Page 55 of Coff

Of course. I should have known. I lean my head back. “Security cameras.”

“Where the hell are you?”

Now, I could tell him the truth, but I know that will get me a lecture or two. Instead, I lie. Not something I usually do with my brother. “I decided to walk around and clear my head.” Well, I did walk around, so it’s not entirely untrue.

“Uh-huh.” He’s not buying my bullshit. “You aren’t too far from the therapist’s office, then? Give me the cross streets, and I’ll pick you up.”

And he called me on it.

“No need. I rented a car. I can drive myself back.”

“Fuck, Logan, you went to find her, didn’t you?” He doesn’t need to say who he’s referring to; we both know. “Don’t deny it,” he says.

Nelson walks out of the restaurant and gets into his car. The window is still out, but now he has clear plastic taped up over the gaping hole. I turn the phone on speaker and toss it into the passenger seat so I can follow this man wherever he goes.

“Logan, you’re losing your touch.”

I laugh to myself. “Why do you say that?”

Nelson pulls out onto the road. I wait a beat, then follow.

“Because Delaney came to my office to see me.”

She went to see my brother? “Why?”

“She wanted to know if you’re in town. She said she thought she saw you.”

So that’s why she was there. Maybe I wasn’t as discreet as I thought I’d been. Wait, how the hell would Delaney know who Brian is or where he works? Nelson gets on the highway, and I follow a couple of cars back.

“Brian, have you been talking to her all these years?”

Nelson exits the highway, and I do the same.

A door clicks shut through the phone. “What? No.”

“Then how did she know who you were or how to find you?”

While I’m trying to focus on where Nelson is going, my focus is on whether my brother has been hiding something from me all these years. “Is she one of your informants?”

Finally, Nelson pulls into a parking lot of a large warehouse. I keep driving down the road, then turn around about a block later.

“No, she’s not. She said you mentioned you had a brother, Brian, years ago, and the first thing she did was confirm I have a brother named Logan. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken to her.”

She remembered something I said all those years ago. It shouldn’t matter, but it makes me smile.

I spot the man’s car in the front row. He’s no longer in it. I park in the back of the lot and keep my eyes on the building.

“If she saw you, then that means you are doing a shit job of stalking her,” he says.

“I’m not stalking her.” Because I’m stalking her husband now.

“Uh-huh. I don’t believe that. What is going on? All these years, you were fine, and then you see Rocky Manzia once, and now you have to get close to her? It’s too dangerous. You need to leave it alone.”

Not going to happen. I know she’s miserable, and that tugs at me. I can’t leave it alone now.

“What did you tell her?”

He sighs. “I told her I haven’t seen you in months. Then she left.”

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