Read Online Beg Me by Lisa Lawrence - Free Book Online Page A

out of how much it helped him.”
    “Right, but why? Helped him with what?”
    “He didn’t tell me that.”
    I looked at him in disbelief, and he insisted quietly, “He didn’t!”
    “Can you read French?”
    “Hell, no! I sell a few foreign titles because we get people walking in here from Rwanda, Algeria, Cameroon. Every so often I get a few white European tourists and a few Asians, so I carry some Indian novels, Asian history. You’ve looked through the store, Teresa. It’s only two shelves for that stuff. I go by titles and catalogs.”
    “He must have thought it was pretty important,” I thought aloud.
    “Well, he didn’t explain—I think maybe he was trying to protect me. He knew I wanted to stay out. And he was just as determined to win Anna back. He said he could bring the whole group of these psychos—his word, not mine—crashing down. I wished him luck but doubted he could pull it off.”
    “Well, how did
you
get out?”
    “Aw, nothing dramatic. I sort of ‘weaned’ myself from them. I left them the impression I didn’t know anything about what else they were doing—and I didn’t
want
to know. And I stopped coming around so much. I said the bookstore needed me. I was neglecting my business. It’s far easier for a guy than a girl.”
    “Better to have a high ratio of girls to guys, eh?”
    “Actually, yeah.”
    I remembered what Jeff Lee had told me secondhand from Craig Padmore. How did he put it?
The group thinks black men are the sexual supreme, and they have to learn how to dominate women as the first step to taking back family power and financial power.
I asked Oliver if this was accurate.
    “That’s pretty close,” he said, looking embarrassed at the sexism.
    “So what else
are
they into?” I asked.
    “Straight up, I don’t exactly know. Really. But it’s got to be criminal—I just don’t know the specifics. They’re sitting on major real estate, and they’ve got cash to burn. I pretended everything was aboveboard for a long time—too long. And then I just couldn’t stand not knowing and wanting too badly to know, knowing it might be dangerous to go looking. So I up and left.”
    I didn’t say anything for what felt like close to a full minute.
    “No, you didn’t.”
    He crinkled his brow, staring at me in mild wonder that I should contradict him like this. But he wasn’t making a denial.
    “I saw pictures of how Anna was tied up, how she let herself be tied up,” I told him. “You go to dark places doing this stuff, don’t you, Oliver? It must get pretty wild.”
    I was conscious all of a sudden of how he’d slumped against the desk, half out of the light of the one naked bulb. I couldn’t see his eyes anymore. “What do you know about it?” he croaked.
    “Nothing,” I said softly. “But I’ve seen it in your face. You’re haunted.”
    “Yes…”
    “You did things with those people, and after some time you knew what they were capable of. And you didn’t like that you might be capable of it too. So you left.”
    “Yes.”
    “You still have a conscience, Oliver. We were both friends to Anna.
They
killed her. They killed Padmore. Help me bring them down.”
    “No—fucking—way. You’re nuts! You’re gonna get yourself killed and me too if I keep listening to this shit. Go home. I don’t know what you’ve pulled off in England, but this is America, Teresa. Most of us wake up every morning to a goddamn war zone anyway, and—”
    “Quit it!” I said, losing patience. “Just quit it, will you? I have been in real war zones in Sudan, Oliver. I’ve had to run for my life in Chicago. I nearly got my head shot off in Bangkok—and I wasn’t even looking for trouble then! I’ve had militia soldiers shove rifles point-blank in my face, and I once talked my way out of a nasty shakedown in Tunis. I’m telling you, Anna’s dead, they’re responsible, and I
need your help.
Now will you please tell me about them?”
    He came back into the light and