Page 63 of Stay in Your Lane!

Especially the part where he could come crashing in—almost literally—and break through my internal panic. I was still freaked out, still worried sick about what we should do and what could happen, but Everett was here. That made things better.

Except what if being with me puts him in more danger?

What if him being here puts him in the crosshairs?

Fuck.

By the time Everett came striding into Waffles?, my mood had darkened again, and the sight of him made my stomach twist.

I don’t want you to get hurt.

He looked around the restaurant, then found me at the booth kitty-corner to the one occupied by the Goth kids. Instead of sitting across from me, though, he sat beside me, and he wrapped an arm around me.

“Hey. You okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m, uh… I’m kind of glad I didn’t get called in for this one, to be honest.”

Everett’s lips thinned and his brow creased. He hadn’t been happy when I’d called and told him I’d been explicitly informed I wouldn’t be cleaning Leon’s death scene. I usually didn’t get a call unless I was being contracted for a specific job—why would they bother telling me they weren’t hiring me for something?—but this smacked of warning me that I was losing the city’s business.

“I don’t know if they’re keeping me out because he’s associated with Leighton,” I admitted, cradling my coffee between my hands, “pr if they’re just letting me know I’m persona non grata for the time being.”

Everett shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re fucking with our licensing and stuff, too. My whole family is in a panic because there’s documentation missing that we need to operate.”

I winced. He’d told me as much over the phone, and I still felt guilty that this was hurting him and his family.

“We’redefinitelyon to something,” Everett went on. “And especially now that they’re messing with my family, I’m about as likely to let this go as Steve is to let go of a piece of shrimp that Bill wants.”

I laughed, which feltreallygood. Steve didn’t like sharing, but he was especially protective of shrimp, and doubly so if it was shrimp that Bill wanted. That Everett had noticed made me warmer than my coffee.

“Your dad’s gonna try to talk us out of it, though, isn’t he?”

That warmth vanished, and I sighed. “Yeah. He is.”

“So what do we say?” Everett’s eyes were somehow both pleading and determined. “I don’t want to let this go. But…” He chewed his lip.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” All the reasons I wanted to stay this course were clear as day in my mind. The problem was that I’d never had much of a spine when it came to facing mydad. He’d been a hardass cop his whole career, and he’d been a hardass father my whole life, I’d been terrified to tell him I didn’t want to be a cop and wanted to start my own business.

To my surprise, he’d taken the news well. He’d said something to the effect of, “It takes a certain kind of man to be a cop, son. You’re better off realizing it’s not for you now than after you become one.”

I’d been so relieved he hadn’t been angry with me, I think it was a full two years later before I realized how backhanded his response had been.

Kyle fidgeted next to me. “We’re gonna stick with it, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said without hesitation. “A man was murdered, and nobody cares but us. We’re not letting it go.”

At that, he relaxed a little, as if he’d honestly thought I was going to bail. I couldn’t blame him for that, given how many times I’d seriously considered it.

“Do you think your dad will look into it? Or is he going to call it a suicide, too?”

I chewed my lip. “I want to say he’ll look into it, because I know he’s not a dirty cop or anything like that. But he does believe in the Blue Code of Silence. And he doesn’t like pushing back against what other cops are doing.”

A lot of unspoken thoughts played out in Everett’s expression. I wondered if he was thinking what I’d come so dangerously close to concluding too many times—a cop who covers for dirty cops is also a dirty cop, therefore my dad was a dirty cop.

I followed the logic. I believed it with literally any cop on earth.

Believing it about my dad was…

That was hard. It was something I didn’t want to believe.

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