All of Nothing Read online

Jax paused with his hand on the handle of the door leading outside.

  A young black boy wore black sweats and a stained NBA t-shirt two sizes too big. His wide brown eyes flashed with amusement, and his grin revealed white, even teeth. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least he was spending the night in a homeless shelter.

  “What’s up?”

  “I heard you talking to Miss Hayley. You want to find Raven.”

  Jax hunkered to his haunches. “Yeah, I do.”

  The boy’s eyes grew concerned. “Are you gonna hurt her when you find her? One time she came here, and she didn’t look so good. Sometimes she plays checkers with me, but Mama wouldn’t let me see her. She cried a lot. Mama said a mean man hurt her, and for me not to grow up like that.”

  Hurting Raven hadn’t been on his radar, and with all his might, he tamped down the dread knowing someone had. Jax shook his head, honesty ringing in his voice. “No. I just need her to sign something for me. That’s all. And your mama’s right. It takes more courage to be nice than to be mean.”

  The kid bobbed his head. “I believe you. I know where she crashes sometimes, but you have to promise you won’t tell. You got any cash?”

  Jax was used to being asked for money. That’s just the way it was when you were rich. But this kid asking made him chuckle instead of growl. Who could resist a kid looking out for himself?

  “How much you looking for?” Jax asked, pulling his wallet out of his pocket.

  The boy tilted his head, considering.

  Jax knew the look. The kid wanted to get as much as he could but didn’t want to ask for so much he came away with nothing. He was willing to pay for something useful, and he pulled out a hundred dollar bill.

  “How about this?” he asked.

  The boy’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. He reached out his hand.

  “No can do,” Jax said, pulling the bill away. “Info first.”

  “Raven stays at her friend Elle’s sometimes. I heard her talking to Mama about it. Elle has a hair shop on Z Avenue.” His face fell. “I don’t know how to get there, though.”

  “Lucky for you, I do,” Jax murmured.

  The boy held out his hand again and dropped it when Jax put the bill between his teeth and reached for his wallet.

  “You change your mind, mister?” the kid asked, scuffing his toe on the faded linoleum.

  Jax pulled out another hundred dollar bill. “No.” He held up the two bills in each hand. “One for you, and one for your mama, okay?”

  The boy grinned in excitement.

  “Promise.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die! Thanks, mister! Remember, don’t tell on me!”

  The boy ran away, the bills clutched in his fists.

  Jax chuckled, but the fact he had probably just given that kid more money than he or his mama had seen in a long time made his smile fade.

  As he turned to the door, a donation box bolted to the wall, secured with a large deadbolt lock caught his eye.

  Before he left the building, Jax shoved a check written out for fifty thousand dollars into the slot.

  He thought nothing of it; he’d claim it as a charity donation on his taxes.

  Z Avenue wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  Drug deals took place in plain sight. Hookers claimed corners and were a permanent fixture in that part of town. Stolen electronics were sold out of plain white vans and the trunks of beat up cars. Gas station attendants were protected by bulletproof glass boxes. Bar fights were a regular occurrence because the bartenders couldn’t be interrupted stealing from the registers.

  Nobody dared venture into that part of town unless they belonged.

  Jax, dressed in his suit and overcoat, being driven by a chauffeur in a spotless black Mercedes, didn’t.

  He could just imagine how the street would look in the summer at this time of evening. But now it was February, and the sun took what little warmth it had brought to the day while it sank below the hazy chilled horizon. Not a soul lingered on the frozen sidewalk.

  “Don’t stay here,” Jax told his driver before opening the car’s door. “Give me twenty minutes, and then come back. It won’t take me longer than that to know if I’ll find what I need.”

  “Yes, Mr. Brooks,” the driver said, meeting Jax’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Jax gritted his teeth against the cold air as he opened the door.

  He wouldn’t have bothered if there hadn’t been any lights on in the grimy, rundown salon, but there was one light cutting through the darkness of the shop. He bowed his head against the frigid air trying to find a way into his jacket and pulled open the heavy glass door decorated with a pair of scissors and the words Jagged Edge. The letters were peeling from the glass, the residue of the sticky backs outlining the missing letters.

  A woman swept hair off the dirty linoleum floor, and she glared at him. “We’re closed.”

  Her platinum blonde hair was shaved on one side of her head, the other side hung past her ear, her bangs hiding her face.

  Earrings ran up and down her exposed ear, and where the earrings stopped, a tattoo began, snaking down her neck from behind her ear, disappearing into a shabby tank top she wore under a stained white apron.

  “Are you the owner?” Jax asked, not letting the pinch of her mouth, or the anger in her eyes, deter him from finding out what he needed to know.

  “Who wants to know? You a cop?”

  Jax stepped deeper into the salon. The woman ran a real business . . . or tried to. The smell of chemicals floated through the air; she’d recently given someone a permanent. And the fact that she was sweeping up hair indicated she’d had a customer or two not that long ago.

  He had to give credit where credit was due. It would be next to impossible to try to run any kind of business on Z Avenue. How many times did she get robbed? By the look of her, she had a gun close by, and knew how to use it.

  “No, I’m not a cop. I’m looking for someone.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” the woman clipped, bending to sweep the hair into a dustpan.

  “I’m looking for a Raven Grey,” he said, and zeroed in on her expression.

  The woman pursed her lips and blinked at the floor. “Don’t know her.”

  Yes, you do.

  Jax waited her out.

  She emptied the dustpan and secured it to the broom’s handle. After storing it in a closet in the back of the room, she met his eyes. “What do ya want her for? A quick fuck? You slummin’?”

  Jax hated thinking about Raven that way. He’d been tempted, and he’d given in. Raven in a wedding dress had made him feel things he hadn’t felt before, and he’d succumbed to those desires before he could tell himself no.

  But it hadn’t been because he’d wanted to see what slumming was like. It had been the look in her eyes after downing the contents of his flask. It had been the way she’d looked in all the satin and lace. It had been because he knew he could, and that little amount of power over her had made him harder than he’d ever been in his life.

  “I don’t need to slum.”

  “Then I don’t know what you’d need her for. If I knew her,” she tacked on, realizing her mistake.

  Jax leaned against a small desk the woman used to check in customers. He hadn’t wandered too far into the little shop; he didn’t want to spook her. Cops couldn’t be bothered to come out this way, especially in the cold, but he didn’t want to take the chance she would push a panic button. Maybe it wouldn’t call the cops. Maybe she had a huge hulk of a husband upstairs above the salon pounding back beer and gobbling pizza who wouldn’t give a shit about beating the fuck out of him.

  “If you’re her friend, perhaps she told you about something that happened about three years ago. Standing in for a bride?”

  Anyone else would have missed it, but Jax caught the imperceptible widening of her eyes.

  Raven had spilled her guts.

  The kid deserved another hundred.

 
Jax wasn’t sure he would have made it this far without the tip.

  The woman took a pack of smokes from the pocket of her apron and lit one up. She stared at him while she took a long drag. After she blew out a lungful of bluish-white smoke, she crossed her arms over her non-existent breasts. Tilting her chin, she said, “Maybe. What of it?”

  “She signed the certificate with her real name. We’ve been married on paper for the last three years. I’m engaged and need to apply for another marriage license. I need to find Raven to divorce her.”

  The woman laughed, the sound coming out dry and hoarse like the smoker she was.

  Jax cleared his throat, suddenly wishing for a glass of water. Or three fingers of good scotch.

  “Look at you. Your jacket cost more than what I make in a year.”

  Jax shoved his hands into the pockets of said jacket. A jacket he would need to send to the dry cleaners after standing in this woman’s smoke.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “She’s not brave enough to take you for everything you’ve got. And even if she was, she’d never be able to afford a lawyer that could take on yours.”

  Jax had hoped he’d get out of this situation pain free. But that wasn’t to be the case. Now he’d have to decide how much a divorce from Raven was worth to him.

  He thought of the fury on Lucia’s face if he told her he couldn’t marry her on the date they’d decided. A divorce from Raven was worth a lot. More than he’d ever admit to this woman.

  “Will you tell me where she is if I promise to take care of her?”

  “Like you did last time?” she asked, then took another draw of her cigarette. “The two thousand you gave her is pocket change to a guy like you. And she didn’t get a chance to use it, either.” White smoke puffed out of her mouth.

  “What do you mean, she didn’t use it? What happened?”

  “She’s too trusting. She got ripped off one night at a shelter. They took every penny. It almost broke her. I never saw her so devastated. She had big plans for that cash.”

  Jax gritted his teeth. Raven getting beat up. Raven losing the money he’d given her. Jax fought against the feeling of responsibility that wiggled in the back of his heart. “You have my word that I’ll look out for her. Better than last time.”

  A full ashtray sat on the corner of the desk, doubling as a paperweight, and, snorting, she snuffed out her cigarette.

  She was close enough now Jax caught a whiff of a cheap perfume under the layers of cigarette smoke.

  Rubbing her face, she met his eyes.

  Jax was taken aback by the fatigue, despair, and loneliness that filled her eyes.

  “I don’t believe you, but the fact is, I’m worried about her, and right now, you’re the only one who can do anything about it. She hasn’t stopped by in a while, and in the cold, that’s not like her.” She jerked her head toward the back of the salon. “Sometimes she sleeps in my storage room.”

  “She spent a night at Heavenly Hands a week ago,” Jax offered. “It’s how I found you. I paid off a little kid to tell me how to find you.”

  Her mouth tightened. “Well, that was a week ago. If you were searching the homeless shelters, where else has she been?”

  Jax stared at the floor. “I don’t know. She could have been at any of them. No one would tell me anything.”

  “Then they haven’t seen her. Little kids aren’t the only ones who will take money in exchange for information, no matter how uppity and indignant those bitches pretend to be. Loyalty to Raven or their other clients don’t shut them up. They just didn’t have anything to tell you. I’ve had to stay in one or two, and they’re all scum suckers.”

  Jax rolled his shoulders. Her tone implied she lumped him in with the “scum suckers.”

  “Do you know where else she could go?”

  The woman sank wearily into the chair that sat behind the desk and rested her head in her hands. “There’re a bunch of abandoned apartment buildings along Pike. They were zoned for demolition a long time ago, but one of the buildings still has electricity and the temperature inside stays above freezing in the winter.” She looked at him, her upper lip curling. “Raven tries not to stay there—it’s dangerous for a woman to be alone in that building, and she knows she’s welcome here. God only knows what kind of situation she’s in right now.”

  “She’s your friend.”

  The woman stood, her hands on her hips. “What do you know about friends?”

  “I know enough you care. Do you want to come with me?” Jax asked, unnerved by her display of emotion. No one felt like that about him—not outside his family. He tried to remember a time when he had felt like that toward another person. Love. Care. Concern.

  Not since before the accident.

  “I can’t. I need to keep an eye on this place twenty-four/seven, or assholes will vandalize my shop quicker than shit.”

  Jax cocked his head. “If I give you money for helping me, you could relocate.”

  “Not everyone cares about money, Mr. Bigshot.”

  “That hasn’t been my experience,” Jax said smoothly, pulling out his checkbook. “Cash it, or not.” He ripped the check out of the book and handed it to her.

  Without taking her eyes from his, she tore it in two. “I don’t need your money. I’m here because I want to be. Just let me know, somehow, if you find her. I want to know if she’s okay.”

  A small pit at the bottom of his stomach began to grow.

  “Because you don’t think she is?”

  “Because after everything you told me, I know she’s not.”

  Chapter 3

  Looking for a homeless woman after dark in an abandoned apartment complex wasn’t the best idea Jax ever had, but it wasn’t the worst, either.

  His driver had been waiting at the curb when he’d come out of the Jagged Edge, and he hadn’t batted an eyelash when Jax asked him to drive to Pike Street.

  At first Jax wondered how he’d find which building the woman was talking about, but when his driver pulled onto Pike, the light shining from various windows made it clear which building still had power.

  “Stop up there,” he pointed over the seat toward the building. It wasn’t a high rise, and Jax thanked God, but it would still take time to search, especially if the people inside took an instant dislike to him and refused to help him.

  His driver idled at the snow-covered curb, and Jax studied the gray crumbling complex before he spoke. “I’ll need you to wait.” Jax hated asking that of him, but he had little choice, and he hoped it wouldn’t take him long. He had the divorce papers his attorney had hastily drawn up in his overcoat’s inside pocket, and all he needed was a signature.

  He didn’t plan on giving Raven any more cash; it was her own damn fault she hadn’t kept a better eye on the money he’d given her, and while he’d been touched the stylist at Jagged Edge cared about Raven, he did not. He certainly wasn’t going to double back and let her know any news. He could pass on the message to Raven her friend was concerned, and that would be that.

  “Do you need your gun, Mr. Brooks?”

  “No.”

  Jax was never far from his handgun, but since the accident he never carried it on his person. Being armed came with the security business, but he would never blithely carry a gun again.

  “But—”

  “No. If anything, it will give me a chance to practice my self-defense. My instructor is getting soft.”

  The driver flicked his eyes from Jax’s in the rearview mirror back to the black street. The streetlights had been shot out and the dim lights shining from the building did nothing to combat the complete dark of the winter night. “As you will, sir.”

  The front double glass doors were unlocked, and Jax walked into the lobby without incident. Broken mailboxes hung from the wall, and the carpet had been worn to less than threadbare many years ago.

  The hairstylist had been correct however, that it was at least above freezing, and
while Jax wouldn’t take off his coat, he could understand why this would feel like a safe haven for a person who had nowhere else to turn.

  The lobby was empty, and Jax hit the button for the elevator, just to see if anything would happen. He wasn’t surprised when nothing did, though he wouldn’t have ridden in it anyway.

  Even if he’d had a death wish, plummeting to his grave in a malfunctioning elevator was not the way he wanted to go.

  But that did mean he’d be searching a mid-rise building without a working elevator.

  He wouldn’t be able to do this all in one night. Jax should have went home and enlisted Erik’s help, and maybe a PI. But this was his last lead, and with the way Raven was known all over the city, it wasn’t too unrealistic to think she’d spend tomorrow somewhere else.

  Jax had to search as long as he could tonight. If she slipped through his fingers, he’d be back at square one.

  The hallway beyond the lobby on the first floor revealed little. Every apartment door was shut tight, and Jax heaved a sigh. Privacy must be hard to come by, and a chance to inhabit an empty apartment rent-free would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. But short of knocking on every single door, there wasn’t much else he could do to find her.

  He knocked on the wooden door of apartment one-oh-one.

  Nothing happened, and Jax rubbed his forehead in resignation.

  Anyone could be behind that door. Druggies on a high, blacked-out alcoholics, whores working over their johns. Or johns working over their whores.

  He didn’t pretend to be an expert at this kind of lifestyle, but working in security had shown him the underbelly of the city more often than he liked.

  Moving on, he knocked on one-oh-two, one-oh-three, and on.

  He didn’t get any results until apartment one-ten, when a scrawny old man dressed in six layers of smelly clothes opened the door in a drug-induced haze. He didn’t look coherent enough to answer the simplest of questions. But Jax tried anyway.

  “Do you know a Raven Grey?”

  “Wha’?” The old man swayed and leaned against the doorjamb.

  Jax should have brought Raven’s picture. It might have been easier to flash her photo than to keep describing the thin woman with black hair and colored streaks.