“Babe, we’ll talk about it later.”
“What job?” Linda asked.
“Fuck,” Max clipped.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said quickly to Linda. “We need to go in.”
“What job?” Linda repeated.
“Mom, later,” Max bit out.
Linda’s hands came up. “All right, all right. Yeesh. Later.” Then she looked around Niles to Becca and asked, “Do you wanna get a coffee? I’m meeting Barb and Mindy at the café.”
“Awesome,” Becca answered.
“Mindy?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Linda said to me then invited, “You guys finish, you can join us.”
I smiled at her and said, “That would be lovely.”
“Someone kill me,” Max muttered, I looked up at him to see he was looking up at the blue, cloudless sky.
“Darling,” I called, putting my free hand to his stomach, “we need to go into the Station and get this done so I can see Mins and get a coffee.”
Max’s head tilted down and his frustrated gray eyes locked on mine. “Babe, just gonna say, you’re lucky you’re so damned cute.”
That was when I curled my body into his, got up on my toes, pressed close and smiled at him before I said softly, “I know.”
And I did know. At that moment with Max looking irritated but still amazingly handsome and I was tucked firm in the curve of his arm, I knew.
I knew I was possibly the luckiest woman in the world.
And Max proved me correct when his eyes moved over my face, his expression cleared, his face warmed and his mouth came down on mine.
*
We were sitting in the little room that Mick questioned Kami in, Max at my side, his chair pushed slightly back but close to mine, his arm draped around the back of my chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles.
This seemed like a pose of masculine relaxation but it wasn’t.
I knew this when he clipped, “What’s takin’ so fuckin’ long?”
I looked up from returning the texts my friends had been sending.
Before texting I’d found that yesterday Niles had called four times, Mom three and I had five calls from three numbers I didn’t know. After interrogating Max I found that one call was from his home phone (so I programmed it in), three from his mobile (so I programmed that in too) and the last one was from Arlene (which I also programmed in). Mom had given Max my number, Max had given it to Arlene and her message was mostly about how next time we were at The Dog I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye and partly about her asking when I was making another fish casserole without any mention at all about my heartbroken getaway which, I suspected, she knew would be foiled.
“They are investigating a murder, darling,” I attempted to soothe the wakening beast.
His irritated eyes sliced from their impatient examination of the door to me and I decided just to let the beast wake and take my chances.
Thankfully at that point the door opened and Jeff walked in carrying papers and a pen.
“Fuck, sorry, I mean, um…” he looked at me and repeated, “sorry.”
“Max curses all the time, Jeff, you don’t have to apologize for saying the f-word,” I assured, smiling at him, he smiled back, headed to the chair opposite us, dumped his papers and sat down.
“Shit, Jeff, we been here twenty minutes,” Max put in, proving me right about the swearing.
“Yeah, I know, things are crazy.” He looked at Max then he looked at me. “Sorry to say, Nina, we can’t find Damon.”
This wasn’t exactly good news.
Max straightened in his chair and glared at Jeff. “Jesus, we’re talkin’ Mathews here. He ain’t the brightest bulb.”
Jeff nodded. “I know but he’s proving elusive. We been lookin’ for him since the spray paint incident, talkin’ to folks all over town. His boss says he hasn’t been to work since you and he had your thing and he wants him to come back real bad, mostly so he can fire his ass.”
That wasn’t good news for Damon but I couldn’t find it in me to care since maybe it would mean he’d be forced to move away from Gnaw Bone, his self-appointed stalker duties and Mindy.
Jeff kept talking. “And none of his friends admit to knowin’ where he is. His old landlord said he caught him last Friday tryin’ to put a bolt cutter to the lock on one of the storage units he’s got. The old guy aimed some buckshot at him, chased him off, didn’t know we were lookin’ for him. Other than that, we got nothin’. Mathews is in the wind.”
“He doesn’t even know how to spell ‘wind’, he can’t be in it,” Max bit out and I pressed my lips together to stop from laughing.
“We’ll find him,” Jeff promised. “But we’re low on resources, seein’ as we got every man we can spare here, at the county sheriff’s and even the frickin’ highway patrol tryin’ to track down Shauna and that Robert Winston guy.”