Luke pulled over and parked in a well-lit street in a neighborhood filled with comfortable houses of the nearly very rich. He made to exit the vehicle.
“Wait,” I called.
He turned to me and raised his brows.
“We can’t do this,” I told him.
“Why not?” he asked.
“It’s not right.”
Luke twisted his body fully to face me. “We don’t make judgments. We send invoices.”
I could see right away where there might be a problem with my being on the team. I didn’t make judgments but I sure as hell had a moral code.
I decided not to debate this point with Luke mainly because I didn’t figure I’d change his mind in the few minutes I had.
I tried a different tactic. “I don’t see how this is going to help me be more of a nuisance to drug dealers.”
“This isn’t training, babe, this is a ride-along. You go where I go. You don’t like it, I’ll take you home and you can have a bubble bath.”
In truth a bubble bath sounded good. However I figured if I f**ked up this chance there wouldn’t be another one. I was too curious about what this team of badasses did for a living, considering I was “with” one of them (I didn’t know how to describe my relationship with Vance except that calling him my “boyfriend” sounded pretty stupid… we were exclusive, Vance made that clear, but how to translate that into a descriptive modifier was unclear). Also I had the impression that the team liked me, respected me. I had this impression because somewhat easily they’d accepted me. If I went home and had a bubble bath I knew that would disintegrate faster than the bubbles.
“Let’s do this,” I muttered, getting out my side.
As he did last night, Luke walked straight up to the house like he owned the place. He opened the door with a key.
“You have a key?” I whispered, not about to make the same mistake as I’d made last night by being loud and calling attention to us.
He looked at me. “Client gave it to us.”
Oh. Right. That made sense.
Luke entered and didn’t turn on any lights. He went directly to a massive kitchen like he’d taken that route on numerous occasions. I followed.
He went straight to a small office off the kitchen that even in the dark I could see it was decorated by a woman. Luke pulled on a pair of plastic gloves then took a small flashlight out of his belt and started to rifle through the desk.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Anything,” Luke answered.
I stood there watching.
The flashlight often slid along the walls and I saw one of those bulletin boards with the criss-cross ribbons on it, business cards, receipts, notes, letters and photos were shoved into the ribbons. The photos were different shots of the same four people, a woman, a man and two young boys.
“They have children,” I hissed at Luke.
Luke didn’t answer, he kept searching.
I got more uncomfortable. I wanted to pretend it didn’t matter but it went against the grain, so deeply against the grain that the grain was feeling raw.
“Luke.”
He straightened and turned to me. “Not our problem.”
“But –”
“Babe.” His voice was a warning. I was trying his patience.