Page 22 of The Woman By the Lake

That meant he was crashing on his mother’s couch.

A forty-year-old man who was crashing on his mother’s couch…again. All because he found it impossible to keep his shit tight.

At least he hadn’t asked to crash at Riggs’s, which would put Riggs in the position of telling him fuck no. Riggs had learned that lesson the hard way years ago when a “couple of nights” turned into three months, and by the time the man left, Riggs’s cupboards were bare, there wasn’t a drop of booze left in the place, he’d had to buy a new couch, and he’d nearly lost a good friend.

As messy as his bud was, he loved him, because Bubbles was impossible not to love.

That said, right now, Riggs didn’t have the time or patience for this shit.

“Listen, need a bottle. A good one. I pissed off my neighbor, and I need to make amends.”

Bubbles eyes got huge. “So, rumor is true? Someone’s living at Weaver Cabin?”

“Yeah,” Riggs confirmed.

“Holy shit!” Bubbles yelled.

“It’s a rental house on a lake, Bubs, and it’s good Dave and Brenda finally have someone in it.”

It was like he didn’t speak when Bubbles said, “I gotta start a pool about how long they’re gonna last.”

Even if the rumors were true (which they were not), Riggs almost wanted to see someone try to fuck with Nadia Antonov, even the type of “someone” they claimed messed with the people who stayed in that cabin.

The woman could deep-freeze Putin himself.

Hell, she could deep-freeze Stalin, and since that was her bloodline, Riggs had no questions about how her great-granddad bested an infamous despot.

But now knowing the shit she was wading through, he hoped like fuck she was left alone.

“Bubs, the bottle,” Riggs reminded him.

He watched his friend’s body jolt, then he nodded too fast and too much before he pushed through Riggs and led him to his storeroom.

Anyone else, Riggs would wonder if he was on something.

Bubbles had always had more energy than he could expend, case in point, how he was walking to the storeroom right now, freaking fast and every other step wasn’t a step, but a half a skip.

Riggs followed a lot slower.

They hit the storeroom and Bubbles flipped the light switch, saying, “Couple of year ago, went with Candy…” He stopped and stared into space, “Or was it Barbie?” He shook his head and ignored the shelves haphazardly stacked with cases of beer, bottles of booze and rolls of inexpensive toilet paper and headed to a locked cabinet that held the back stock for his top shelf. “Doesn’t matter, was in Sonoma, and, man, I musta entered a fugue state when I tasted it. But this shit was so good, I couldn’t help myself.”

He’d pulled out his keys and was opening the cabinet.

He was also still talking.

“Should have my head examined. A good shot of whisky, they’re all over it. The occasional snifter of Hennessey, sure. But that stuff doesn’t go bad. Someone orders a glass of this for twenty-five bucks in my joint, they won’t be buyin’ another one, and that bottle’ll stay open since no one who comes here has the cabbage to drop on a twenty-five-dollar glass of wine unless they’re celebrating a wedding, or a divorce. So I’d have to pour the rest of it down the drain.”

“Or you could drink it before it went bad,” Riggs suggested.

Bubbles looked at him, his face a picture of utter confusion, before it brightened, and he replied, “Fuck, shoulda thought of that.”

Christ, how this guy kept The Hole running, Riggs had no clue. He was funny, and affable, but he was a funny, affable and loveable doofus.

Bubbles reached into the locker and grabbed an expensive-looking bottle of wine, one of about twelve identical ones piled in there.

Riggs narrowed his eyes on the bottles as Bubbles jerked the one he’d nabbed his way.

Riggs didn’t take the bottle.

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