Page 37 of All Wrong
Shane’s eyes swept over him twice before they locked on.
Fuck.
Shane exited the vehicle and crossed the lot, his leather shoes hardly making any sound on the smooth asphalt.
“Talk to me,” he said quietly. Calmly.
Nowhat the fuck are you doing here, which said a lot about the guy in Nick’s opinion. His boss’s twin, while identical in appearance, was Sean’s polar opposite—soft-spoken and polished, though no less deadly when provoked.
Nick liked him. Liked all the Callaghans really. They were good men to have on your side, and they took care of their own.
Which includes Corinne McCain, he reminded himself. But how did he explain his presence outside of her apartment building to Shane when he couldn’t make sense of it himself?
“Does this have anything to do with what Nicki asked Mick to look into?” Shane prompted.
Yeah, he could go with that. “Maybe,” Nick replied. “One of the kids at The Zone said guys were handing out free samples around here.”
Shane’s brows rose. “Around here?”
Nick shrugged. “There’s a park down the street where teens hang out at night sometimes. What about you?”
“Heading out to the Goddess, but Lacie wanted to check in on Corinne first.”
Nick thought about saying something like,Ah. She lives here?But decided against it, as it was in direct violation of hisdon’t say anything more than necessaryrule.
“Everything okay?” Nick asked instead, keeping his voice only mildly interested, as if he didn’t really care about the answer one way or another and was simply being polite. He swiveled his gaze across the lot, scanning left to right and back again.
“Lacie worries when Corinne doesn’t answer her texts and calls,” Shane replied with a slight lift of his shoulder.
Which didn’t answer the question at all, Nick realized.
Nick nodded because what else could he do? Admit that he knew Corinne was going through a rough patch? Or that Lacie’s big-sister mothering got on Corinne’s nerves? If he did, he’d have to explain how he knew those things, and he wasn’t going there.
Nick’s attention went to the street, his eyeslatching on to a late-model pickup. It might have been the same one he’d seen pass by earlier, but without a plate number, he couldn’t be sure. Pickups were a dime a dozen around Pine Ridge.
Shane followed his gaze. The vehicle slowed, then turned the corner. The brake lights had barely faded when a figure in a dark hoodie emerged from the line of trees across the street and moved toward the vehicle at a fast clip.
Nick’s instincts flared. He was already on the move when Shane asked, “You want backup?”
“I’m good. Later.”
Nick cut through the lot. By the time he emerged onto the street the pickup had turned on, both the vehicle and the dark figure were gone, but the sense that he’d just missed something important remained.
He jogged back to his bike and cruised the neighborhood, but found nothing. Eventually, he went back to Corinne’s building. Shane’s vehicle was gone, and all was quiet. Nick sat in the shadows of the small courtyard and waited, his eyes scanning the street, the nearby buildings, the occasional passersby.
Hours later, there was no sign of the pickup, nomore lone figures skulking about in dark hoodies. And Corinne’s lights were still on.
What was she doing up there? He had to stop himself more than once from walking into her building, riding up to the seventh floor, and finding out.
It’s none of your business.
For the dozenth time, Nick asked himself why he was skulking around Corinne’s building like a demented creeper. He could rationalize and tell himself he was grasping at straws, trying to follow any and every lead to zero in on the new dealer, but it would be a lie. The truck and the hooded figure—both as common as the evergreens for which the town had been named—were nothing more than convenient excuses.
The truth was, he couldn’t get Corinne McCain out of his mind, and it was driving him crazy. They’d known each other for years. Sort of. Why was he now suddenly obsessed? Because she’d waited for him outside the police station, exhibiting a belief in him that defied logic? Or because, when she’d cracked those shields and bared a part of her soul, he’d recognized the same sense of restlessness, of not truly belonging, that he felt in his own chest?
He cursed under his breath. “… in the same boat,” she’d said. They werenotthe same. Not even close.
It was well past midnight when the lights finally went off. With a sigh, Nick stalked back to his bike and went home.
