“Kids get their names on the street for a reason. Look for a kid that looks like he could be smuggling food in his cheeks. He also has a tattoo on the back of his neck of something that looks like it could be a chipmunk or a squirrel. He’s not going to want to talk to you. Those kids are going to scatter when they see you coming.”
The cell phone lying on my desk started to ring and we both took that as a cue that our conversation had run its course. I picked it up and put it to my ear, and watched the girl slip silently out of my office. She was an interesting one, and I had a feeling even though I promised to forget she ever existed, I hadn’t seen the last of her.
“Are you looking at the monitors?” Chuck’s question was barked in my ear and I turned around in my chair, tapping the keys on my computer that turned the bank of security video feeds on behind my desk. Since it was the afternoon and nowhere near working hours yet, I had left them off while I talked to Noe.
When the screens fired back to life, it took every speck of self-control I had not to throw my cell phone at the monitors. At least twenty men wearing black tactical gear with the word “police” across the back were storming through the front doors of the club with weapons raised.
Luckily, there were no customers crowding the dance floor or cluttering the bar area, but the employees that were milling about were all frantic as I watched the raid happen in front of me like it was a TV show.
“What?” I couldn’t form any more words than that as I watched one of the cops approach Chuck, who still had his phone to his ear. The cop stopped in front of my head of security and I heard him ask where I was. On the video feed I saw Chuck hesitate for a second, but because I recognized the deep voice when the policeman spoke, I told Chuck to go ahead and bring him on up to my office while his cohorts continued to poke their noses and guns into every nook and cranny of my club.
I couldn’t face the cop sitting down. Not when what I really wanted to do was take the automatic rifle he had in his hands, and turn it on him and demand he leave me and my business alone. He stripped off his protective face gear and glared at me just as hard as I was glaring at him.
I don’t know how Titus King found himself on the right side of the law when he had every single characteristic that should have made him a man like me, terrible childhood and a parent that preferred death and brutality to loving nurture included.
“Why are you raiding my club, cop?” I put my hands on the edge of the desk to avoid pummeling him in the face.
Titus narrowed his eyes and I swore his hatred of me and what I did to keep this city alive blazed out of his gaze like the blue flame of a blowtorch.
“We got an anonymous tip that you received a delivery of cocaine and that you were sitting on it for one of your suppliers. The source sounded credible, so the lieutenant in charge of the drug unit decided a surprise takedown was in order.”
“Why are you here, then?”
Titus grunted and I saw his black-gloved finger twitch where it was resting on the trigger guard of the gun he was holding.
“I’m here because it’s no secret my very pregnant girlfriend works for you, and for some odd reason actually likes you and her job. I told the sergeant in charge of the tactical team that I wanted in just in case there was dope stashed here. I told him I would like nothing more than to lock you up and keep you away from my family.” He glared at me even harder and a tic started working in his cheek. “I also told him that you’re a sadistic bastard and if we did find anything illegal here, you wouldn’t be above using innocent patrons as leverage in order to escape a drug bust.” He snorted. “You’re welcome.”
If he thought I was going to thank him while my club was being ripped apart, he had another thing coming. I lifted my eyebrows at him and gave him a speculative smirk. “Does Reeve know you’re here?”
He grunted his answer, which clearly meant he hadn’t told her that he was coming to raid her boss’s club. I bet that was going to go over really well when he got home from work. Reeve was a spitfire and she also carefully kept one foot on the right side of the law and the other hovering just enough over the edge of the wrong side to keep things interesting. She was an asset to me and my enterprise. She was also not going to like her man messing in my business, but more than that, she wasn’t going to like that he kept her out of the loop because he knew she did have threads of loyalty attached to me even though Titus had tried to snip them time and time again.
“There are no drugs here. I don’t have my hands in that stuff. The guys that move it and sell it answer to people in other countries, and I don’t like the lack of control that gives an operation. I also let Keelyn and Race sink a ridiculous amount of money into this place to get it up and running. I wouldn’t play around with their investment like that. I’m a businessman first and foremost, cop. I don’t do things that endanger my money or my partners.” I could get my hands on any illegal substance I wanted at any time, but that didn’t mean I needed to have my fingers in the honeypot. Drugs were a hard line for me. When I first came to the States I’d dabbled here and there, testing the boundaries of my newly minted freedom. I realized very quickly how easy it would be to find myself tied to another kind of owner and I refused to risk it. I didn’t want my business anywhere near people who so effortlessly corrupted and owned the weak and the desperate. I stayed away from the lure of narcotics, but the people I often found myself dealing with didn’t. In order to keep my finger on the pulse, I had to know who dealt what, who imported what, and how they all managed their business, but I didn’t consider them my colleagues.
“The source said that you keep the stash in a private room in the basement that is only accessible by private elevator.”
The lightbulb went off and I swore in Arabic as I shoved my hands through my hair. “Was the source a woman?”
Titus’s own dark eyebrows shot up until they almost touched the band of the black, knit cap covering his forehead.
“Why?”
I sighed and moved around my desk. I walked past him without saying anything but heard Chuck tell him to follow me.
“I had some problems with a woman and her husband. She didn’t want to play by the rules, so I kicked her out.” I punched the code in for the basement of the building once we were all in the elevator. I shook my head a little. “First I kicked her out of the club, then I kicked her out of the Point. She’s mouthy and unstable. I should’ve known she would pull something like this.”