Page 35 of Hold Your Breath
Since she’d been expecting to have to argue just to get him to talk theories, she was startled at his direct answer…as well as a little confused about exactly which question he was answering. “You don’t what?”
“I don’t think there’s a head mounted in the Freedom Survivors’ game room.”
“Oh.” Oddly, she was a little disappointed. After reading militia stories all afternoon, her imagination was ready to take off at a full-on gallop. “Why not?”
“To my knowledge, they haven’t reachedthatlevel of crazy. I’ve asked around some, and the consensus is that they’re just a bunch of preppers who have a big gun collection and like to run drills. They’re not going to be chopping off some guy’s head and tossing him in the reservoir because he spoke out of turn. If theyareresponsible for killing this guy, they’ve reached a serious new level of fucked-up and have hidden it well.”
That didn’t disprove anything—but it didn’t prove it either. Since he seemed more open than usual about discussing theories, she asked, “How about the motorcycle club?”
Callum looked thoughtful. “Don’t really know enough about them to comment on that. You know who’s a member, though?”
“Who?”
“Your crush.”
She barely prevented herself from blurting,You?When she just looked at him, mentally fumbling away from that potential disaster, he grimaced.
“Calendar boy? With the sexy tattoos?” He saidsexy tattoosin a falsetto that made her snort, although she still didn’t know the identity of this so-called “crush.” When she continued to stare blankly at Callum, he sighed. “Walsh? The guy whose ass you couldn’t take your eyes off of the other night?”
“Ian? The fireman?” She had to think about that for a moment. Her brain immediately went to the obvious image. “Whoa, Ian on a motorcycle. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any hotter.”
Callum made a disgruntled sound, and she bumped him with her foot under the table. “I’m just messing with you, Cal.”
“Did youkickme?”
“It was barely a nudge,” she scoffed. “A little love nudge.”
His face went still, and his eyes flared with sudden heat. As she realized what she’d just said, she clapped a hand over her mouth, instantly making her slip of the tongue so much more obvious. They stared at each other for a long, charged moment.
She finally couldn’t take it anymore and mumbled through her fingers, “So, about the dead guy…”
The intensity of Callum’s stare eased as his mouth relaxed into a half smile. “What about him?”
The arrival of their food stalled any further discussion. To Lou, it was a welcome relief from the earlier tension. If Callum was going to be sleeping over at her house tonight, it probably wasn’t good to bring up the whole “love” topic…or sex, or lust, or anything having to do with his body touching hers. Her ears grew hot at the thought, and sudden warmth pooled low in her stomach, although she tried to convince herself the spicy sauce on her ribs was to blame.
After she worked her way through half her plate, she sighed and looked at Callum. “Think Ian will talk to me?” At his sharp look, she added, “Not in a fifth-grade crush kind of way. Do you think he’ll talk to me about whether the MC might be involved in HDG’s death?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She poked her baked beans with her fork, frowning.
“If they had something to do with it, he’s not going to rat out his club, Lou.”
That made sense, although it did make things harder. “Not even for his emergency-services sister? I thought we were a club, too.”
Although she meant it mostly as a joke, Callum answered seriously. “He grew up in the MC. I think it’s hard for him, balancing both the club and Fire. There are guys on both sides who don’t trust him because he straddles that line.”
“That must be hard.” She took a bite of the beans. After she swallowed, she asked, “Did you grow up around here?”
“Yeah.” His expressionless mask fell back into place. It wasn’t until she was faced with robot-Callum again that she realized how much he’d opened up over the past few days.
“Did you know him? Ian, I mean.”
“Not really.” He crumpled his napkin and tossed it next to his cleared plate. “You done? I should get to the meeting.”
She stared at him in horrified disbelief. “You cannot eat at Levi’s and not have the berry-apple crumble. You just can’t. It’s…sacrilegious!”
His scowl eased slightly.
