The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,48
away. We’ll take it to my house.”
“Park it on the street. I’ll have someone pick it up and tow it tomorrow.”
“Can you follow me in my car?” she asked. “I can take you back to your car after.”
“Yeah, I’ll drive your car. But you’ll be lucky to get it back.” Cyrus took the keys to her Mustang.
It took three seconds for Nora to hotwire the car.
She pulled out into the street. Cyrus followed. She thought she lost him on the way to her house at one point, but a minute later, there he was behind her. The man knew how to tail.
They reached her house and she parked the Sentra in front. When Cyrus got out of her Mustang, he was on his phone again.
“Half an hour,” Cyrus was saying. “Home by eight.” Pause. “Yeah, I know. I know. Love you, too, baby.” A laugh. A smile. “Never again, I swear.” He hung up.
“What’s never again?” Nora asked. Cyrus pursed his lips at her. “I’m standing right here. Of course, I heard you.”
“Never again am I doing a favor for the police department.” Cyrus stashed his phone in his pocket. “Ready?”
Nora popped the trunk of the Sentra again and went back to it. Cyrus was staring hard at her house or something on it.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“That is a lot of damn beads,” he said, raising his hand to a clump of red and silver beads on a low-hanging branch. “You may be a little into Mardi Gras, lady.”
“I didn’t put them up here, I promise.”
“Who did?”
She shrugged. “No idea. They weren’t on the tree when I saw the house the first time. By the time I moved in a month later, there were a handful. Every few days, more show up.”
“You never catch anyone doing it?”
“S?ren thinks I have an ‘admirer.’ Maybe some teenage boy who lives on the street and is trying to be cute. I’d think Gmork would growl though if a boy were out here in the middle of the night beading my tree.”
“So, a woman?”
“Who knows?” Nora asked. “They’re pretty though. They don’t seem to hurt the tree.”
“It would freak me out if someone was beading my trees at night. Or Paulina’s. I’d stand guard.”
“Nico kind of felt the same way. He came to visit for a couple days and swore he felt like he was being watched while he was in my house. That’s why he got me Gmork.” She glanced up at her tree. She rarely gave it much thought, but Cyrus’s questions had gotten her wondering about it again.
“He got you that dog because it’s a man-eater, and if you’ll tell me where he got him, I’ll get one for Paulina.”
“I’ll tell you where we got him, if you invite me to the wedding.”
“Just check Satan’s duffel bag, please.”
“It’s just handcuffs and rope and blindfolds.”
Cyrus gave her that look again.
“It’s kink,” Nora said. “These are toys.” She pointed at the bag. “You are telling me you never tied a girlfriend to the bed or blindfolded her or anything?”
“I’m not telling you nothing, lady.”
Nora drew on the latex gloves again. Seemed like overkill, “but better safe than accidentally exposed to Hep C,” as her fellow dominatrixes say. She dug through the bag, finding nothing she hadn’t found before.
“Maybe this is a dumb question, but if Ike had a, well, a you, wouldn’t his lady keep all this stuff herself?” Cyrus waved his hand at the toy bag in the trunk.
“Depends.” Nora shrugged. “Some people are germaphobes and keep their own private set of gear. Maybe he fetishized the stuff and wanted to keep it around. Maybe he was a switch, like me.”
“Switch?”
“I do the beating, and also get beat. By different people, of course. I beat clients, but they don’t beat me—only S?ren does.”
“You ever flip the tables on your Viking and tie him up? Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
“Never,” she said. “He’s all dominant. Unfortunately. He’d look so pretty in handcuffs.”
“Stop.”
Nora smiled as she kept digging, turning out pockets, checking linings. “Any luck on that key?”
“No luck there. But this is interesting.” She held up an unopened box of K-Y lubricant.
“Okay, so, Ike was fucking someone,” Cyrus said.
“Or someone was fucking Father Ike.”
“Right. Yeah. Possible. Not gonna think about that, though.” Cyrus turned his back to her, walked up and down her driveway. He hit the end of her street, turned on his heel, walked back.