Page 18 of The Pretenders of Copper County
“What?” I demanded. “Something ringing a bell finally?”
“N-no.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “Just realizing certain phrases mean different things to different people, that’s all. Carry on.”
I made myself ignore this nonsensical statement the same way I’d ignored his gut-punch eyes and kept talking. “Someone was supposed to brief you that I was coming. Once I had you with me, we were supposed to stay at this safe house and keep you under the radar until your uncle testified?—”
Chris opened his mouth like he was going to protest again, so I talked louder.
“Ah-ah-ah! Still my turn! I wassupposedto keep you here at this safe house,” I repeated. I knew I sounded pissed off, but it was impossible to keep up my friendly act when he was looking at me like that. “Unfortunately, that plan’s been blown to hell becausesomeonetook a fucking swan dive off a trellis and borrowed the neighbor’s phone to alert the world where we are, so now I need to find us a new safe house. Which I will, but at this point, it probably won’t be until tomorrow.” Which was going to make for a hell of a long night. I fixed him with a cool stare. “And you’re sayingallof this is news to you, huh?”
He regarded me for a long, silent moment, adjusted his glasses, then asked politely, “Sorry, is it my turn to talk now?”
Like that stopped you before. I folded my arms over my chest. “Yes. Talk.”
“First, that was a very exciting story, Reed.” He smiledkindly. “More exciting than the time in season two when John Ruffian had to infiltrate a cookie-smuggling ring to intercept the government secrets being baked into the Macadamia Chip Delights?—”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“—but none of that means I’m the person you’re looking for, unfortunately. Or… fortunately, I guess, since if I were that person, this whole situation would be high-key terrifying instead of, you know, bewildering and inconvenient.” He pushed up his glasses and leaned toward me confidingly. “I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m not an adventurous person in general. Really, aside from one tiny, little Ale-pocalypse—which was blown all out of proportion—I’m the most boring person ever.”
He said this with perfect frankness, like he wasn’t a metric fuckton of oversized eyes and words and clothing, all wrapped up in one small and distractingly sexy package. Like he hadn’t escaped a safe house, climbed down a trellis, and earned the loyalty of the guy next door, all within fifteen minutes of our arrival. Like he was truly as innocent as he was claiming to be.
“Sure,” I agreed blandly. “Totally ordinary.”
Chris nodded. “So’s my uncle. Look, I don’t mean to argue with you about this.” His eyes pleaded with me for understanding. “I hate arguing, so Ineverargue, as a rule, but it feels like you’re not listening. Uncle Danny is a gardener—you should see his sedum! He can’t read the labels on a wine bottle without glasses, but he refuses to wear them. He’s been doing amateur theater for years, but he’s so self-conscious he’s never let me come to one of his shows. He has a heart condition, and he should be following a special diet, but he makes—made—pasta carbonara for me every Sunday because he knows it’s my favorite. Thisperson you’re talking about, who’s in trouble with the law, and confessed to crimes, and has enemies, and went into witness protection without me? That’s not the man I know. And I could prove it to you right now if I still had my phone. My cousin Nicky would tell you?—”
“Nicky?” I straightened, my heart beating faster. “You mean Nicky Knives? Please don’t tell me that’s who you were calling when you were next door. Fuck me, Chris. That guy is straight-up psychotic.”
To my surprise—though, really, I wasn’t sure how anything about this guy surprised me anymore—Chris laughed. It sounded strained but genuine. “Oh my gosh. NickyKnives? My cousin wishes someone would call him that!” He leaned forward again and said in a hushed voice, like someone might overhear, “When we were little, his mom called him Snickerdoodle. Hehaaaatedit. Later, when he moved in with Danny and me, he’d go around demanding, ‘Call me Nicky Steel, Chrissy.’ Or ‘Call me Nick Fury.’ But Uncle Danny always told him you couldn’t force a nickname like that, you had to earn it, and?—”
Chris glanced up at my unamused face, and his shoulders slumped. “If you must know, I called our old neighbor Mrs. Rose, back in New Jersey, only she’s hard of hearing, and I don’t think she understood what I was saying. I didn’t call Nicky. He and I aren’t close, and he’s currently not speaking to me.” Somehow, Chris sounded almostdisappointed.
“Thank fuck for that,” I said fervently. “The only thing that would make this little situation worse is for Nicky Knives to show up.”
Chris’s lip trembled. “Please stop saying things like that. You’re talking about my family, Reed. Theonly people I have left. A-and they’re not perfect. I know that. But they’remine.”
Before I could clap back with something heartfelt and probably unwise, I heard a noise outside. Motioning Chris to stay where he was—which earned me an eye roll and a sigh—I moved toward the window.
Next door, a rusted sedan pulled into Kenny’s driveway, quickly followed by a pickup truck, and six men piled out. Kenny stepped onto his porch and greeted the newcomers with fist bumps and back thumps before ushering them inside. Which would have been totally normal… except I could see from the glow of the streetlight that one of the men had a shoulder rig, and when Kenny hugged another, there was a visible bulge in the middle of his waistband that suggested he was carrying, too.
Great. Six large unknowns—at least two armed—visiting Reefer Heaven next door. I considered going outside to get a better view of their license plate numbers but quickly rejected the idea. I’d have to contact local law enforcement to ask them to run the plates, which begged the question of whether anyone at the Division had even contacted the locals, per protocol, to let them know Chris and I were here. The person who briefed Chris should have done that, but—I darted a quick glance at my protectee, who’d pulled his knees up on the bed and wrapped his arms around them, like maybe if he shrunk into a small enough ball, I wouldn’t be able to see him—given the other serious failures of protocol here, I wouldn’t bet money on it.
I let the curtain fall, then compulsively pulled out my Glock, removed the magazine to check that it was loaded, and slid it back into place. From the corner of my eye, I saw Chris tracking my movements before quickly averting his eyes.
This gave me an idea of how to prove he was a liar, once and for all. The guy was supposed to be a weapons expert, right?
“Hey, what’d you do with my, uh… my Colt?” I demanded, gesturing toward the duffel bag on the bed.
“P-pardon?”
“My gun. My backup weapon. The Colt .45 that was in my bag. When I came in here to check on you after my shower, I saw it was gone?—”
“Oh,that. It’s under the mattress.” He cocked his head. “But is it a Colt? I thought it was a Hellcat subcompact nine millimeter.”
I snorted. He knew a Hellcat subcompact on sight but wanted me to believe his family was a bunch of innocent cheesemongers?Sure. I couldn’t believe I’d actually started falling for his act.
“My bad,” I lied easily, retrieving my weapon from the area where he’d pointed. “I get those two confused.”
Chris frowned, as well he might, since a Colt .45 and a Hellcat had about as much in common as Shrek and Tinker Bell. He opened his mouth to say something—probably another rambling story about how his crime lord uncle actually ran a sanctuary for displaced honeybees and donated kidneys to orphans in his spare time—and I immediately held up a hand to cut him off.
