Page 49 of Hidden Shadows
“Yeah?”
There was a small beat of silence, then Nate spoke. “Hey. Everything okay?”
No. It was about as far as it fucking got from okay. “It’s fine. What do you need?”
“My mission took less time than I thought it would, so I’m trying to call Finley but can’t get through. The calls keep going to voicemail. Is everything all right?”
Shit. Her phone. It was probably in her pocket when she fell through the ice yesterday. Would she even have a device to get footage today? “She fell into some water. It probably broke.”
There was a weighty pause. “Water? What kind of water?”
“An icy lake.” Nate cursed as Nixon continued, “She’s okay. I pulled her out.”
“How’d she end up in the damn water?”
“We don’t know. She thinks she got too close to the edge and bumped into someone. I disagree.”
“Goddammit. The quicker this trip is over, the better.”
“Yeah.” That was all he had…a “yeah.” Because what happened after the trip?
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Everything going okay between you two?” Nate asked, like he somehow knew it wasn’t.
“Yep.” Another damn lie.
There was yet another pause, and when his friend spoke again, his voice held a warning. “Nix—what’s going on?”
“We got together.”
Nate cursed again, this time louder. But when he spoke, his voice was low. “How? You don’t date. You’ve told me that numerous times. Hell, I’ve seen it. You hook up with women, but that’s it. So what is this? A fling?”
Nixon’s back teeth ground together. “Nate—”
“She’s important to me, Nixon. You know that. So don’t fuck around with her. You need to be a hundred percent on this. You need to know that you can handle her life—that you can handleher—long term.”
* * *
Finley tried notto tap her foot on the floor of the car. It was a nervous habit of hers.
When she’d knocked on Nixon’s door, he’d opened it with that familiar closed-off expression on his face again.
She hated that look. The second she’d seen it, it felt like all their progress had just disappeared. Hell, it felt like last night had never happened.
“Wait for me to come around,” he said in a low, hard tone when they pulled into the fair lot.
Before she could respond, he was out.
To distract herself, she pulled out her backup phone. Thank God she’d brought it. She usually did, just in case, because of how dependent her job was on access to both a camera and her social media accounts. But this was the first time she’d actually had to use it.
When her door opened, she climbed out. He set a hand on the small of her back, but there was nothing intimate about his touch. He was all business today.
She sighed. “Nixon, I don’t want to fight.”
“We’re not fighting.”
She almost rolled her eyes. “Okay, what would you call this?”
