Dirty Kiss (22 page)

“Tired.” Leaning his head against my arm, Jae closed his eyes, murmuring softly in Korean.

“English, baby,” I reminded him.

“Who is that? Is that… your boyfriend? I don’t want you to have a boyfriend.” His eyes were open again, staring through the open door at Bobby.

Scarlet was in good hands. Bobby was a master at consoling people. My best friend never used that finely honed skill with me because he thought tough love would work better. If that didn’t work, he resorted to the tactics of my older brother and pounded the shit out of me until I gave in.

“Oh, um… no,” I said. It seemed like as good a time as any to set the record straight. “That’s my friend, Bobby. There’s no one but… you, okay?”

“Were you scared?” Jae slurred the words together. Exhaustion was spreading through him, leaving bags under his eyes. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Yeah, I was scared. Hospitals aren’t the best place for me, sometimes.” I was losing Jae to sleep, and I slid him off my arm and onto the pillow. “Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll be right here.”

“Neko, remember?”

“Yeah, shit. Okay, I’ll head down there and see what I can find,” I mumbled, rubbing at my face. Bobby had driven us, and I wasn’t sure he was up to taking me to a disintegrated building to look for a dead cat in the middle of the night. On the other hand, he owed me one, and it was as good a time as any to cash it in. “I’ll be back.”

“No, I need to get out of here.” Jae strained to reach the call button. “Need to find someplace to go. Can’t go with nuna, she’s living with… well, I can’t go there. Maybe Uncle Kim can put me up.”

“Jae, no.” I looped the wire out of his reach. “You’re stuck here until they tell you it’s okay to leave.”

“Can’t afford it.” He was fully slurring now, barely able to keep awake.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.” His pulse beat strong under my thumb as I ran my hand up his neck, cupping his jaw. He set his mouth into a tight line, and I was momentarily thankful that he was too battered to give me much of a fight. I might have outweighed Jae by forty pounds, but I was willing to bet he could give Bobby a run for his money if he was pissed off enough. “I’ll be back. Promise.”

“Call Scarlet when you find Neko. She’ll let me know.” Jae nodded off, resting his hands under his face as he turned, struggling briefly for air. “Take care of her. Please, Cole.”

I didn’t want to leave him. Hell, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. There was going to be the unpleasant task of telling him that he was going to stay with me until we could figure out what the hell was going on, but that was going to be an argument I intended to win, even if I had to drag Claudia in as a proxy. Pound for pound, she could take Jae on, and with luck, Scarlet would side with me.

“Cole?” Jae’s soft whisper stopped me before I left the room.

“Yeah, Jae?”

“Agi.”

“What?” My head was already throbbing with a headache, probably from the stress leaving my pores, but the word made no sense. “I don’t understand you.”

“If you insist on calling me baby, at least do it in Korean.” He grunted. “It’s agi. Now go find my cat.”

“
Explain
to me why I was stupid enough to let you talk me into doing this?” Bobby stifled a yawn, more for show than sleepiness. I’d been with him on pub crawls that lasted until six in the morning, and he was as fresh then as when he’d started. “The cat’s dead. A building fell on it. The only thing left of it should be its ruby slippers.”

“Was that a gay joke?” I poked, sipping at the rancid coffee we’d gotten from a convenience store. “Because if it was, it sucked.”

“I just don’t know why we’re going into the wilds of Garden Grove to go look for a dead cat.”

“Because I promised him.” Pointing out the obvious usually worked with Bobby, so I tried my hand at it. “And because there was that night when you called me at three in the morning to come get you, and then you made me promise not to laugh or say anything when you came out of a club wearing only pink suede chaps and a black thong. That’s why.”

“I’m never going to call you again. You’re going to sit by the phone and wait for me like some lovesick puppy, and I’m going to sit back and laugh at you.”

“Right. You have no other friends but me.” The coffee wasn’t so bad once I shook more sugar into it. I’d already dumped five packets in and was more than willing to sacrifice another five to thin the oil slick forming at the top of the cup. “And I’m taking pictures of your naked white ass the next time it’s in those chaps.”

“You are a cruel bitch, Princess.”

“I learned from the best, old man.”

We turned the corner, and my heart stopped. It looked like there was nothing left of Jae’s side of the building. Three of the retaining walls were caved in, leaving the already pathetic porch structure standing solo amid rubble. A municipal truck was parked near the curb, workers already trying to establish power to the block. The blast had taken out the lights for at least five buildings, and from the looks of things, the rest of the building hadn’t fared well either.

Three police cars sat watch, wide-shouldered patrolmen leaning against a hood and keeping a steady watch on us as we pulled up. A fire utility truck was parked slantways across the driveway, blocking any vehicle from entering the cordoned-off area. All together, it looked like a block party had gone wild, and the city had sent reinforcements to contain the crowd.

“Jesus, it looks like a fucking bomb went off.” Bobby whistled, parking the truck. “That kid’s damned lucky to be alive.”

He wasn’t far from wrong about how the building looked. I thought we’d seen the worst of it from the street, but as I stepped out of the cab, the fickle light from the streetlamps turned the place into something I’d only seen in apocalypse movies.

The bathroom walls were blown back against the brick, the gypsum board no match for the force of the alleged gas leak. Most of the ground was flooded, probably from the fire trucks who’d answered the call. I approached the place carefully. Investigators would be crawling over the place come morning, and the last thing I wanted to do was move something. As it was, there were a couple of men poking about the place. They gave us the briefest of glances before they continued walking around the perimeter of the building.

“Hey, boss-looking guy at two o’clock. You go sniff around, and I’ll go schmooze.” Bobby elbowed me in the gut. “He probably wants to kick us out. I’ll do my best retired-cop impression. Try not to look like a looter.”

“Tell him I won’t touch anything.”

There wasn’t much to touch. What wasn’t sodden was burnt. Jae’s photos were black, flat corpses, their edges curled in. I wondered if I could get them to release his photo equipment, but there was no telling where it was. The cinderblock lay in puzzle pieces over the remains of the apartment. It was a wonder Jae had survived. It would be a miracle if his cat had.

“Hey.” Bobby joined me, clapping me on the shoulder. “The supervisor said that we can go looking around the edges but not to touch anything. He hasn’t heard anything, but things have been pretty loud down here. Neighbors keep yelling that they want their power back on. One of the idiots took a shot at the line crew.”

“Yeah, this looks so promising.” I stared at the crumbled walls. “Okay, maybe we can take a look and hope we can at least see something.”

“Hold up, Cole.” He grabbed at my arm, pulling me back. “You hear that?”

“Don’t pull this shit on me, Bobby,” I said, jerking myself free. “Too long of a night for practical jokes.”

“Shut up. I’m serious.” Stepping toward the pile of gypsum, Bobby stood with his head cocked, listening intently. “I am telling you. I heard something.”

“I am going to break your ass if you start laughing at me.” The threat was thin. I was too worn to do any serious damage to him, even if I wanted to. I nearly fell flat on my face when my foot caught on the bed frame. Bobby caught me before I made a total fool of myself, but I could hear the snickers from the cops watching us. “Okay, what am I listening to?”

“I swear to God, I heard a cat,” he said, pointing toward the pile of debris against the intact wall. “Over there.”

The screaming demand was faint, but I heard it. Lifting a section of wet drywall, I opened up a small hole to peer through. “Shit, it’s too dark. You have a flashlight in the truck?”

“Yeah, let me grab it.” Bobby nimbly maneuvered through the brick minefield that I’d stumbled over. He was back with a thick, black Maglite, turning the beam on. “Here. Don’t let them see you digging.”

“What do you do with this thing?” The light pierced even the darkest corner as I moved closer to the mess. “Call down UFOs?”

“I got it because it’s heavy enough to whack assholes like you over the head with,” he sniped back. “Look for the damned cat.”

A pair of orange-gold eyes peered out at me from the hole, her rumbling voice nearly as tortured as Jae’s. From the sounds of it, the cat had been crying for hours, probably incensed that her pet human hadn’t come for her. Handing the flashlight to Bobby, I reached in, snagging her by the shoulders. She came without a fight, blinking when she emerged into the flashlight-drenched world.

“Fuck me, Cole,” Bobby whispered. “You are so going to get laid for this.”

“Shut up.” I gripped Neko tightly, trying out some baby talk to keep her calm. “I didn’t do this to get laid.”

“Then I’ll tell him I found her,” he teased. “What I saw through the door was fucking hot. I want to get laid for finding the cat.”

I decided that once I got Jae’s cat to someplace safe, my first order of business would be to punch Bobby in the face. Maybe break his nose. I informed him of my plans as we picked our way out.

“Keep dreaming, Princess,” Bobby said, unlocking the door to the truck. I slid in, holding the cat tight against my chest. The last thing I wanted was to lose her now.

“Home, Robert,” I yawned, trying not to hit my jaw against her tiny head.

“Nuh-uh. I’m afraid our night isn’t over yet.” Bobby tapped the call button of his navigation system, bringing the information screen online. I groaned when I saw the listings he pulled up.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. She’s fine. She looks fine.”

“Hey, last thing you need after rescuing your boyfriend’s cat is for it to get sick from breathing in all that smoke,” he pointed out. “Dead cats don’t get you laid. Here’s one close by. Nothing says I want you like a huge emergency vet bill.”

Dawn
was shaking the world awake by the time I got in. I didn’t want to look at the clock because I feared it would tell me I only had a few minutes left of the night before Claudia would begin her round of wake-up-Cole calls. I jostled the cat carrier inside, apologizing to Neko when she screamed her disapproval at the treatment she was getting at my hands. Behind me, Bobby carried the paraphernalia the emergency vet said I would need to make Neko happy while she stayed with me.

I’ve seen a mother of infant twins carry less shit with her than what that cat scored at the vet.

“Where do you want this?” Bobby asked, scraping off the price tag from the litter box. “Downstairs bathroom?”

“She going to find it there?” I peered into the carrier. Neko spat another demand to be released, and I was fairly certain I heard a death threat included in her displeasure. They’d given her a bath to wash off the soot and drywall debris from her fur, and now she was a poofy black ball of cute. Demonic and possessed, but still cute.

“Doc said she would.” He shrugged, ambling off to the bathroom. I left him to assemble the potty and braved opening the cage, belatedly wishing I had a rolled-up magazine to defend myself with when she leapt out to rake my throat open.