Page 124 of Lost Then Found
Miller lifts a brow. “She doesn’t want anyone’s help, Boone.”
I glance at her. “Then why the hell are we having this conversation?”
Miller sighs, like she’s explaining something to a child. “Because when does Lark ever ask anyone for anything? Ever? She’d rather bleed out on the kitchen floor than call someone to take her to a damn hospital.” She gestures vaguely. “So we’re going to start digging.”
“Right. And you think I’m the guy for that job because?”
Miller gives me a look, unimpressed. “Boone. You were in the fucking Special Forces.”
I raise a brow. “So?”
She groans, throwing her hands in the air. “Jesus Christ. You were literally trained for this kind of thing. You can track people, figure out who’s working for who, who’s feeding Wendell information.”
She’s not necessarily wrong.
I spent years doing exactly that. Following whispers, digging up information that wasn’t meant to be found, finding the weak link in a chain and snapping it before anyone could react.
If Wendell’s got someone working behind the scenes—someone making sure that health inspection went exactly the way he needed it to—I could maybe find out who it is.
Maybe.
“How did you know I was in the Special Forces?”
She smirks. “I have my sources. Now what’s it going to be, Booney?”
I sigh, tipping my head back toward the sky. “Fuck.”
She grins. “There he is.”
I run a hand down my face, mind running in a dozen different directions at once.
I want to help. Hell, I’d do anything for her.
But what if this backfires on me completely?
What if digging into this, getting involved in something she didn’t ask me to be involved in, just pisses her off more? The last thing I want is more distance between us. The space we already have is eating me alive, every clipped response, every half-second where I think she’s about to soften only for her to pull back again.
But then I think about what it would feel like to actually take this bastard down. To find the piece of shit who’s been pulling the strings, setting Lark up to fail, trying to rip the Bluebell right out from under her.
Nothing would satisfy me more.
“I’m in.”
Miller grins, bright and triumphant. “Figured you’d come around,” she says, looking down at her manicured nails. “Look at you, being all heroic and shit. Warms my heart.”
I roll my eyes. “You done?”
“Not even close.”
I ignore her, rubbing a hand over my jaw. “Okay, so where do you want to start?”
“Well, we’ve got two real options,” she says. “We can try to find the health inspector who failed the Bluebell and see if she’ll talk, or we can look at the official report at the county office and figure out where the bullshit started.”
I nod slowly, turning it over in my head. Both solid options. The first could get us a direct answer, but the second could give us proof.
“Either way, we need to figure out who actually pulled the trigger on shutting Lark down,” she continues. “Because it sure as hell wasn’t her fault.”
I cross my arms. “Do you have any kind of plan, or are we just gonna wing it?”
