The Witness (Miami Private Security #4)

29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Michael

I t was like someone flipped a switch inside Sabrina. One moment tears, the next she pulled away from me. She used the cuff of her shirt to dry her eyes and stood tall. She nodded a thank you to me and slowly spun to reassess the damage. This time it was different, her expression calm, eyes narrowed and calculating.

I shoved my hands into my pockets, feeling more like a bodyguard than a boyfriend. Was I a boyfriend? At my age, the title didn’t sit right. I sure as shit was too old and too big to be a boy, and the things we’d done in Cuba were so far beyond friendly, it was laughable. The title had never appealed; I’d just dated someone.

I used the toe of my boot to push a chunk of broken plaster out of the walkway. Despite the damage from the gunfire, the place was beautiful. Marble and raw stone in a million different shades of taupe, gray, and cream covered most surfaces. The coldness of the stone was interrupted by warm mid-tone wood details like the front of the bar and a wall of shelves.

A feature wall with emerald green, geometric-patterned wallpaper had sustained some of the worst damage. Large chunks of plaster and ribbons of fancy wallpaper hung in tatters.

“I think the front glass will be the simplest and most important fix, don’t you?”

I turned to look at the plywood sheets. “That’s a lot of glass.”

“Yes, but glass is glass. It's not Italian marble or Spanish tile or hand-painted wallpaper from England. So, it's going to be the easy fix.”

Nodding, I followed behind her, not sure if she was right or wrong. I was a handy guy; I’d wrenched on my bike for years, but this was luxury commercial construction.

“Let’s see the rest.” She walked deeper into the restaurant’s dining room.

As we walked, she got out her cell phone and flipped on the flashlight. I did the same. With the windows boarded up and the power off, it was dark in the space. The dining room was very much still a work in progress. The frames of half-constructed banquet seats lined one wall, and decorative overhead beams lay on the floor waiting to be installed.

“It looks like the front took the brunt of the damage.” I spun my light up toward the plain, drywall ceiling.

“Other than that.” She pointed the beam of her light at a scorch mark on a wall where a fire had briefly burned. A couple of other burned patches dotted the far wall.

“I think our Smith Agency guys put the fires out.”

“I owe them. If it had gotten going, Viande would be a total loss.” She maneuvered past some construction supplies and through a doorframe at the back of the dining room.

Her kitchen looked like it wasn’t finished, but it also wasn’t damaged.

“All the missing appliances, that’s how it is supposed to be?”

“Not ultimately, but yes, it’s expected. My appliance package was delayed. A problem with the trucking company scheduled to deliver them. It got pushed back to the new year. I’m thankful for it now. No stoves, no working gas lines.” She handed me a big push broom that leaned on a wall and took an oversized metal shovel for herself. In the dining room, we each took a handle of a big red garbage can and carried it into the bar area between us.

It was hard for me to keep my big mouth shut as we walked back through the mess. I wanted to hold her hand and tell her it was all going to be alright. But any idiot could see that may or may not be true. And her ramrod straight spine and determined steps didn’t make me think she needed platitudes.

“If you want to start sweeping, I’m going to call a few people.”

I was grateful to be put to work, even if it was manual labor. I bent to my task, making neat piles of broken glass and drywall I scooped into the red garbage can while she talked on her cell.

Her tone was the same sharp, commanding one that I’d heard her use when she wanted to be taken seriously. I thought of it as her professional voice. Quinn had an ultra-polite one she reserved for client phone calls. Sabrina had one that she used when she encountered bullshit.

Her contractor and insurance company were the first calls. Then the power company about reestablishing temporary power and a supplier of high-end marble and custom wallpaper. None sounded like they went great. Christmas was less than a week away, and the holidays were an impossible time to get anything done, especially construction.

A knock on the makeshift door drew my attention. I flipped up the hem of my shirt to expose my weapon for easy access before I cautiously opened the door to a man I’d never seen before. He carried a load of plastic bags from a chain hardware store. His hat had the logo for one of those app-based delivery services. I tugged my shirt back over the gun before I freaked him out.

“Should I bring all this inside? I have another load in my car and I’m double parked.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder at his illegally parked vehicle.

“Out there is fine. We’ll bring it inside,” Sabrina called from behind me.

When had she put this order together? It included basics like bottled water and a new broom with a real dustpan and shit I’d never have thought of, like two collapsible mini dumpsters for all the debris and a string of battery-powered emergency lights.

I propped open the door and started carrying in the stuff. My head raced with thoughts of what would make me more helpful. Shit, I should have offered to go to the store. I was feeling less useful every minute, and I didn’t like it at all. Helping was what I did.

“Where do you want it?” I ripped open the plastic packaging of the fabric dumpster.

She spun, considered her options, and pointed like a general commanding her troops. Zero hesitation and never second-guessing her choice.

A few minutes later, she was shoulder to shoulder with me. Sweeping, collecting debris, and prying bullets from the drywall. I enjoyed working with her on one level, but her attitude completely weirded another part of me out. She’d had her breakdown and now was balls to the wall handling the situation. I’d met women like her before, but they were rare, and I had no fucking clue how to handle it.

Kira, Quinn, and Sydney were all the same, and I worked with them every day, so… yeah, no big deal. I’d figure this out. Barring that, I could ask Smith, my badass boss, or better yet, Leck, the self-made billionaire, for advice on being with a woman like their wives. The thought made me feel inadequate on a visceral level.

“Knock! Knock!” Simon called, jerking the plywood door open for his install team.

“Welcome to my mess.” Sabrina tried to sound cheerful, but there was a brittle quality to her forced laughter that grated on my ear. She was damn good at putting on a brave face, but the stress was getting to her.

I opened a water bottle and gave it to Sabrina. “Here. Take a break. I can show Simon and the team the electrical panel and the rest of the space.”

She protested but relented when one of Simon’s guys toed a turned-over bucket toward her as a makeshift chair. She sat with a sigh, bending forward and bracing her elbows on her knees, rubbing her temples.

I hated walking away from her but knew she’d never take a break with all of us standing around, so I ushered everyone out of the bar area and back to where they would get started.

As we walked, I filled them in on the power situation and Simon said he’d already had a plan for a battery-operated system until Florida Power and Light restored the electricity that the fire department had ordered turned off.

“So how’s she doing?” Simon asked.

He and I stood in the back alley. We were deciding where to put the camera and alarm sensors on the exterior of the building.

“She is the most organized, determined, capable woman I’ve ever met.” I shook my head in astonishment.

“You have worked with Quinn for a decade. Are you sure you want to make that statement?”

“Yes. No. Fuck.” I wanted to rip my hair out, but it was so short now I couldn’t grab enough to get the leverage.

“So you’re sleeping with her and a little scared of her. Welcome to my life.” He snort laughed.

Simon was a nerd, and we’d all joked with him about his awkward way with women. I wasn’t loving that when he finally got even for our teasing, it was at my expense.

“Scared of her and for her. I want her to let me help.”

“You ever been with a single mom?”

“Yeah.”

“No, not the sad, helpless ones you go out with. The ones like my mom—battle-hardened. She raised three boys in Overtown alone. This was back when Overtown was Miami’s own war zone. She took no shit from us or the gangbangers that ran our neighborhood. I remember my mom chasing off some asshole that was trying to recruit my older brother to the gang with nothing but an old metal baseball bat. The guy had a gun and Mom only had her attitude. Afterward, she smacked my brother upside the head, made us dinner, and finished the laundry. That night when she thought we were all asleep, I saw her on the couch crying into a glass of cheap wine.” He shrugged and attached a new battery to his electric drill, getting ready to mount the camera.

“What did you do?” I knew Simon came from the rough part of the city and had paid for school with a stint in the army and academic scholarships. I also knew he and his brothers had recently sent her on an all-expenses-paid cruise to Alaska.

“Made sure I was never the reason she cried.” He shrugged, like his answer was obvious. “That’s the thing with a woman like my mom or Quinn, or Sabrina. You add value, or you get the fuck out of their way.”