“I kinda figured that out when I woke up and found her gone.”
Vaughn shook his head and picked up his coffee. “Now what are you gonna do?”
“Can’t do anything till we get home.”
“And then?” Vaughn prompted.
He shrugged, pretending all kinds of nonchalance that he didn’t feel. “Then…I don’t know.”
Chapter Seven
Washington, D.C.
Cam turned up his collar against the icy November wind chasing dead leaves across the pavement and fought down a surge of envy as he waited for his informant to show. Jude and Libby had stayed in Key West for their honeymoon and were probably sitting together on the beach right this very minute, being all lovey-dovey with each other as they soaked in the beautiful weather.
Three days home, and Cam would give anything to see the sun again. Winter had arrived early and brutally, pounding the east coast with ice and snow storms and shutting down several major cities in the process. Luckily, D.C. had avoided the worst of it, but the weather forecasters were not optimistic about that trend continuing and gleefully spoke of an impending Snow-pocalypse.
He just hoped to be cozy at home before that happened.
Cam glanced up and down the quiet street dotted with abandoned warehouses and boarded up buildings. This part of the city was dying, struggling for every breath, but cities needed places like this. In a few years, some politician would probably see the potential charm and get it in mind to clean up these streets and revamp the warehouses into condos for yuppies, leaving the homeless squatters like his informant, Soup, without a roof over their heads once again.
Man, he wished he could get Soup some help, but if there was one thing he learned in his nine years on the force, you can’t help those that don’t want it. Soup was perfectly happy with his lot in life. Then again, Soup had all but pickled his brain and ruined a good career in banking with drugs and alcohol, so maybe he wasn’t the best judge of what was good for him.
Happiness was relative anyway.
Look at him, for example. He had a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food to eat, and a decent job that made him a comfortable living, and he was wallowing in misery.
Three days home, and not a word from Eva. After several texts and the once-a-day messages he’d left on her voice mail had gone unanswered, he was starting to wonder if he’d ever hear from her again. Maybe he could drive by her place again when he left here—
No, that was a little too stalker-ish for comfort. He’d already spent way more time thinking about her than was probably healthy. Which, really, was par for the course. Sometime early in their partnership, his affection for Eva had blossomed into something much more dangerous, something he absolutely shouldn’t have felt.
Love. He was completely, head-over-ass in love with her.
He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened. It was more like a bunch of little moments that added up over the years, like that time she got so excited at a Redskins game she accidentally dumped her beer over his head. Or the first time she kicked his ass in a sparring match, then spent the rest of the day gloating about it. Her watery smile after that asshole Preston stood her up when she had tickets to a Blake Shelton concert, and Cam had arrived decked out in a cowboy hat and boots to take her, even though he hated country music. Or all the late nights at work, when they were so exhausted they were running on caffeine and fumes, and they’d burst into hysterical laughter over something as juvenile as the squeak of a chair sounding like a fart. Each of those moments had chipped away at his heart, bit by tiny bit, until she held the whole damn thing in her hands.
He’d spent the past five years being so careful not to jeopardize their relationship, but now he’d gone and fucked everything up for one drunken night of sex. He’d be lucky if she ever talked to him again.
Cursing under his breath, Cam studied the street again, desperate for a distraction from his current train of thought. Still empty. Where was Soup? After all the panicked messages the guy had left him while he was gone, you’d think he’d be on time.
Five more minutes, Cam decided, then he was out. He had better things to do than stand here, stiffening up in the wind.
The five minutes came and went.
“And that’s a wrap.” He turned to trudge back to his 4Runner and that’s when he finally spotted Soup peeking around the corner of the nearest building.
“About fucking time,” Cam said.
“Bad, bad news,” Soup replied. He had a persistent twitch, a simultaneous jerk of his oily head and fast blink, and it got worse when he was upset or in withdrawal. Since he had a very fresh set of tracks up both of his bare arms, Cam assumed the twitch was from nerves.
“What bad news?”