Page 19 of Second First Kiss

“You got any ideas on who’s behind this?” Harris asked, toeing an empty egg carton that had been discarded on the ground.

“My guess? It’s a kid,” Nolan said. His breath turned to vapor in the early morning chill. Even in a parka and beanie he could feel the last of winter trying to hang on. “Not that we’ll figure out who is was.” Nolan jerked a chin to the security cameras which were covered in yolk.

“That is one hell of a shot. I mean one camera, lucky. Three cameras with a bull’s-eye is talent,” Jax said.

“Why didn’t the alarm sound when the cameras were taken out?” Harris asked.

“For some reason the alarm wasn’t armed last night,” Nolan explained. Otherwise he would have been notified the second that first egg made contact.

Jax stilled. “That’s the third time in two months.”

Nolan ran a hand down his face, last night’s scruff coarse under his palm. “Tim swears he armed it.”

“Do you believe him?” Harris asked.

“Yeah, I do.” The bar manager, Tim, might be a little too flirty with the customers and a little too friendly with the staff, but he was reliable and honest. “The guy’s never given me any reason to doubt him.”

Brynn’s smile faded. “What does the security company say?”

“That there is nothing wrong on their end. They’re sending out an IT person later today to check the wiring and motion detectors on our end. But I looked and everything seemed to be in working order.”

“I think we should call the cops and report this,” Brynn said, and the rest of the siblings rang in with their agreement.

“I am the cops,” Nolan said.

Harris patted his shoulder. “I think she meant the real cops. You’re more lost hikers and illegal bonfires.”

“I carry a gun and just rounded up a group of crackheads who were using an RV camper as their own personal lab.”

“Yet you can’t seem to catch a teen with a grudge,” Jax snickered.

“What do you want me to report? That someone toilet papered the men’s room and egged the bar?” He’d be the laughingstock of the department. Plus, it would only prove what his boss had been hinting at: Nolan was spread too thin. Between his job and the lodge, he hadn’t caught more than six hours of sleep in any one stretch. As for a social life? Unless he counted poker night with his siblings, it was nonexistent.

“We all know that someone is R. J. Locke,” Brynn said.

“Knowing it and proving it are two different things,” Lucas said.

“Maybe it was one of the kids you arrested the other night,” Harris added.

Hell, it probably was. Nolan looked at his siblings who were all looking at him expectantly. “Why do you guys think I was the intended recipient of such a gift?”

Jax used his fingernail to scrape off some eggshell that had dried to the window. “You were the one who arrested a bunch of kids the other night. And this looks like kids to me.”

“Again, I didn’t arrest them, just scared them straight.”

“Well, it worked. Kat is scared,” Brynn said quietly, and his gut turned inside out. “I guess the social worker caught wind of the arrest and showed up at her house.”

“I didn’t arrest her,” Nolan clarified.

“Doesn’t really matter, the end result was the same. The social worker now has one more reason to say no,” Brynn said. “Kat is already struggling to overcome her parents’ reputation, prove that she isn’t a flake, and between her past antics and then the night at the sheriff’s department, she’s going to have a hard time.”

“Antics?” Nolan snorted. “She was a teen when all of that went down.”

“This town has a long memory,” Jax said. “According to Milly, the social worker assigned to the case is the same one who investigated Kat’s parents back in the day.”

“That sounds like a conflict of interest,” Nolan said, going through a mental Rolodex of who he knew at the county that he could call on Kat’s behalf.

“That sounds like small town living,” Lucas said, making it clear that it was not complimentary of Sierra Vista. “Just another reason why I’m counting down the days until I can get back to New York.”

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