Page 188 of Sweet Temptation

“Yeah, that’ll do.” It was good news, for both Summer and her brother.

But I still needed to make sure there was no connection between Summer and the Bloody Bastards MC.

And that Blair Sanchuk was out of her life—forever.

Her mom was right. One year was not enough. Especially when we didn’t even know where the fuck he was.

“I’ve got some not-so-good news, though,” Naveen went on. “Thought I’d hit you up with that last.”

“Hit me.”

“Seems Justice Sorensen has got himself a pretty voracious coke habit. Far as we can tell, he’s being supplied by your friendly neighborhood Bloody Bastard. Goes by the name of Boasty. Word I got is that this guy has a Bastards tattoo on his right forearm. And a reputation for being a decent guy, whatever that means.”

“Same guy I met at Justice’s place. Any reason to think their relationship is anything more than dealer/user merriment?”

“Nothing I could find. They seem to be friendly. That’s about it.”

I considered this, wondering what it all meant. There was no crime in being “friends” with a criminal. Even scumbags had friends.

Buying drugs from him, though… that was a crime.

“I’m assuming you’ve got no word on Sanchuk?”

Every day, it was the same damn thing on that front.

“Not yet.”

“Any chance this Boasty guy might be talkative in a way that could help us?”

“That’s doubtful, especially when he’s so far out. We can’t pull that kind of weight out near Hope. Sticking our necks out to try to question him about Sanchuk would probably do nothing but get Sanchuk tipped off that we’re looking, and send him deeper into hiding.”

Yeah. Unfortunately, that sounded about right.

“Right. Well, keep at it.”

“Will do,” he said.

I was actually starting to feel a little bad taking up so much of his time with this shit. Naveen had a lot of other work to do, a large part of which was managing all our guys on their various assignments. I’d been asking a lot of him on this—and him only, because I wanted my best guy on it, overseeing our efforts from the office.

Really, it had only been a few weeks. But it felt like a long damn time. And I wondered, not for the first time, how long we could keep this up.

At what point we’d have to give up this fruitless search and write Sanchuk off as gone.

“How are things over there?” Naveen asked, when I remained silent.

“Summer’s parents are here. Just had to give them the lowdown. Wish I could give them some better news, at least that we have eyes on Sanchuk or something. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them he’s MIA.”

“Huh.”

“What?” I said, picking up on his tone.

“Pardon my bluntness here, but are you falling in love?”

“What? Where the fuck did that come from?”

Said the guy who was totally busted.

“You forget I’m a fool in love myself,” he said. “Know all the signs. And yours have been flashing with all the subtlety of a Vegas strip show for a while now.”

---