he could talk himself out of it, he checked the GPS map on his phone and headed for the address she’d given him.
Just a quick drive-by. Surely she wouldn’t be anywhere around the place.
When he saw the flames reaching into the night sky, he knew instinctively that was the place. He turned onto the correct street and sure enough, there it was – a brownstone on fire at the far end of the street, spitting orange and red high into the sky and filling the area with thick black smoke. There was no sign of any kind of first responders, no neighbors milled in the street.
Someone walked out of the smoke that hung like a curtain around the house. Kevin slammed on the breaks. It was her. Jesus, she was trashed. Covered in blood and soot, clothes torn, dark hair flying like a pirate flag in the wind. She stumbled into the street and looked like if she didn’t sit down soon she was going to fall down.
Taking care not to hit her, Kevin pulled up, leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
She stared for a long moment. He thought he was going to have to remind her of who he was when she climbed into the car and shut the door. “No hospital. Promise me.”
Kevin may have been rich and spoiled but he’d been in his share of trouble before. Kicked out of private school, juvenile arrests that cost the family money and favors to make go away. Gossip fodder and too many lovers and flunking classes in college because he couldn’t be bothered to get up before noon. Parties and drinking and fast cars and faster women and stupid stunts. Community service for a drunk and disorderly charge that his brother refused to take care of. Kevin had a long and colorful history of personal idiocy and reckless behavior.
But when this mysterious woman climbed into his car, he knew he was about to find out what real trouble looked like.