Page 147 of Stop and Seek
Jagger. Same tribal tattoos. No dreads, just like the recent pictures. Tank top stained with black ink. He looked like someone who’d made a lot of people cry and never lost sleep over it.
“How’s it going, man?” he asked, elbow extended in a social-distance style hand-shake. Noah didn’t move. “What can I do you for?”
“Theo—” was as far as he got before Jagger started talking again.
“Did something happen?” Jagger snapped the gloves off. Tossed them into the trash. “I’m supposed to meet him—I’m late, to tell the truth.”
Theo waswhat?
Over my dead body.
Noah clenched his fists at his side, breathing through the rage and white noise inside his head until it settled down to a low rumble.
No.
It was fine.
He could use this.
“Yeah.” Noah let his voice wobble a little. “There was an accident and he was asking for you.”
Jagger’s expression twitched. Just a little. Like he wasn’t sure whether to believe it.
“An accident.”
“Car wreck,” Noah lied, putting enough breath behind it to make his eyes shine. “Not bad, but he hit his head. You know how he gets with the…”
“No—yeah. Yeah, I do. No one called his parents, right? He hasn’t talked to them in years.”
Good to know.
Noah shook his head. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“I can drive, my bike is out back—”
“No,” Noah interrupted, fast and sharp.
Jagger froze, keys halfway out of his pocket.
Noah forced a smile. Tried to look harmless. “The hospital is wild. There was a pile up on the interstate… let me drop you off at the front. Be easier on everyone.”
Jagger hesitated. Then he shrugged.
They walked in silence, sneakers on linoleum, then on concrete. The alley behind the shop stank of oil and something rotting in the dumpster. Jagger lit a cigarette with a gold Zippo and didn’t ask Noah a single goddamn thing. Not how Theo was doing. Not what hospital. Not whyNoahwas the one showing up.
That told Noah everything.
Two blocks down the road, and Jagger started talking.
“You got somenicewheels,” he said, hands moving over the radio knob. He cranked the air conditioning higher. “This has to be one of my favorite models. Everyone loses their mind over a BMW, but I don’t see the appeal.”
Noah blinked at the road.
Seriously?Seriously?
Not one damn word about Theo.
His knuckles were bone-white on the wheel, but he forced himself to smile like his molars weren’t cracking under pressure. This guy was unbelievable. All he had to do—literally all he had to do—was say “Is Theo okay?”
