Page 18 of The Kings of Kearny

The bullshit started the second we stepped inside.

A large man in a security uniform rose from a chair in the entryway and blocked our path, his feet braced wide like he was facing down a charge. He had light black skin, a shaved head, and the kind of build that made me think that he could literally throw us out of there. His name was Hank. I’d chatted with him on several occasions, usually when there was a line of visitors waiting to get checked in. He was an ex-cop who worked the security detail here. Magnolia Hills mostly kept him and a few other officers around to help out with unruly patients. It wasn’t uncommon for people with dementia to become violent, and sometimes even the large male orderlies on staff needed another helping set of hands.

Hank had only ever been kind to me, but now he did nothing to mask his open look of disgust as he stared Jakob down.

I squeezed Jakob’s hand, praying that he’d let me deal with this. “Hi, Hank.”

“You can’t come in here,” he said, still staring at Jakob.

The biker tensed beside me, his grip tightening.

Shit.

I pulled my hand free before he bruised my fingers and stepped in front of him, hoping to defuse the situation. “Hank, this is my boyfriend. He’s not here to start any trouble. I only wanted him to meet my gran.”

Hank’s gaze finally dropped to me, and I saw recognition in his eyes. “You’re dating a King, Krista?”

I nodded. “I work at Charley’s, remember?”

He frowned. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

“No. Look, I promise he won’t be a problem. I just want him to meet Gran while she’s still”—I took a deep breath and put a little wobble into my voice—“you know, my gran.”

His expression softened. He knew my grandmother had Alzheimer’s and that her short-term memory was already slipping. I might have felt like an asshole for playing this card and intentionally manipulating him, but if it kept Gran and her new friends safe from some wannabe drug dealer, I’d do this and worse and pray for forgiveness later.

Hank’s gaze lifted back to Jakob. His expression hardened. “You step a toe out of line, and I’ll shoot you,” he said, resting his palm on the butt of the gun strapped to his waist.

Jakob didn’t say anything, but the hard jerk of his chin could have been a nod of assent.

I waited for a tense moment as Hank eyed him, then let out a shaky breath when he finally stepped aside and let us in. I could tell from the look on his face that our days of friendly banter while I waited to see Gran were over. As an ex-cop, it made sense that he hated the Kings—they got away with murder in this town, if some of the uglier rumors I’d heard were true—but I couldn’t keep a little pang of regret from darkening my mood as we left the entryway behind us.

Thankfully the reception area was relatively clear. There were only two other sets of visitors ahead of us, waiting to get in: three older Latino men, and a young couple that looked to be of eastern Asian descent with two rambunctious kids running circles around them. The woman turned when she heard Jakob’s boots clomping over the marble, and the friendly smile fled from her face when she caught sight of him. She leaned in and whispered something to her husband as we approached. He glanced back and then grabbed his kids, keeping them close.

If Jakob’s feelings were hurt, it didn’t show. He stared at the room around us with a look of utter boredom, like he didn’t want to be here. No one watching from a distance would notice the focus in his eyes, the way they seemed to take in every detail. A door opened to our right, and he turned to track the man who strode out of it. Something about how focused Jakob was on him had me turning my head too.

The man was white and looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. The navy suit he wore fit him like a glove, revealing broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He had the kind of good looks that reminded me of an old-school Abercrombie poster. His brown hair was styled into a crew cut. The deep golden color of his skin spoke of a life led outside. He looked young, successful, and supremely confident.

His dark gaze scanned the room as he walked, pausing over Jakob briefly and then landing on me. I was an attractive woman. I was used to being checked out. God, the first week I worked at Charley’s, I got hit on more times than I could count. This man looked at me with interest, but it was different than idle appreciation. His gaze roved over me almost clinically, as if checking my features against some sort of internal database. He must have been a doctor.

A heartbeat later, he pulled his gaze off me and disappeared into another door. He didn’t reemerge, but Jakob kept his attention fixed in that direction like a sight hound. Had he recognized that guy? There was no way to ask him without someone overhearing. Between the cavernous space and the marble beneath our feet, this room had the kind of acoustics most theaters would kill for. Every sound was amplified, even the hushed whispers of the couple ahead of us.

Several awkward minutes later, we stepped up to the front desk. The white woman behind it was even taller than me and sturdily built. In her early forties, her mousy brown hair was pulled up into the same no-nonsense bun she always wore it in. Her hazel eyes were sharp behind her thick-framed glasses as she looked between Jakob and me.

I placed my hands on the counter and smiled, trying to look nonthreatening. “Hey, Annie.”

She jerked her head at Jakob. “He can’t come in here.”

I repeated the same sob story that I’d told Hank, but unfortunately, she was immune to my pretty face and crocodile tears.

“Last time we let one of them in, we ended up with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of damage,” she said, her chin set in a stubborn line.

Okay, why the hell hadn’t that shown up in my Google search? Had Daniel King done something to smooth it over or cover it up?

Jakob stepped beside me and slid two crisp hundred-dollar bills over the counter toward Annie. “I won’t be a problem.”

She eyed his hand for a second and then darted a glance around the room. No one else was in line behind us, thank God, or she might not have been tempted to take the bribe. Finally, looking for all the world like she didn’t want to, she reached out and grabbed the bills.

“You better not be,” she said.

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