Page 32 of All Wrong
Nick circled the block, then parked across the street. He didn’t recognize the guy with her, which was only mildly surprising. He knew a lot of people, but he didn’t know everyone in Pine Ridge. Judging by the looks of him, he and Nick didn’t run in the same circles.
He looked perfect for Corinne though. Wholesome. Handsome. Athletic. Like the guy next door.
Shit. Was this the guy her sister had been trying to set her up with?
As Nick continued to observe, a strange, possessive instinct rose within him and whispered in his ear, telling him to walk into that café, throw Corinne over his shoulder, and put her on the back of his bike, where she belonged.
He told it to shut the fuck up. But he couldn’t seem to make himself leave.
Through the window, he could see her smiling. Nodding occasionally. Even laughing once. Each positive reaction was like a tiny stab in the chest.
Thunder boomed in the distance—a warning that he should get his ass in gear and get back to the garage before the storm hit. He didn’t mind riding in the rain. It was one of his favorite times to ride in fact. But the thought of working the rest of the afternoon in wet jeans and steel-toed shitkickers wasn’t appealing.
He was just about to leave when Corinne and the guy pushed their chairs back and stood up, so he stayed right where he was. Again, he couldn’t say why, only that hewantedCorinne to see him.
She did. She’d no sooner stepped out of theplace than she spotted him, almost like a homing beacon. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. For those few seconds, it was as if a thread stretched between them, negating everyone and everything else.
Then, she turned away, back to the guy she was with. The thread snapped, as did something else.
What the hell am I doing?
He mounted his bike, kicked it, and took off before he did somethingreallystupid.
It took mostof the afternoon and almost losing a hand in an engine before Nick managed to shove those images of Corinne and Mr. Wholesome to the back of his mind. It wasn’t as if he had any claim on her, and he sure as hell didn’t plan on staking one.
Besides, he had other things to worry about.
Through sheer force of will, he put his attention on the job in front of him, knocking out one vehicle after another, until his schedule was clear. Afterward, he grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed up to The Zone. Nicki hadn’t been at the garage all day, and he wanted an update on what, if anything, was happening with the samples he’d passed along.
He found her in the office, reviewing paperwork.
“You busy?”
“Never too busy for you, little brother.”
His lips curled at the familiar taunt. Neither of them knew who had been born first, but Nicki liked to lay claim.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
She glanced at him with tired eyes. “Grant requests and responses.”
“I thought Shane was handling that for us,” he said, referring to Nicki’s lawyerly brother-in-law.
“Who do you think drafted these?” She waved her hands over the neat stacks. “But I like to know where the money’s coming from. Who’s supporting us and who’s not.”
Nick was glad she did because he had neither the patience nor the desire to do it. “Any news from Michael?”
“Nothing useful,” Nicki replied. “It’s high-grade stuff, but he didn’t find anything that’s going to help us identify where it came from.”
“What about the symbol that was stamped on it?”
Nicki leaned back in her chair. “Mick says it looks like a variation on the Greek letter phi. It’s used a lot as a variable in chemistry, as well as to indicate something called the golden ratio.”
The term jogged something in Nick’s mind fromway back when he’d still been a kid and well-meaning counselors had futilely tried to put him on the right path after both he and Nicki had achieved DaVinci-like scores on science and math aptitude tests. Nicki often said that was why they shared an affinity for machines.
“Divine proportion,” he mumbled.
“Yep.”
