Page 89 of The Kings of Kearny

I checked the time before locking my screen. It was seven a.m. That meant I only had a few hours to get out of here without Jakob in tow. Nick and crew might not be ready to meet until noon, but there was work to do on my end before their plane touched down. I needed to call Magnolia Hills. I needed to find a coffee shop in Hermannsburg, the town in between Joker and King territory, and then I’d have to drive at least an hour to get there.

Nick and I talked for a long time last night, going over everything. The plan was simple enough, but we’d made several contingency plans for when shit went sideways. If the military had taught us anything, it was that shit always went sideways.

“What’s the nearest town?” I asked.

“Peterborough,” Jennifer answered.

“They have a drugstore there?”

“They do,” she said.

“I’ll need to head over sometime this morning.”

“I’ll drive,” Jakob said.

Damn it.

I cocked a brow at him. “You don’t think I can get to the store and back safely?”

He met my gaze head-on. “Not with your track record.”

“I’ve been doing just fine on my own these past twenty-six years,” I said.

Gran snorted. “Keep telling yourself that, kiddo.”

I leaned forward to look at her. “Don’t you start in too.”

Gran grinned, unrepentant.

“Let the woman go on her own,” Jennifer said, coming to my rescue. “She hasn’t had a minute to herself in days. She probably needs a break.”

Jakob looked at me in question.

“Some alone time would be nice,” I said. “It would give me a chance to clear my head a little.”

He eyed me. “You’ll call if anything happens?”

I feigned annoyance. “What could happen? I doubt the Jokers are posted up waiting for me.”

“You never know,” he said, his expression turning stubborn.

“Fine. I’ll call if anything happens,” I relented.

~*~

FIVE HOURS LATER, Isat in a tiny coffee shop in Hermannsburg. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, geared more toward takeout than sitting in. I’d snagged the table closest to the window, paying a trio of high school girls to get up from it and move to one in the back. They sat there now, whispering together, throwing confused glances my way.

I did my best to ignore them, eyes trained on the street outside. Hermannsburg was a quaint little town. The original settlers were German, and like some of the bigger Germanic-founded Texas towns, the architecture looked more old-world European than modern-day American. Elaborate signs hung outside the stores, adding to the atmosphere. I sat in Hans ‘Kaffee. Across the way was a bar called Der Platz. Google told me that translated to The Place.

It was a cool, eclectic little town, one that I wanted to come back and visit once my life returned to normal.

If my life ever returns to normal,I thought. There was a good chance that our little plan might blow up in our faces. Daniel King said that Redding was a loose cannon. He’d gone so far as to call him a sociopath. I thought about the look Redding gave me in the police station—that cold expression, those flat eyes, dead of emotion. He’d assaulted a girl in Afghanistan and ordered a hit on an innocent woman here. I didn’t think Daniel was wrong to call him a sociopath.

I relayed all that to Nick last night, and most of our contingency plans revolved around how to react if Redding went off the rails. It was damn near impossible to predict the behavior of someone like him, and that worried me, especially because in less than half an hour, he would walk through the door of this coffee shop.

Another man entered it now. He wore a deep blue suit in a modern cut that was tailored to perfection. His black hair was artfully quaffed. Aviators hid his dark eyes. His head swiveled toward me, and he smiled, his teeth blindingly white against his tan skin. A chorus of sighs echoed from the table in the back. The high school girls must have caught sight of him.

I nearly turned to them and said, “All that and a brain.” Nick was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. He’d gotten out of the military a few years before me and had his pick of job offers. CIA, NSA, a nice cushy desk job in DC—he could have done anything he wanted. In the end, he’d joined the FBI.

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