Page 2 of One Cry Too Loud
“It’s okay. I don’t mind. Do I detect a little jealousy in your voice?”
Danny was our old boss and Kat’s three time former fiance. To say they had a complicated past was to say the desert was hot. It vastly oversimplified the situation.
“I’m not the type who gets jealous,” I said honestly.
“Good, because I don’t like those types,” she said, emerging from the bathroom. As I took her in, I saw that she looked roughly the same as she had when she vanished into the room. The toothbrush was gone, of course, her slippers had been replaced with more appropriate shoes, and a light sheen shone on her face. I assumed it was a touch of makeup, just enough to soften the edges and accentuate the vast physical blessings God had already bestowed upon her face. I didn’t know too muchabout that stuff, though. All I knew was that she looked amazing, and that was all I needed to know.
“You were wearing red the first night I picked you up from this house. I thought you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,” I said, looking her up and down. “Strange as it seems, I think you look even better in blue.”
“You remember that?” She asked, her hand instinctively touching her blue top.
“Hard to forget, not that I’d want to,” I said. “I was barely seventeen and shaking like a leaf, praying to God that you wouldn’t notice all the thin spots in the beard I was desperately trying to grow.”
“I did notice.” She smiled. “I still thought it suited you.”
“Would you have thought, back then, that we’d be here now?” I asked. “That’d we’d be about to-”
“About to what?” She asked, smiling a bit as she bit her lower lip. “What do you think we’re about to do here, Jackson? Why do you think I invited you in?”
“I think you invited me in because you wanted to come in,” I said. “And I think we’re about to go for a drink. Though, if you had another idea, I might be-”
My phone buzzed loudly, cutting into my words and putting a stop to them. I wasn’t the texting type, not really. Everyone in my life knew that. In fact, the only time my phone ever went off with a text was when I was needed for work. And the vast majority of the time, that text came from the woman standing in front of my right now.
I narrowed my eyes and grabbed my phone.
“What is it?” Kat asked. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, reading the words splayed across my screen. “It’s Vanpelt. He needs to see me.” I looked back up at Kat. “He says something has happened.”
CHAPTER 2
“What the hell are we doing here?” Kat asked, opening the passenger side door of my car and stepping out. The sun had completely set, leaving the sky a dark, starless black. A storm was coming, though that wasn’t unexpected in Florida, especially at this time of the year.
“This is the location he sent me,” I said, stepping out of the car myself and meeting Kat around the front. We were standing in a completely empty parking lot on the southside of town. Though it wasn’t late by any means, the businesses in this particular shopping center; craft shops, bakeries, an insurance agency, a bank, and even a breakfast spot all catered to the daytime crowd, and that meant they had all been closed for at least an hour.
“Are you sure? There’s no one here,” she said, as though it was something I couldn’t plainly see myself.
“I know I’m not the most technically savvy person in the world, Kat, but I can read a dropped pin on a map,” I answered. Looking down at my phone, I continued. “He just sent me a message. He said he’d be here in five minutes.”
“Five minutes we could have been using for our drink,” she reminded me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, smiling at the woman.
She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t asking you to apologize. I know how the job is. It’s my job too. It’s just that I was looking forward to it.”
“I was looking forward to it myself,” I said honestly. “You know, I know we haven’t used the word when talking about tonight, but I haven’t really dated a lot since Denise.”
“I haven’t dated a lot since Daniel,” she said, talking about our old boss. “You know, since thelasttime with Daniel.”
“I really didn’t mean to read the letter he sent you,” I said, harkening back to what happened in her house.
“Oh, it’s fine. I was teasing you, which-as you know, is one of my absolute favorite things to do.” She laughed softly. “He was just sending me some paperwork anyway. I’m helping him finish up the sale of his house.”
“That’s right. He moved,” I said, shaking my head and remembering that fact.
“Down to New Orleans,” she answered. “When the CCU folded last year, his job went away. Luckily for him, he was needed over in Louisiana. He’s working for the other CCU now.”
“With Harry?” I asked.
