I tilt my head in confusion.
“Cora and Leo, her boyfriend, are going to train me while he’s home for spring break. They offered me a job today. You’re my first case. Well, the first case I get to help out on, anyway.”
“Is this a blackmail thing, then? You don’t tell them about me and you get a new job out of it?”
He sits up and puts his palms out. “It’s not at all like that. They offered me the job before I found out you’re not Vera Swain. I could tell them or not tell them, and it wouldn’t change a thing for me other than I don’t get to help you.”
The waitress shows up with two glasses of water and takes our order. Beau’s mouth presses down when he hears my order, but he doesn’t say anything. When she leaves she takes the energy around our table with her. I can’t help but be suspicious of his motives. He seems on the level, and maybe he is. I don’t trust easily, if at all. Me sitting here with him drinking tap water and trying not to gawk at the way the muscles of his forearms bunch and flex is new for me. He doesn’t stare overlong at me or make the silence that settled over us feel uncomfortable. My hands are on the table—not under it, resting on my gun.
That says more about how Beau makes me feel than I have words for.
“If I give you my email address will you send me the links to your sister’s social media pages?” he asks. “There might be something there that can help us find her.”
“I checked them tonight and there were no new posts. But sure. I’ll send you the links.”
He pulls a business card out of his T-shirt pocket. “My email address. And phone number. In case you need it.”
His gaze shifts away as he takes a sip of his water. The phone number is a stretch for him, an uneasy overture. He’s hoping I’ll call. I’m half hoping I’ll have a reason to. I study the generic Nash Security and Investigations card he’d jotted his info on, committing his phone number and email address to memory, and then tuck it into a sewn-in pocket in my bra. Everything of value and necessity stays on me in case I have to do the cut-and-run thing again.
“It’s warm,” I tell him, humming the M.
My unexpected flirtation catches him as off guard as it catches me. I clear my throat and break eye contact. What am I doing here with him? I’m not this person. I never have been and I never will be. I can tell he’s not either. I try to ignore the sensations that bombarded me from the first moment I met him. He can feel them too. His struggle to understand and control them mirrors mine. I see it in the way he studies me with a little crease between his eyebrows. We’re a fucked-up pair for sure.
Chapter 5
Beau
Vera’s flirting with me. At least I think she is. It’s been a long time since a chick showed any interest in me that wasn’t morbid curiosity. She’s not very good at it, but I’m not either. I’m not sure why I asked her here. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know why she came. We’re each making an effort in our own way. Toward what I don’t know. But it feels easy. A new and rare kind of comfortable. At least for me.
I don’t need to know who she was. Getting to know who she is now is enough for me. I’m not who I used to be either. I can never be him again, so I can’t fault her for wanting to reinvent herself. If it wasn’t for Cora I might have done what Vera did and changed my name, my location, and my life. It occurred to me more than once right after I got out that I could do just that. But I couldn’t do it to Cora. She worked too hard, sacrificed too much for me to disappear on her.
“Do you really think you can find my sister?”
“I’m going to try. I found you,” I remind her.
She tucks her chin under and stares at her hands. “Was it easy to find me?”
“No. It was a hunch combined with sheer dumb luck and tenacity. Basically, I drove by almost every pay-by-the-week motel in San Diego until I found the one with your car parked out front. If it hadn’t been parked out there tonight when I drove by, I wouldn’t have found you. That’s the dumb-luck part.”
She nods. “Thanks for telling me my mistake.”
“You’re not going to disappear on me, are you?”
“No, but I need to be a lot smarter.”
“Is it dangerous for you to be here?”
“It could be.”
“The gun?”
“Yeah, among other…things.”