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“C?”

He growled at me. “If you’re being chased by cops, ditch the gun. If you’re being chased by some guys from the neighborhood or someone from Kady’s crew, shoot at them.”

“Cop, ditch; bad guy, shoot,” I teased him. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”

“I will shoot you myself.”

I started laughing even though I shouldn’t have. He was very dangerous.

“You’re really a wiseass, you know that?”

I did know that, I thought, as some of the tension in my shoulders and neck finally started to dissipate.

“When we get out of the car, I’ll help you with the holster.”

And then it wasn’t funny anymore. “I wish Benji had had a gun.”

“Me too,” Conrad agreed. “At least that way it would’ve been over faster.”

“Why?”

“He would have shot at them, and they would have killed him right then.”

I shouldn’t have asked the question.

MY MOTHER was happy to see me. It was her last day of work, since she had asked off starting the following day, Wednesday, to go to Dallas to visit her sister, my Aunt Janet, who just had a baby. It was strange. Her sister was forty-three and having her first child, and my mother at just forty-six had been finished bearing children years ago. I was twenty-four and my sister was twenty-three. She’d had me at twenty-two, when she met and fell in love with my father. Everyone had said she was too young, but now, when she was still really young with no children in her house, she was free to do whatever she wanted.

“When are you going to take a real vacation?” I smiled at her from where I was leaning on the counter above her.

“After the first of the year,” she said softly, her eyes flicking up to me and then away. “Marissa and Clover and Patrice and Judy and I are going to Jamaica.”

I chuckled, and when she looked up, she was scowling.

“What?”

“You know what,” I teased her.

“No I do not, or I would not be asking.”

“It’s like that movie, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.”

She growled at me. “I’m gonna hit you.”

I smiled bigger and braced for the smack with her pen.

“You and I both know that a man for me is out of the question,” she assured me, making my knuckles sting where she hit them with the pen. “I won’t be—”

“Don’t say that,” I told her, reaching into the breast pocket of my coat. Gabriel had given me money, which had shortened the number of places I’d had to go. Not having to stop at the bank had been nice. I had separated the cash out in the car on my way over. “Here, this is for your trip and for the mortgage payment this month.”

She took the envelope and looked inside. “Trevan.” Her head snapped up, her dark brown eyes on mine. “There’s twenty-five hundred dollars here.”

“I know, but you might need to get Aunt Janet stuff, and you need to pay the mortgage, like I said. I was gonna come see you tonight, but my plans changed, so this is better. I wanted to hit you up before you left.”

“Honey, you have a restaurant to save up for and—”

“I know, Mom, but you need things too.”

She nodded. “Thank you, baby, this helps, and now I don’t have to owe Aunt Janet for the plane ticket. I felt bad about that.”