Page 48 of In the Nick of Time
“Be careful!” Nick repeated. “We don’t know what, and who, to be careful of.” Hands on his head, Nick spun in a slow circle. “I need to take Tim outside.”
Doug had no idea how often a tortoise needed to go, but Nick clearly needed a few moments to gather his thoughts and calm down.
“Don’t take too long. We need to get moving.”
“I don’t know if it’s possible to rush a tortoise, just saying.”
“Just go already.”
They had no plan. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on.
A Velvet Elvis who possibly put people to sleep with his voice. A mysterious man who wore a porkpie hat but who, in Nick’s opinion, wasn’t a hipster. Doug didn’t like that the porkpie hat guy had approached Nick. Had placed his hand on his arm out of the blue and without permission. He worried that April and thus SPAM were keeping vital information from them. Doug wasn’tsure why they would, but he needed to figure out if they were. Because if he was right, they would never get to the bottom of this without more intel.
While Nick was outside taking care of the damn reptile, Doug checked his personal email. There was nothing urgent, but he responded to a few phishing scams because he loved to annoy the con folk. At the bottom of the page, a message from Rich popped up. Doug hit delete without reading it. He had nothing to say to Rich.
Funny, he didn’t get mad anymore when thinking about his ex. The Rich Effect had faded away to nothing. Doug was self-aware enough to admit that much of this was likely due to the goofy younger man he’d known for less than seven days.
Rich would’ve hated Nick Sedgewick. Rich wouldn’t have taken the time to figure out that, once you got past the dimwit airhead persona Nick Sedgewick showed the rest of the world, he was smart, funny, and damn sexy. Mind, before this week, Doug might not have either. But he, at least, could admit it. Nick was a hundred times more mature and thoughtful than Rich, and it had nothing to do with his age.
Rich would never rescue a random reptile. Rich couldn’t care less if a kid was lost in a crowd. Truthfully, Doug was realizing that Rich was not a nice person in general and he was better off without him.
It hadn’t taken Doug more than twenty-four hours to realize that whenever he was being a particular asshole—something that Doug was very accomplished at—Nick would counteract him with a ridiculous comment or possibly a fact about aging brains and bodies.
Well played, Agent Sedgewick, well played. Doug could admit when he’d been bested—for the time being anyway. He also wasn’t afraid to admit he enjoyed their chemistry. He thought that Nick did too.
Was he surprised? Absolutely. But now he understood that it wasn’t the fact that Rich had left him for another man, it was that Rich didn’t want to get older and was using a younger man to try and stop the process. Nick didn’t seem to care that he and Doug were fifteen years apart. And who knew what would happen when the mission was over.
Doug still planned on retiring; he was done with desk work. Maybe he would start a gym? It wasn’t a terrible idea. Maybe he’d write his memoirs. Glancing at the corner of the laptop screen, Doug realized Nick and the tortoise had been gone for longer than he was comfortable with.
“That damn reptile,” Doug grumbled as he shoved his feet into his sneakers, grabbed some keys, and headed down to the parking lot.
He wasn’t there.
Nick was nowhere to be seen.
“Nick!” Doug called out, but there was no answer. “Agent Sedgewick!”
Doug checked everywhere he could think of, even underneath parked cars, but Nick was nowhere. Vanished. Disappeared. This gave Doug a very bad feeling. On the off chance Nick had needed something from the lobby, Doug headed inside. Nick wasn’t there either.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered quietly.
Back out in the parking lot, Doug stood in a lonely patch of shade and stared out into the too-bright sunlight, looking for any sign that Nick had been there.
“They ambushed him,” a voice said.
Doug looked around. There wasn’t anyone nearby. No human being was within seventy or eighty feet of him.
“Knocked him out and shoved him into a black Ford Expedition. I didn’t get the license plate.”
“What the actual fuck.” Doug looked around again, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.
“Down here.”
Doug moved his gaze downward. There, slowly crawling out from under a sporty red roadster with its soft top down, was the fucking reptile.
“Again,” Doug said. “What. The. Actual. Fuck? A talking tortoise now?”
Tim stared up at him and blinked once. Very slowly.
