had stabbed me and had left me with a message to keep out of Mr. Fu’s business.
“Why didn’t you tell me this days ago?”
“Because...because I wanted to talk to Mr. Fu first. He’s not a criminal.” I could tell by the way Pete had raised one dark sexy eyebrow that he was surprised as I was about this turn of events. Mr. Fu had helped us out several times. And we’d helped him. Didn’t that make him a friend...of sorts? “I don’t know what to think anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about him. But if I am, I want to hear from his own ungrateful mouth why he is so anxious for me to die.”
“I don’t know, Kyra. It sounds too risky. I don’t think it’s a good idea to expose you—”
“But we’re talking about the same man who said we were the best things to ever happen to him. He’d called us his guardian angels, his children.”
“Situations change. People change.”
“I can’t believe Mr. Fu is behind any of this.” Pete was nodding in agreement, so I pushed my luck. “Will you take me there... now ?” Facing the devil would be better than going to Pete’s house and immersing myself in those unresolved issues I had with him. Besides, I didn’t think Mr. Fu was the devil. He was simply a kindly old man with a tough reputation.
I was certain of it.
Sure, I was.
I was staking my life on it, so I must have been pretty confident that Mr. Fu wasn’t going to kill me on sight, right?
Well, facing Mr. Fu was better than going to Pete’s.
PETE GRUMBLED. And swore. And flipped open his cell phone and called Blakely. Guys, I’ll never understand them. They can be snarling at each other one minute and best buds the next. Though, as I listened in on the conversation, I could hear a lingering tension between them. Pete disconnected the call and then turned his car around and headed back toward the city. I bit the inside of my cheek in order to hold back the triumphant smile gurgling inside me. He might have changed his mind if he’d seen me smirking like that.
“I’m not going to take you to Mr. Fu and have no one know where we are. Unlike you, I don’t enjoy taking needless risks,” he explained. He was frowning so hard I would have leaned over and kissed him if not for the stitches in my stomach that had made leaning nearly impossible.
Thank goodness for those stitches.
Chapter 6
BLAKELY AND ANOTHER UNIFORMED OFFICER were waiting for us outside Mr. Fu’s house.
“Told you she was lying to us,” Blakely hissed as I passed by him toward the front door.
“Can they wait outside?” I asked Pete, purposefully ignoring Blakely and his sour-faced buddy, Officer Grant.
“No,” Pete and Blakely answered in unison.
“If Fu is dangerous, we’ll need the backup,” Pete said, though he didn’t sound as if he believed a word of it. His brows were still knitted, a telling sign that he was just as puzzled about things as I was. The evidence so far added up all wrong. Mr. Fu was behind both the women’s disappearances and the attempts on my life? True, he was the one who’d been interviewing new prostitutes. He was the one who had suddenly changed his behavior, refusing to see me. And he apparently had sent the man in the white hat to stab me.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to think of Mr. Fu as a killer...or a kidnapper. Although, if his reputation was to be believed, he could very well be both.
By the time we reached the front door, Mr. Fu’s stoop was crowded with testosterone and police-styled grandstanding. I had to physically push my way past Blakely and Grant in order to stand next to Pete when he rapped his fist on the red and gold painted wooden door. When Fu’s ancient housekeeper opened the door Pete had his badge out.
“He not here,” the housekeeper rasped before anyone had a chance to demand anything.
“Are you sure he isn’t dead?” I asked her for a second time, feeling slightly alarmed.
“Not dead. Just not here,” she said, a sly smile pulling
Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory