Page 95 of The Kings of Kearny

Chapter Twenty-Three

The white van was gone.

I stood fifty feet from the door of the café, staring at the spot where it had sat. The flow of traffic on the sidewalk bent around me, people throwing me annoyed or confused looks as they passed. Fair enough; I’d come to a screeching halt in the middle of the sidewalk, and now it must look like I was just standing here daydreaming.

Where the hell was the FBI van?

I blinked a couple of times and then looked up and down the street, wondering if the feds had moved it for some reason. Maybe they’d parked illegally and a pesky town official had threatened them with a ticket.

Sweat beaded on my forehead. The sun beat down, baking the pavement. Heat waves rose from it in a way that made me wonder if I’d finally snapped and was hallucinating. I checked the street again. No. I wasn’t. The van was gone.

I frowned and forced myself to walk toward the café. Jakob had known about Nick. How?Howww?And why hadn’t he said anything sooner? Why had he let me into Kearny, into Charley’s, knowing that I used to sleep with an FBI agent? Maybe Jakob had friends still in government work too, one at the NSA who agreed to illegally hack my Messenger account, and so Jakob knew I’d turned Nick down. Or maybe he’d told Daniel about the risk I posed, and they agreed to let me in only so they could teach the FBI a lesson. Through my violent murder. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot after everything I’d already been through?

I barked a laugh. It sounded as hysterical as I felt. The nice old white lady passing me on the sidewalk shot me a look and then picked up her pace to get away from the crazy woman. I wanted to apologize to her, tell her I was fine, but I didn’t know if I was. Jakob was right; I wasn’t used to his world. As warped as I thought I was after surviving two wars and a plane crash, I still had morals. My mind might have some dark corners, but there was light in there too. I looked for the good in people. Jakob was proof of that. My first instinct was to befriend someone, not to sniff out ways to manipulate them.

I was in way over my head with all these devious motherfuckers.

With that thought ringing through my mind, I pulled open the café door and stopped dead in my tracks for the third time in less than five minutes. It was silent as the grave inside. The gentle music that had filtered down from overhead was off. No quiet conversation met my ears. No tinkling of ceramic mugs, no whirring of machinery, no scraping of chair legs over floor tiles. Nothing.

The door opened into the middle of the shop. Straight ahead was the service counter. When I’d walked in earlier, three people had been manning it. A pimply teenage boy worked the register. Two baristas were behind him, foaming, whipping, and pouring coffee. The counter stood empty now, and it freaked me out. I jerked my gaze away and took in the rest of the space.

The entire goddamn café was empty.

What the fuck was going on?

A motion caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see Nick emerging from the back.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

He smiled that megawatt smile at me, like everything was okay. This time I didn’t fall for it.

“Come sit with me,” he said, pulling out a stool at the table we’d shared earlier.

I stood rooted to my spot by the door. “Answer my question, Nick.”

“I will,” he said, still smiling. “Just come sit down.”

The only reason I obeyed was because it felt like my legs were about to give out. Too much shit had happened in the past few hours—hell, the past few days—and my mind was unraveling. Calm, logical Krista Evans, who, if she’s honest with herself, thinks she’s smarter than the average bear, had gotten everything wrong again and again, and now she was in the middle of an empty café with an FBI agent having a full-blown existential crisis. Maybe the sky wasn’t blue. Maybe it was purple. And really, whatislife?

I dropped down hard on the proffered chair. “Where the hell is everyone?”

Nick smoothly took his seat beside me, looking unflappable. “They’re out back, taking their fifteen-minute break together.”

I eyed him. “You didn’t have them all killed?”

He laughed, his whole face lighting up with amusement. “No. They’re fine.”

“Where’s Redding and his lawyer? What happened to our plan?”

He sobered. “Redding said something about you I didn’t like, so I arrested him.”

What the fuck?

I eyed him. He didn’t look like he still held a torch for me. From all appearances online and in person, he seemed to really love his wife. I didn’t think him arresting Redding was born from jealousy or overprotectiveness, so what was this about?

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