Page 88 of The Pretenders of Copper County
“Sunday! Reed!” Watt Bartlett tore open the door to the flower shop and raced out to the sidewalk as I passed. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”
I shook my head, not slowing down. “I can’t talk now?—”
Watt kept pace beside me, long legs eating up the wet pavement. “Well, your husband needed youhoursago, asshole. He’s all upset, convinced you’re not going to love him anymore?—”
I stopped and turned to stare at him. “Not love him? What?” I glanced around, trying to spot him through the pounding rain. “Where is he?”
“Back at the campground. He borrowed my phone so he could call someone about a family emergency or something. He wouldn’t tell me. And I wondered maybe if it was something to do with… well, you being one ofOak’s friends.” Watt lifted an eyebrow. “But after Chris’s call, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. He cried?—”
“Cried?” Heart racing, I grabbed the front of Watt’s shirt, which was already soaked through and cold to the touch. “Did he say who he talked to?”
Watt, to his credit, didn’t seem upset by my manhandling. He shook his head. “He didn’t, but when he first made the call, I… I might have overheard him sayNicky?”
My numb fingers slipped off Watt’s shirt and I sucked in a breath.
Nicky. There it was. The missing piece. The “something” I’d told Janissey we’d overlooked. The cousin who, in Janissey’s own words, was “called Nicky Knives for a reason.” The cousin who’d been looking for Chris and, considering he’d managed to get him on the phone, had apparently found him.
“Fucking Christ.” I spun around, darting across the street to my car, splashing through puddles.
I heard him mutter under his breath, “He must really love the guy.”
“Yes,” I snarled over my shoulder as I yanked the door open. “More than you know.”
The ride back to the campground took far longer than it should have. The rain poured down in torrents so hard the wipers could barely keep up and slicked the fallen leaves strewn along the twisty road. When I finally pulled into the campground driveway, I didn’t slow down, even when the deep ruts made the car bottom out. I skiddedto a stop beside the caretaker cabin and dove out into the rain once more.
“Chris?” I screamed as I ran, fear and love making it come out more like a howl. “Chris!”
“Reed!” Dolores ran from the woods, waving her arm. “Hey, Reed.”
I ignored her, throwing open the door to the caretaker cabin, but there was no happy smile and big doe eyes to greet me. The kitchen area was tidy, but empty, the bathroom open and dark, and in the bedroom?—
I rushed through the door, grabbed Chris’s hand knit sweater from the foot of the bed, and brought it to my nose to inhale. Vanilla andChris, the most potent fragrance in the universe. I closed my eyes for one second to steady myself, then turned toward the door to question Dolores…
Which was when I saw the gun.
“Where the hell is my nephew?”
Dante Fromadgio looked a lot less intimidating in real life. He was thin and short, with eyes a few shades darker than Chris’s, salt-and-pepper hair, and a little mustache. With his khaki pants, plaid button-down, and honest-to-god sweater vest (a twin to Chris’s sweater) he might’ve looked like a retired banker…
You know, if not for the fact that he was holding my backup weapon on me.
I held up both hands. While my gun was in its holster against the small of my back, I didn’t dare pull it on Chris’s uncle. “Dante?” I said. “I’m Reed. Agent Reed Sunday. From the Division.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t answer my question, son.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know where Chris is. I’m looking for him, too. I just got word that you’d escaped from the Marshals and came back here to tell him. But a friend said he overheard Chris talking to Nicky?—”
“Christ.” Dante’s nostrils flared and his shoulders slumped. “If Nicolas already found him?—”
I lunged forward, grabbed his wrist, and applied pressure. Dante released the weapon with a sigh.
“I wasn’t going to shoot you unless you’d hurt my nephew.”
“Good to know.” I checked my gun before jamming it in the back of my jeans next to my own. “Now what the hell does Nicky want with Chris?”
Dante shook his head tiredly. “Exactly what I tried to prevent, I assume. Nicolas got the idea in his head that I’d have let him take over my business when I retired, if not for Chris. I told Nicolas over and over that my choice had nothing to do with his cousin, that I didn’t want that life for either of my boys anymore, that it was time to fix the mistake my father made decades ago.” He sighed. “Nicolas didn’t believe me. He said he’d prove to me that he was the ‘true Fromadgio’ heir. He never understood that being a true Fromadgio had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with honor… or at least it used to.” Dante spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know where I went wrong.”
“Tell me about it,” a male voice said. “I’m in the same boat.”
