“The usual, lovely Lina?” Justice called from behind Café Rev’s counter when I walked in.
“Yes, please. Mind if my furry friend joins me?” I asked, holding up Piper in her pumpkin sweater. The dog sniffed the coffee-scented air and trembled at the excitement of the early morning rush.
Justice grinned. “Not a problem. I’ll make something extra special for Miss Piper.”
Of course the beloved barista already knew the dog’s name. And of course he knew my usual. I’d been going to the same café around the block from my town house for the past two years, and they still got my order and name wrong.
“Everything okay?” he asked me over the buzz of the busy café as I paid for my coffee.
I blinked. That definitely never happened in my coffee shop.
“Yeah. Sure. Totally fine,” I said.
It was a big, fat lie.
But I wasn’t about to explain to Justice that I was freaked out because there was something so irresistible about Nash Morgan that I was acting completely out of character around him. Snuggling. Confiding. Emotionally supportive. And I certainly wasn’t about to voice my concern that Lucian was about to ruin it all even though I wasn’t sure I wanted “it all” in the first place.
They had been friends for years, and if Lucian said I was bad news, Nash would listen.
I should be happy. Lucian’s interference would extricate me from a situation I didn’t know how to handle and let me focus on what I came here to do. I should be ecstatic. Instead, I felt like that time I’d insisted on going on that roller coaster after four shots of tequila in college.
“You sure? Because your face doesn’t say totally fine,” Justice pressed.
“My face and I are fine,” I promised. “I’m just…trying to work a few things out in my head.”
He grabbed a mug and twirled it around his finger by the handle. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is distract yourself and let the answer come to you.”
I threw a twenty in the tip jar. “Thanks, Justice.”
He winked. “Grab a seat. I’ll yell for you when it’s ready.”
I grabbed the first vacant table I saw and plopped down in the chair.
Justice was right. Nash wasn’t some operation to plan out and execute. He was a grown-ass man and he could make his own decisions. But he should probably make them with all the information. If I told him the truth and he still wanted to believe that I was bad news, then it was his loss. Not mine.
Then why did it feel like mine? The tiny voice niggled in my head. I wasn’t actually falling for the guy. Was I? Prior to this weekend, I’d drunk at a bar with him and patched him up after a shootout. We barely knew each other. This was just a crush. Nothing more.
“You look like you’re a million miles away,” Naomi said, appearing with several beverages.
“How much coffee do you drink in the morning?” I asked as she took the seat next to me.
“Two of these are yours,” she said. She slid a latte and a paper cup of whipped cream with Piper’s name written on it my way. “You didn’t hear Justice calling.”
Piper forgot to be terrified and stuck her snout into the whipped cream.
“How did you know Knox was the one?” I blurted out the question without even consciously thinking it.
But if Naomi was surprised by the question, she didn’t let on. “It was a feeling. Some kind of magic. A rightness, I guess. It definitely didn’t make any logical sense. On paper we couldn’t be more ill-suited to each other. But there was something so right about how it felt to be with him.”
Shit. That sounded…familiar.
I busied myself with a hit of caffeine.
“But you can’t just fall for someone over the course of a few days, can you?”
“Of course you can,” she scoffed.
I wished I’d gone to a bar instead of a café.
“But there are layers to it. You can fall head over heels for someone on the surface. You can find them attractive and exciting or, in Knox’s case, infuriating. And it can stop there. But the deeper you dig, the more pieces you see of that person, the further you can fall. That can happen fast too.”
I thought about our late-night confessions, the strange, fragile intimacy we’d built between us by trusting the other with things no one else knew. I wondered if it would shatter if I told him the full truth. Or was there an invisible strength in that kind of honesty?
“Or if you’re like me and Knox, it can take a chisel and a hammer before you get past the ‘You’re hot. Let’s have sex’ layer,” Naomi added.
“I like that layer,” I admitted.
“What’s not to like about that layer?” she teased.
“Can the deeper layers even compare to that?” I was only half joking.
She hit me with her full wattage grin. “Oh, honey. It just keeps getting better. The more you know and love and respect your partner, the more vulnerable you are together, the better everything gets. And I do mean everything.”
“That sounds…terrifying,” I decided.
“You’re not wrong,” she agreed. “Have I waited the appropriate amount of time before demanding to know who is making you feel these feelings?”
“This is all hypothetical.”
“Right. Because you’re not sitting there with Nash’s dog. And you and Nash didn’t almost set fire to my dining room table with the sparks flying between you two at dinner. And Knox didn’t throw a fit about Nash cornering you afterward.”
“Nothing wrong with your communication as a couple,” I said.
She stared me down, willing me to break, but I held fast. “Ugh. Fine,” she said. “But just know that if you do need to talk, hypothetically or otherwise, I’m here. And I’m rooting for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, stroking a hand over Piper’s wiry fur. “I appreciate that.”
“That’s what friends are for,” she said before glancing at her watch. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to go let Sloane talk me into using the money from the sale of my house for the good of the community since my husband-to-be absolutely refuses to let me pay for the wedding, the honeymoon, or Waylay’s college.”
“Why not save it?”
“I’m saving some of it. But I used an inheritance from my grandma for the down payment on that house, and it just feels right to invest that in the future of something I care about. Sloane says she has the perfect cause.” She picked up her gallon-sized coffee and stood. “Don’t forget about dress shopping!”
We said our goodbyes and I watched Naomi glide out the door into the chilly autumn morning.
I looked down at Piper. She had whipped cream on her doggy mustache. “I think I need to tell your dad the truth,” I said.
The dog cocked her head and made an uncomfortable amount of eye contact.
“Have any advice for me?” I asked.
Her pink tongue darted out and snagged the whipped cream on her snout.
If Lucian hadn’t managed to convince Nash that I was a scheming, manipulative femme fatale over breakfast, maybe I could tell him why I was there and that I was kinda, sorta into him over lunch.
“You know, even if he’s initially mad at me, I still have you,” I said to the dog. “Maybe I can hold you hostage and ransom you for his forgiveness.”
Piper sneezed whipped cream on the table. I took that as an affirmative sign, and as soon as I finished mopping up the mess, I fired off a text to him.
Me: Have time to grab lunch today? I have something I want to tell you.
I put the phone down and stared at the screen, willing three dots to appear. But none did.
He was probably busy. Or he’d already made up his mind that I was bad news and no amount of belated honesty would fix that. What was I even doing? I was here to do my damn job and figure out a way to stop making risky decisions.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath.
I picked up the phone again.
Me: Just realized I don’t have time for lunch so forget I said anything about it. I have some errands to run so I’ll drop Piper off with Mrs. Tweedy.
There. Good.
It was the smart move to end it all now. It didn’t matter what Nash thought of me. I wouldn’t be here long enough to deal with the consequences.
“Hello, lovely.” Tallulah, Justice’s wife, appeared holding a large tumbler of coffee and a pastry bag. “Just wanted to tell you if that sexy car of yours needs an oil change, bring it my way. I love American muscle.”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else,” I assured her.
She winked and left.
I froze with the mug halfway to my mouth.
Tallulah knew what kind of car I drove. I was part of a group text with fun, friendly women who seemed to be hell-bent on pulling me into their friend circle. The local café owner knew my name and how I liked my coffee. I had gym buddies, granted they were all members of AARP, but that wasn’t slowing them down on the dead lifts.
I glanced around me and recognized half a dozen faces.
I knew where to find all my favorite foods at the local grocery store and remembered to avoid Fourth Street between three and three thirty when school let out. I was in someone’s wedding. I was dog-sitting someone’s dog. I’d woken up two mornings in a row in bed with Nash.
Without me noticing it, Knockemout had sucked me into its gravitational field. And it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to break free. Whether I was brave enough to see what those other layers were like.
“Well, hell,” I muttered and picked up my phone again.
Me: Me again. Lunch is back on the table. Literally and metaphorically. I mean, if you’re available. Hope to talk soon.
“Oh my God. Hope to talk soon?” I dropped the phone and swiped both hands over my face. “What is wrong with me? What is this guy doing to me?”
Piper let out a little whimper. I looked at her. “Thank you for your feedback. I’m going to drop you off at Mrs. Tweedy’s so I can go talk to someone horrible.”
“Well, look who’s back.” Tina Witt looked awfully smug for a woman in a khaki prison jumpsuit.
The first time I’d met the woman, her resemblance to her twin sister, Naomi, was uncanny. It felt like I was meeting a literal evil twin. Only instead of a diabolical goatee, Tina sported the entitled attitude of a not-so-mastermind criminal.
“Tina,” I said, sitting across from her on the metal folding chair.
I’d been here twice before and left both times with big, fat nothing. Either Tina was holding on to some strange loyalty toward Duncan Hugo or she really didn’t know anything about, well…anything. Seeing as how she’d rolled on her ex to the feds, I was guessing it was the latter.
“I told you and your fed buddies fifty million times, I don’t know where Dunc is.”
It was time to try a new tactic. “I don’t work for the feds,” I told her.
Her eyes narrowed. “You said—”
“I said I was an investigator.”
“What the hell are you investigating if it ain’t where that deadbeat, brain-dead moron went?”
“I work for an insurance agency,” I explained.
“You trying to sell me some bullshit car warranty? I’m behind bars, bitch. You see me driving?”
It was clear who’d gotten all the brains in the womb. “I don’t sell insurance, Tina. I find insured things when they go missing.”
“Huh?”
“I’m like a bounty hunter, only instead of finding people, I find the things they stole. I think Duncan stole something that’s valuable to my client, and I think he stole it while he was plotting criminal world domination with you.”
“How valuable?”
It was on-brand for Tina not to care about the details, just the bottom line.
“To my client? Priceless. Market value? Half a million.”
Tina snorted. “Priceless as in a sentimental bullshit baggie of baby teeth? Never did understand that shit. The tooth fairy. Elf on the stool.”
I felt a twinge of sadness for Waylay and the way she’d been brought up. At least my parents had smothered me with love. An active disinterest would have done much more damage. Thank God for Naomi and Knox and their extended families. Waylay now had an army of loved ones at her back.
“Priceless as in a 1948 Porsche 356 convertible that’s been in the family three generations.”
“So you’re saying not only did this dickweasel leave me high and dry to get blamed for the whole damn thing, he also cut me out of some windfall?”
“Pretty much.”
“That son of a bitch!”
“No yelling, Tina,” the guard outside the door called.
“I’ll yell if I wanna fucking yell, Irving!”
“Did you remember if Duncan was with you on this weekend in August?” I asked, showing her the calendar on my phone.
Last time I was here and asked, she’d suggested I ask her “social secretary,” then told me to fuck off.
“That when your expensive-ass car got stolen?”
I nodded.
“I did some remembering since last time. Dunc and his buddies went on a spree that weekend. Came back with six cars. No old-ass Porsche though. But Dunc came back later than everyone else did. I remember ’cause I laid into him because his douchebags showed up without him and drank all my goddamn beer. Then here comes Dunc, struttin’ like one of those birds with the big, fancy tail.”
“A turkey?”
Tina rolled her eyes. “Jesus. No. With the blue feathers and the screaming.” She tilted her head back and let out a warbly scream.
Irving the guard opened the door. “One more warning and you’re going back to your cell, Tina.”
“A peacock!” I cut in.
Tina pointed at me. “Yeah! That one. What were we talking about again?”
Irving closed the door on a long-suffering sigh.
“Duncan coming home late after stealing six cars,” I prompted. “How late was he?”
She shrugged. “Long enough for those dickheads to drink a whole case of Natty Light. ’Bout an hour or two?”
I clamped down on my rising sense of triumph. I knew it. I was right. He’d stashed the Porsche somewhere within an hour of that original shop location. It might not still be there, but if I could find that first bread crumb, I could find the second.
“And you never saw a vintage Porsche at the shop?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nah. He stuck with new Fast and Furious shit.”
“Did Duncan ever take you to meet his father?” I asked.
“Anthony?” She screwed her face up in derision. “Me ’n Dunc were more at the fuck-in-an-alley than meet-the-parents stage before he screwed me over.”
“But he talked about him,” I prodded.
“Shit yeah, he talked about him. The guy was obsessed with gettin’ Daddy’s approval. At least, up until Dunc fucked up that hit.”
My body tensed at the way she so casually mentioned Nash’s shooting. I did my best to keep my expression blank, but on the inside, my heart was thundering against my sternum.
Some people didn’t understand that their actions had consequences. Others simply didn’t care.
“You know, I didn’t even know he was gonna try to take out that Morgan guy. I woulda talked him out of it,” Tina said, lighting a cigarette.
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, them cop pants looked mighty fine on that man’s ass.”
Tina Witt might have been a horrible human being, but she was not wrong on that particular point.
“For another, he was a decent guy. And not just to look at. He never once treated me like his piece-of-shit brother and everyone else did. Even when he arrested me that one time, he put my head in the car real gentle like.” Her hard-lined face had gone dreamy.
“He’s a good guy. Good-looking too,” I prompted.
“You ain’t wrong there. Given how much I avoid cops in general, you know the guy’s gotta be hot if I don’t run in the opposite direction at the grocery store even with chipped turkey I ain’t paid for stuffed in my bra. Bet he’s got a huge dick too,” she said wistfully.
Great. Now I was thinking about Nash and his incredible morning erections and how I might never get to experience one again. “Back to Duncan,” I said desperately.
Tina waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, he just had a medium-sized one. Didn’t really know how to use it. He was kind of a poker instead of a thruster, if you know what I mean.”
I did not. My face must have said as much because Tina stood and began a lewd thrusting demonstration with the cigarette dangling from her mouth.
“Do you think Anthony Hugo would help hide his son?” I asked, interrupting the show.
Tina snorted and sat back down. “Are you shittin’ me? After as bad as Dunc fucked up?”
“Parents forgive all kinds of mistakes,” I pointed out. Case in point, Tina’s own parents.
Tina shook her head. “Not Anthony Hugo. Dunc came home all pissed off and freaked out. Told me he tried to take out a cop and it didn’t go as planned. I was layin’ into him good when two of Anthony’s goons showed up to bring Dunc in for a ‘chat.’ And I was there when he dragged his ass home beat to hell and bloody.”
“What happened during that chat?”
“Oh, you know. Screaming. Humiliation. Threats. Anthony was pissed off that Dunc had brought ‘unwanted attention’ to their business. Dunc said his dad called him names, roughed him up. Which was a real slap in the face, pun intended. Word is Anthony hasn’t gotten his hands dirty roughing up anybody in a long time. He’s got guys for that. But he made an exception for Dunc.”
“How did Duncan feel about that?”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “He felt it moved their relationship into a healthier place. How the hell do you think he felt about it?”
“So you don’t think there’s any way that Duncan’s dad would have helped him go to ground?” I pressed.
“I’d be surprised if the old man isn’t hunting for him to take him out before the cops find him,” she said.
This was news. I filed it away. “Really?”
“I mean, Dunc was an idiot. Way too impulsive. But his dad is downright scary. After Anthony came down on him all high and mighty about how he’d ruined his plans and endangered the family business, I knew what was gonna happen next. The old man would send someone out to clean up the mess. And by ‘clean up the mess,’ I mean he woulda put a couple of bullets in Dunc’s head. Probably mine too.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, lemme tell you, ain’t nothin’ sexy about a man who’s sad Daddy didn’t love him enough. I told him it was time to move on. To make a name for himself. So I convinced him we needed to go into hiding. He made some calls, and we moved into that warehouse in Lawlerville and started to make a plan. We needed money and fast. Dunc figured the best way to do that was to resell a copy of the list. Lotta people between here and DC would be interested in a list of hard-ass cops and their snitches.”
“So that’s when you abducted your daughter and your sister.”
Tina Witt’s bad decisions made my own look like tiny lapses in judgment by comparison. I’d been there to see the immediate fallout. A trail of bleeding bad guys. Knox on the floor with Naomi and Way. Nash, heroically leaning against the wall, gun in hand, shoulder bleeding, looking exhausted and pissed off. My heart gave a pathetic little pitter-patter.
“That was another clusterfuck that dipwad got me into. It was never supposed to be a kidnapping thing, you know? He was just supposed to scare them a little. Get ’em to cough up the list. Then we’d send ’em on their way. But noooo, he had to do things his way. Dunc was an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. He could be sneaky smart when he wanted to be, but he was impulsive. One second, he’d be planning some heist, and the next, he’d be zoned out playing video games until 4:00 a.m.”
“So once you two struck out on your own, who worked with him? There were men at the warehouse the night you were arrested. Were they Anthony’s? Other family members? Friends?”
That’s what friends are for. Naomi’s words from earlier that morning resurfaced in my head. No one was truly alone in this world. There was always someone a person would turn to when they needed help.
“Oh. Like his known associates, right? I’m picking up all the cop speak by watching NCIS and shit in case Chief Morgan ever comes to pay me a visit,” she said proudly.
I wondered how Nash would feel knowing that Tina Witt had a raging crush on him. I also wondered if that meant he’d never come to see her in jail.
“Yes. Known associates,” I agreed.
“Heard most of ’em were picked up by the cops,” Tina said.
“Most, but not all. Someone had to help him get away.”
“There were a couple of goons he had working for him in his chop shop. Then there was Face Tattoo Guy and Chubby Goatee Guy. That dude could eat a twelve-inch cheesesteak in under ten minutes. They were Dunc’s buddies from high school before he dropped out. They all started working for the old man around the same time, but they were Dunc’s friends first.”
Dutifully, I made notes and hoped the descriptions would be enough to lead me in a direction.
“Is there anyone else you can think of?”
She pursed her lips and stubbed out her cigarette. “He had a guy I never met. Burner Phone Guy. I don’t think they were buddies. Least, they didn’t talk like they were. But he was the one Dunc called when we needed to get the hell outta Dodge after his dumb ass shot Chief Morgan.”
“How did Burner Phone Guy help?” I asked.
Tina shrugged. “Dunno. I was too busy yelling at Dunc for bein’ a dumbass to pay attention.”
I closed my notebook and stowed it in the pocket of my jacket. “One more question. What made Duncan start with Chief Morgan?”
Tina shrugged. “Maybe it was that I mentioned how fine the chief’s ass looked one day or that I told him that the chief hadn’t done me wrong like every other fucking resident of Knockemout. He never looked at me like I was a nobody.”
She twirled a piece of straw-textured hair around her fingers. She’d cut and dyed her hair to look more like her sister for the abduction. Now, gray roots were visible at her part and she was in desperate need of a deep condition.
“Course, it coulda been the double asterisks next to his name that caught Dunc’s eye.”
I fought the urge to drum my fingers on the tabletop. “He say what the asterisks were for?”
Tina shrugged. “Dunno. You’d have to ask Dunc.”
“Well, thanks for your time, Tina,” I said, getting to my feet.
“I got nothin’ but time thanks to that asshat. You find him, tell him I sent you.”
I stepped outside into the bright autumn sun feeling like I always did after leaving the prison. Like I needed a shower.
But at least this time, I finally had a few leads to tug on.
I held my breath as I checked my phone. There were no messages or missed calls from Nash. I blew out a sigh and dialed the office as I crossed the parking lot, leaving barbed wire and high fences behind me.
My favorite researcher, Zelda, answered on the second ring. “Yello?”
“Hey, it’s me. I need you to dig up everything you can on Duncan Hugo’s known associates. Concentrate on ones he’s known the longest. Specifically anyone with a face tattoo and anyone on the heftier side.”
I heard the crinkle of a potato chip bag.
“On it,” Zelda said, crunching noisily into my ear. “How’s life in Knockemup? You ready to run screaming to the closest metropolitan area yet?”
“Knockemout,” I corrected, heading in the direction of my vehicle.
“Whatevs. Hey, you hear about Lew?”
I stopped in the middle of the parking lot. “What about him?”
“He’s back on desk duty starting tomorrow.”
“He’s doing okay?” I asked.
“He’s fine. Said it would take more than a broken ass to keep him down. Besides, Daley told him he better get his busted ass back out there if he wants to keep earning.”
I waited for the relief to come, but it was only guilt that lingered.
