Page 102 of Cross & Crown

when it returned, it meant he was wearing himself too thin.

He’d been going over every little detail he’d managed to glean

in the past two days, trying to piece them together, trying to

make sense of them. It seemed like the more he tried to force

his brain to work, the less he managed to come up with, and

the more frustrated he got.

His cell phone began to sing, a raucous fiddle tune that

belonged to only one person in his contacts. Definitely the

only one who would call him this late at night. Nick glanced

at the phone, Ty Grady’s picture on the display. He let it go

to voice mail, though the song grated on his mind because

he’d always reached to answer that call before. He still hadn’t forgiven Ty for the last two debacles they’d gotten themselves

into, for the lies his friend had told him, and frankly he didn’t really feel like talking to the man much lately. He almost

immediately felt guilty for not answering, though, and he

picked up the phone to check the message.

It was curt and to the point, just like Ty. “Hey, Irish.

Haven’t heard from you in a while. I’m starting to get worried, so give me a cal .”

Nick shook his head and hit the button to call back. He

kept in touch with his Recon boys, usually sending at least a

text or something every few days. But he couldn’t remember

the last time he’d been compelled to send Ty anything. The

feeling of having lost something precious made his chest ache,

but it was tempered with so much anger he tried not to touch

it at al .

“You better be shacked up with something spectacular,”

Ty said in greeting.

Nick huffed before he could stop himself. He put the

phone on speaker and set it on the table. “I am, actually. Doc

is in town.”

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