I headed out of Jack-a-Lee’s around one in the morning. It was a shock to leave the crowded warmth of his town house and step into the cold empty streets. I hurried to my car, careful not to slip on the ice. I got in, shut the door, and exhaled, watching my breath hang in the chilled air. Then I started the engine.
It was only fourteen blocks uptown to my house—a short distance to drive, but long enough to do some serious cogitating. The Black Orchid was into Stax Murphy for sums unknown. Stax sent the Velvet Swede to collect. Perhaps it became clear that Queenie didn’t have the dough and never would, or maybe Stax got impatient, or even just plain greedy. Whatever. He decided to nab Queenie and squeeze Lucien Fawkes for the cash.
That scenario made sense. There was only one thing wrong with it. The ransom demand: it hadn’t been made. Twenty-four hours had come and gone, with nary a peep from the kidnappers.
Now that was something to chew on.
Maybe, like Lucien said, the request was simply delayed for some reason. Or maybe Stax had something totally different in mind.
But what could that be?
I thought about it while sitting at a traffic stop and decided that the only thing I knew for certain was that Queenie had secrets. Maybe one of them had gotten him kidnapped, possibly killed.
There was also the Cotton Club angle, but Lucien himself didn’t seem to put much faith in it and neither did I. I just couldn’t see Frenchy needing to kidnap any songbird to put him in that golden cage.
The traffic light changed. Instead of going straight, which would’ve taken me home, I pulled a hard left and drove west. I was thinking of the police station, but something else must’ve been on my mind, because I found myself slowing down in front of Sam’s place. His second-floor apartment was opposite the police station and one block from the newsroom. He was always on hand in case a major story broke, always there for an emergency.
Always there, period. He was my rock, stable and true and firmly in my corner. I wanted to talk to him, tell him what I’d found out from Lucien Fawkes, Morgana, and Jack-a-Lee. But that wasn’t the only reason I went there.
Over the past months, Sam had worked hard to show me that love was still possible, that it was worth giving a chance. And what had I done but push him away?
For the first time since my man died, I wondered if Hamp would have been happy with the choices I was making. I was sure he would’ve been proud of the way I did my job. I could even imagine him smiling down at me.
But since Sam had made his interest known to me, I’d had a different image of Hamp, one of him frowning—not at Sam, but at me, with concern wrinkling his handsome brow. Life was giving me a second chance at love but I couldn’t bring myself to grab it and I didn’t quite understand why.
Hamp. God, I missed that man so much, I missed him in every part of my being. For the longest time, I didn’t even think about somebody else touching me. The desire was just gone.
But that was changing because of Sam, who was patient, kind—and good-looking. There was no denying it. He was single. He was fine. And he wanted me.
Still I hesitated.
I glanced up the street. Beyond the next light, on the other side of the road, was the newsroom where we spent most of our days working together.
Amend that.
As the paper’s society reporter, I was out and about, running from one function to the next. As its city room editor, he was a fairly permanent fixture in the fishbowl of his office. So we couldn’t actually spend that much time together. Our roles precluded it. But like most in the newsroom, I thought of him as the paper’s anchor. His was the first face I sought whenever I walked in the door, and I often sensed him seeking me out too.
Why was I hesitating?
Sam was waiting. But how long would he wait?
Selena Troy, our very pretty obit writer, wasn’t waiting. She wasn’t just the youngest member of our reporting staff, she was also by far the most ambitious. She’d made more than one play for Sam and no doubt would make plenty more. She would persevere until one day she got him, until she brought him down, like a lioness taking down her prey. Then she would make sure that everyone knew about her conquest. Subtlety and discretion were not among her concerns. Selena was one of those women who enjoy the hunt as much as many men do. Sam knew that. Maybe that’s why he’d apparently found it so easy to resist her charms—so far.
I glanced up to see if his lights were on. They weren’t, but instinct told me that he would be awake. Instinct and the dark circles he often had under his eyes said Sam went late to bed and maybe sometimes not at all. Without giving myself time to think about why I was there or what I wanted, I got out of the car, ran up to his front door, and rang the bell.
And waited.
There was no answer.
I raised my hand to ring again, then lowered it. Disappointed in a way I wasn’t ready to admit, I ran to the car, hopped back in, and drove on.