Dirty Kiss (11 page)

Somewhere inside an apartment, a small dog yapped continuously, the sound bouncing off the maze of buildings. Nearby, a man screamed in Spanish for someone to shut up. I wasn’t sure if it was the dog he was talking to or someone else only he could see.

Jin-Sang lived in an upstairs apartment, located as far from the pool and where I parked as possible while still remaining in the same complex. Sweat stuck my shirt to my back, and even though night was close by, the oppressive heat of the day refused to give up its grip on the city. The whine of an air conditioner echoed from the apartment beneath Jin-Sang’s, its rattle sounding its furious charge as it battled the afternoon sun.

A car parked in the space marked for Jin-Sang’s apartment stopped me dead in my tracks. It was an older white Explorer, the same one I’d seen parked in front of the Kims’ house. The interior of the SUV was nearly spotless, just a few pieces of paper on the front passenger seat, nothing to tell me who owned it.

Still, I had a good idea about who owned the Explorer.

I tried to be as quiet as I could, climbing up the cement steps to the apartment. With any luck, I would be able to overhear them through the door. Places like these didn’t invest in heavy sound-blocking doors. Tenants were usually lucky if there was a peephole to look through.

There was a sliver of a shadow along the seam of the door. It was open a crack, nearly wide enough to stick a few fingers through. The space wasn’t wide enough to allow any airflow through the apartment, and I could hear the air conditioner set into the wall straining to cool the open space. Stepping onto the landing between the two top-floor apartments, I glanced down the stairs to see if anyone was watching and slowly pushed the door open.

I smelled the blood before I saw anything. Nothing smells quite like cooking human blood on a sunny afternoon. Taking a deep breath, I stepped carefully into the apartment, and my stomach churned into a knot.

Splatter covered the wall by the front door, streaking the off-white paint with red. A couple of bullet holes punctured the drywall, exposing the framework underneath. I revised my opinion of the apartment’s construction. Whatever the shooter had used to kill his victim had left a huge mess, but the damage didn’t go through to the other side, or I would have spotted it when I walked up the stairs.

In my mind, the wall became brick, bleached from years of sun. It was night in a blink, a soft evening where my belly was full and I was looking forward to the taste of Rick’s mouth on mine. In an instant, it was gone, taken from me in a spray of blood and bone.

Closing my thoughts against the memory didn’t help. All it did was remind me of other things, the taste of Rick’s brain on my tongue and lips, then suddenly pain grinding through me as other shots deafened the air. I’d fallen, holding him… crying for him. Then the world folded in on me.

That night echoed around me, hidden in the blood and the afternoon light.

Two bodies lay on the living room floor, sprawled where they’d been shot. I didn’t recognize the one on his back, the remains of his face broken by a gunshot. Whatever hit him had taken out most of the right side of his skull, a flap of skin holding what looked like his ear sprawled on the carpet next to his body. I was careful to step around him. Pieces of bone were on the tile entryway, bits of his brain caught under the door, smeared when I’d opened it to go in.

I checked the one nearest the door. The carpet was matted with blood under his body. Whatever happened here hadn’t occurred too long ago. The bodily fluids were still liquid, and the telltale stink of his body releasing its remaining refuse had just started to smell the place up. Swallowing the bile at the back of my throat, I turned to the other man.

My fear choked me as I looked at the man lying facedown on the carpet. He was closer to the kitchen alcove, nearly hidden behind a thick-legged table. His features were hidden from me, but a pool of blood had leaked out of a wound I couldn’t see, spreading over the stained beige carpet. I didn’t want to touch the body, but my brain screamed to know if that was Jae-Min lying motionless and dead.

The black hair I’d wanted to run my hands through only yesterday clung to his neck, weighted down with blood. He’d fallen like a broken doll, legs cocked as if in mid-turn when some god had decided it was done with its toy and cut his strings. Crouching, I forced my heart to keep beating as I reached down to brush away the hair that had fallen forward and covered his face.

And I had to stop myself from sobbing like a girl when I saw Jae-Min’s beauty under the veil of black I’d pulled back.

My hands were sticky, the lines on my palms clotted with Jae’s drying blood. There was so much of it, leaking out of someplace that I couldn’t see. I was afraid to turn him over, afraid to touch him in case he fell apart when I held him. I wasn’t going to let him die, cold and untouched.

He was warm to the touch, too warm it seemed, even taking into account the sweltering heat of the apartment. A flush colored his pale skin, a blush of pink across his high cheekbone, and then his mouth moved, giving me a start. Jae-Min moaned softly, and his breath skittered over my fingers. My chest began to thump again as my blood moved through my veins again.

“Don’t move,” I said, reaching for my cell phone. “Stay where you are, Jae. I’ve got to call the paramedics.”

He either couldn’t hear me or was too stubborn to listen to common sense, because the first thing Jae did was shift his body and try to get up. Pushing himself onto his hands, Jae’s eyes were unfocused as he blinked, unable to see me or his surroundings. Gagging, he choked on the thread of vomit that dribbled from his mouth, retching violently.

“Cole?” It was too much to be elated that he knew who I was, but I took what I could get. It was followed by some Korean that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t rational. I’d just met him, but hearing him croak my name and maybe even swear at me was a relief.

“What part of ‘don’t move’ didn’t you hear?” Moving my arm underneath him, I held Jae close when he reached for me again. Resting his head on my jeans, he lay still enough for me to check for where he’d been hit.

Dried blood closed up the tear in his scalp where a bullet had torn past his head. Hidden under his hair, a large lump had formed on his temple, probably from hitting his head either on the heavy wood table I’d found him near or the kitchen counter. Either way, I was guessing he’d been knocked out and now was suffering from a concussion.

Someone answered the phone, and I went into automatic, dumping out information. Jae shivered, his shock setting in. I’d have to find something to wrap him in if they were too far out. I didn’t want to risk him falling unconscious as we waited.

“Baby, stay still.” I froze, hearing that word come from my mouth. Whatever my brain was cooking up, it was going to have to stop. Jae-Min Kim was the last person I’d want to get involved with. “I need you to stay still until someone comes to look at you.”

I was firm on that resolution until his lashes fluttered open and his dark-honey eyes found my face. He didn’t smile, not really, but a ghost of something tugged at the corners of his full mouth, and Jae relaxed against me, letting me hold him up.

“Cole, Jin-Sang… is he okay?” Jae-Min shifted, trying to turn around. His back was to Jin-Sang’s corpse, and I wanted to keep it that way. I should have backed out of the apartment as soon as I’d seen them lying there, but I hadn’t. There was going to be hell to pay, but I was willing to take it. The warmth on my leg was enough to make me feel good about that decision.

“Don’t look, Jae. You don’t need to look.” If he was going to talk to me, I should keep him focused on what had happened while it was fresh. “Did you see who did this?”

“Someone came out from the bedroom. I didn’t know they were there.” He flinched, and his hands grabbed at my thighs. Pain jerked at his mouth, peeling back another layer of his carefully controlled emotions. He was afraid and hurt, biting at his lips to not cry out. It was the face of a man who had no one around him to console him, beating back any sign of vulnerability. I knew that face. I’d worn that face too many times to count.

“It’s okay, honey.” His shoulder blades dug into my arm when I cradled him. “Try to keep awake.”

“Jin-Sang’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Don’t think about that right now, Jae,” I said. Something hit me, hard between the eyes. Looking down at him, I searched for any flinch across his features when I asked, “Do you love him?”

If he answered yes, it would break me. His maybe-lover was splattered across the apartment walls and floor, and I knew how that felt. Life would be filled with guilt and what-ifs. Nothing good ever came from what-ifs.

And if he said no, then I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had a feeling that it would untangle the sour knot resting in my chest.

“No.” His voice was soft and rough. “Not Jin-Sang. Never him. I came here to get him to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?” That was more of a shock than finding Jin-Sang dead.

“I wanted him to tell you about Hyun-Shik.” The sound of sirens bounced around outside, coming through the open door. “I needed to talk to you again.”

“Yeah?” It seemed disrespectful to feel elation hearing Jae say that, especially as we sat in blood and with Jin-Sang’s dead body nearby. Voices echoed in the stairwell, and I called out to the paramedics coming up to the apartment.

“Yeah.” He touched me, running his fingers along the inside of my thigh. A medic headed straight over to Jae, and I moved away, sliding him onto the flat carrying board they’d brought up with them. He grabbed at my hand, snagging my fingers and holding on tight. “Don’t go anywhere, Cole.”

“No problem,” I said. Even with the medic glaring at me with his disapproving eyes, I wasn’t going to go anywhere. “Won’t let you go. Promise.”

“Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t mind baby. It’s nice.” Yelping, he jerked when the medic stuck him with a needle. Pain shot up my wrist, his fingers digging into my forearm. “But don’t call me honey. That’s my mom’s dog’s name.”

“
Yeah
, how do you spell that, again?”

The detective had taken my name three times now. I wasn’t sure if he was singularly stupid or just giving me a hard time. Spelling it again, I enunciated each letter until I was certain he’d gotten it right. The sun had set, but there was enough glare from the parking lot lights that his forehead bounced a sheen back at me.

Jin-Sang’s body was still upstairs, people walking about his apartment and wondering at his lifestyle. Our hands and clothes had been tested for gunpowder residue before Jae was hauled into the back of a waiting ambulance. So far, from the heated mumbling I could hear coming from the paramedic working on him, things weren’t going well. I wanted to commiserate. Things generally didn’t seem to go well when Jae-Min Kim was involved.

“McGinnis, Cole.” He stopped writing, looking up at me, realization dawning on him. “You’re the one that got shot. You worked a house up from here, didn’t you?”

“I’m working here, too,” I replied. My attention drifted to where the medics were working on Jae. They’d moved us downstairs, closing the apartment off to wait for forensics and whoever else wanted to stomp over Jin-Sang’s cooling body. “I do private investigations.”