Snatching up my jacket, I remove the cell from the pocket and glance down at the screen.
Jamari.
Flicking Eshe a glance, I press my thumb to theANSWERbutton and raise the phone to my ear.
“Yeah.”
“H, I’ve been trying to reach you,” Jamari says, and the urgency in his voice clears the last of the lust seething in my blood.
“What’s going on?”
Eshe sits up, turning around in the bed and facing me. Her jeweled gaze fixes on me, alert, sharp.
“Is Eshe Diallo with you?” I don’t answer, and he huffs out an annoyed breath. I don’t know why he bothered to ask.
Yeah, I might use him to get info for me, but that’s because he’s going to do it anyway. I’ve tried to get Jamari to leave me alone, to go back to being a regular sixteen-year-old who doesn’t associate with a killer. Nothing’s worked so far.
I made the mistake of snapping the neck of a home invader I spotted climbing through a bedroom window. The house had been Jamari’s, and the woman I’d prevented from being raped and probably murdered was his mother. Since Jamari had been in the room, I’d also saved him from witnessing that shit and being scarred for life. Shit, saved him from becoming me. Since that night two years ago, I haven’t been able to get rid of Jamari. And at some point, I stopped trying. Still, I’m not dragging him any more into my world than he already insists on being.
“A’ight, fine.” The clacking of keys fills our connection for a moment. “For argument’s sake, let’s just say she is with you. Then she should know Penn Dawson was admitted to Mass General. She was one of the injured at that warehouse explosion.”
Fuck. One of Eshe’s Seven, and one of the women I spotted her with last night. I don’t need Eshe to tell me how she feels about Penn Dawson. She comes under the umbrella of the people Eshe mentioned earlier—the people she would go to war over.
“You got any more details?” I ask.
“She came in with several injuries, but the worst of them are a punctured lung, ruptured spleen, and broken arm. She’s out of surgery now, but they have her in a medically induced comabecause she also suffered some swelling of the brain, and they’re waiting for that to go down. They have her in the ICU for now.”
“Shit.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay, good looking out. Just her? No one else?”
“No. I searched, and none of the other Seven have been admitted for treatment.”
“Good shit. Thanks.”
Ending the call, I round the end of the bed and head toward the small chest of drawers near the door. I open a couple of them, removing a sweatshirt, another T-shirt, and a pair of joggers similar to the ones I’m wearing. I turn around and toss the bundle onto the mattress.
“What’s going on?” She slides off the bed, peeling my shirt up and off her, completely unashamed of her nudity. There’s no way in hell I can’t look at her petite, wickedly curved frame covered in all that smooth, beautiful brown skin. No way my gaze doesn’t trace over the very flesh I just feasted on like a starved man. “What was that call about?”
I want to turn away, get my shit together, because all that naked, perfectheris distracting as hell. Especially with her taste still lingering on my tongue, my lips. But stellar pussy or not, I’m not fool enough to turn my back on Eshe.
“You need to get dressed so we can go. Penn Dawson is at Mass General.”
She freezes, her hand hovering over the sweatshirt. Her eyes… shit, her eyes glass over, and before I can stop myself, I move toward her. Why? I don’t know. Something—everything—in me needs to erase that glaze from her eyes. Permanently eradicate the cause of it from this earth. But as quick as that haunted look took over her gaze, she snaps out of it, and I draw to a halt. Because I was about to make a complete ass of myself over something that has nothing to do with me. Something that isn’t my business.
Someone who isn’t my business.
Goddamn.
I said before that Eshe Diallo is dangerous.
And every time I’ve been in her company, in her fucking presence, she’s proven it.
“Tell me everything you know,” she coldly demands, quickly dressing. My clothes dwarf her, and yet she still manages to appear intimidating.
While I run down the info Jamari gave me, I pull on my boots, a hoodie, and my jacket. I hand her the only footwear available—the boots she wore last night. Again, the knee-high boots should look ridiculous with the enormous sweatshirt and joggers, but she remains regal and proud. No wonder Abena wants her dead. No one laying eyes on Eshe would mistake her for anything other than what she is—a queen.
Unlike when I broke it to her that one of her Seven is in the hospital, she maintains her stoic demeanor as I detail Penn’s condition. She occasionally nods, gathering up the empty pizza box and water bottle and carrying the refuse to the kitchen to toss them in the garbage. I frown, a little perplexed, a hell of a lot captivated as she straightens the covers on the pullout, sets the two pillows right, and arranges my chair with its back aligned against the wall as she passes it. She just cleaned my shithole of an apartment.
“I’m guessing your source is reliable,” she says, waiting for me by the door, that sharp gaze watching as I strap on my guns and knives.
