Drake lowered the bat to his side and stared at the man sitting in the chair behind his desk. He was short and unimpressive, and yet every time he saw him, Drake felt unease wash over his soul.
“What do you want?” Drake snapped, the words coming out more harshly than he had intended.
Raul stood and Drake felt his hand tighten on the bat.
“He wants to see you,” he said flatly in a thick Spanish accent.
“What does he want?”
Raul said nothing. He simply moved toward Drake and the door.
“You don’t need that,” Raul instructed, his eyes flicking to the baseball bat.
Don’t go; tell Raul to fuck off. Tell him to relay the message to Ken Smith that I’m not his errand boy.
But he couldn’t do that. He owed the man. If it weren’t for him, Suzan would be dead right now, burnt alive by a psychopath hellbent on recreating deaths from Beckett’s forensic pathology exam.
Drake frowned, the scarred skin on his cheek crumpling uncomfortably. He leaned the bat against the wall by the door and shrugged.
“Alright, let’s go then.”
As expected, Raul said nothing during the drive to Ken Smith’s condo. This, unfortunately, left Drake with time inside his own head, which soon became a messy bog of emotions and memories.
He was glad that Chase had brought him on the case, even if his position as ‘Special Consultant’ was ambiguous at best. And he was pleased that the harsh feelings that his ex-colleagues in the force had once harbored toward him, seemed to have eased. Yet being back in the fold meant that his memories returned, that Clay was once again front and center in his mind.
And this made him want to drink again. He hadn’t sworn off the sauce completely, but it was more under control than it had been for as long as he could remember. No drinking in his car parked outside a high school, for instance. But now, in this moment, sitting in Raul’s midnight black Range Rover, he wished that tucked inside his jacket pocket was a miniature of Johnny Walker.
Just one. Just enough to take the edge off.
But the only thing in his pocket was a mysterious e-reader.
And a finger bone. There was that, too.
As they pulled up to the condo in downtown Manhattan, however, Drake knew that he only had to wait until he made it to the 80th floor—the penthouse—before he would get his fix.
Drake exited the car first, and hurried across the parking lot to the glass doors at the front of the building. He knocked once and a security guard with a thick brown mustache waddled over. There was immediate recognition in his face, but to Drake’s annoyance, he didn’t open the door. Instead he just stood there, his hand on the keys at his belt.
“Open up,” Drake barked.
The man didn’t acknowledge him.
“Hey, you deaf? Open the—”
The security guard’s eyes darted over Drake’s shoulder, and he followed the man’s gaze. Raul was suddenly beside him, forcing him to do a double-take to make sure that he had left footprints in the snow, that he hadn’t just materialized like a damn apparition.
“Ah, I see,” Drake grumbled. “Waiting for your boss.”
Raul nodded, and the security guard returned the gesture before immediately unlocking the door.
“Thanks,” Drake said sarcastically as he passed. He didn’t bother to knock the snow off his boots.
Like the front doors, Drake was the first to the silver elevator, but once again had to wait for Raul to flash his key card for it to open.
Drake took note of the card that he used: a plain, white key card that was attached to a cable extending from his plain, black belt.
It might come in handy to have one of those, Drake thought absently.
The elevator chimed and they stepped inside.
Something occurred to Drake as the silver coffin ascended, a conversation he had had upon first meeting Raul.
He turned to the man then, who was staring blankly at the doors, paying Drake no heed.
“I thought you worked for Clarissa Smith?”
Raul said nothing and Drake pressed harder. He was annoyed by the man’s affect, and was going to try his best to break through his frozen demeanor.
“What? She turn you down after Thomas died?”
Drake thought he saw the man’s mustache twitch.
“Ah, I bet that’s it. I bet you tried to slip it in as Thomas was lowering into the ground, didn’t you?”
Nothing this time.
“How’s she doing, anyway? You still in touch?”
Raul turned to him then, his dark eyebrows furrowing so much that they nearly covered his beady eyes.
“Clarissa is—”
The elevator pinged, announcing their arrival, and Raul’s mouth suddenly clamped shut. The doors started to open, but Drake’s hand shot out and hit the close button, halting their progress.
“Clarissa’s what? Just a pawn in your boss’s game? Is that it?”
Raul looked at his hand, then the doors at half-mast. For a second, Drake thought that he was going to slap his finger away from the button, and something inside of him clenched.
But Raul did nothing.
“You know what I don’t understand about this whole thing, Raul? I get what Ken Smith is up to—he wants to be mayor. Will do anything to be mayor, evidently. But you? What do you want out of this thing? Why are you so loyal to this prick? Me? I owe him… but you? Do you owe him too?”
Raul looked him straight in the eyes then, and Drake thought he detected a hint of a smile on the man’s dark lips.
“We should go. Mr. Smith will be waiting,” he said calmly.
Drake scowled and took his finger off the button. The doors slid open, and he was surprised to see Ken Smith standing just a few feet away, dressed in what looked like another bespoke suit.
He was smiling, revealing a row of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth that stood out on his tanned face.
“Drake, so glad that you could make it.”
“Like I had a choice,” Drake replied, stepping past Raul and into the lavish penthouse.
“Please, come in,” Ken said with a hint of sarcasm. “We need to chat.”
“What I need,” Drake began, stamping his feet, leaving wet footprints on the marble tiles, “is a drink. Then maybe we can talk.”