Payback: The Return of C.R.E.A.M. by Solomon Jones

Author:Solomon Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

Karima was barely listening as Lynch talked about the investigation on the drive to Center City. She occasionally acknowledged a question with a grunt or a nod, but she hadn’t heard anything he’d said from the time the boy had approached her with the note.

Only when Lynch pulled the car into the parking lot of police headquarters did she begin to notice her surroundings, and even then, it was only because of the memories that the place brought back.

She still remembered the day she was released from her first stint in prison. Duane had met her in that parking lot in a cherry-red Mercedes, leaning back in the cream-colored leather driver’s seat with his lips fixed in a grin.

His eyes were intense, strong, and observant—as dangerous as they were gentle. That day, she knew that she could never let him go.

Duane Faison was six feet two inches of trouble, and when he smiled at her, the white of his teeth against his chocolate skin looked like sunshine to Karima’s weary eyes. He was her weakness. And Karima—the woman he’d come to know as Cream— was his weakness as well.

That day, she gave in to him after six months of telling herself she wouldn’t, and as the rain stretched out across the morning sky, she fell in love with him all over again.

A few days later, the man of her dreams died trying to protect her. Karima felt that she had no one to blame but herself.

“Karima,” Lynch said, his voice laced with concern. “Karima!”

She turned to face him.

“We’re here,” he said as he watched her tears streaming down. “Are you all right?”

She wiped her face quickly. “Yes,” she said with a tense grin. “Just memories, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

“Your mother was a good woman,” Lynch said.

She nodded and pursed her lips, unwilling to tell him the real source of her tears.

Lynch sat there for a moment, looking at her. The tears made her seem more vulnerable, which made her face even lovelier.

Karima looked straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge his stare in the hope that he would stop.

He didn’t.

Sensing the unbridled desire in his eyes, Karima began to grow angry. At herself. At Lynch. At life.

Suddenly, she turned to him. “Why?”

Lynch was unsure how to respond. “What do you mean, why?”

“You keep trying to say you want me without saying it,” she said bluntly. “I’m wondering why.”

“I—I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing,” he said, looking out his tinted windows as police officers and civilian workers walked in and out of police headquarters. “I guess I don’t know why.”

“I don’t know, either,” Karima said, the grief and anger evident in her voice. “I’ll tell you what I do know, though. My mother’s dead, my man is dead, and all I’m getting from you is some bullshit about how you want me to help you with the case.”

“I do want you to help me with the case,” Lynch said, more to convince himself than Karima.

“No, you don’t!” she said, her tone heated.

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