Page 18 of Crossing Paths
Although Norah didn’t mean it as a joke, Laken threw back her head and laughed.
Still puzzled, Norah waited impatiently for the woman to give her an answer.
“You know this town,” Laken said with one of her dismissive hand waves. “There’s not much happening, so all gossip is fair game. But enough about boring hometown rumors. Tell me what it’s like to bring in wanted criminals. Your work must be so exciting!”
It took a long moment before Norah could respond. The conversation was taking odd turns she wasn’t prepared for, and Laken’s attempts to redirect felt more like evasion than Norah liked, but she reminded herself to give the other woman a chance. “It’s satisfying but usually not very exciting.”
As she said the words, Leifsen’s creepy messages flashed through her mind, but she pushed them away. Everything in her brain needed to focus on getting through this encounter without suffering humiliation. This wasn’t the time for her to get paranoid.
“Oh, I can’t believe that,” Laken said coyly. “I think you’re just being modest.”
Frowning yet again, Norah shook her head. “It really isn’t exciting. Maybe a little more for my sisters, but for me it’s just a lot of hours in front of a computer.”
Laken hid a tiny frown behind her coffee cup as she took a sip. Catching that brief downturn of the other woman’s mouth, Norah studied Laken, curious about her unexpected reaction. Norah had always loved solving puzzles, and she felt some of her tension fade as she set her mind to figuring out what was going on with her former classmate.
“Tell me about your sisters’ jobs then.” Laken said, affixing her smile back in place as she lowered her cup. “Have they ever chased after anyone famous?”
“Not really.” Norah shifted, uncomfortable with talking about the business. Even giving that evasive nonanswer felt wrong, like she was breaking confidentiality rules.
“Well…” Another of Laken’s micro expressions flickered across her face—frustration this time—and the puzzle solver in Norah added it to the other clues. “Who are they after now? Anyone I’ve heard about?”
Norah didn’t want to talk about Leifsen for several reasons, so she just raised one shoulder in an awkward half shrug. “Just a…white-collar criminal. No one interesting.”
This time, Laken’s mask dropped for a solid two seconds as she glared at Norah. “What about your mom?” she asked. “Have your sisters had any luck tracking her?”
Oh. That’s her plan.The pieces clicked into place, and Norah couldn’t hide her grimace. It seemed that Laken wanted the good gossip straight from the source. “I really don’t want to talk about Mom,” she said flatly, and Laken’s head jerked back slightly, as if she wasn’t expecting to be so bluntly refused.
“I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.” Laken plastered on a look of sympathy, and Norah wondered how she’d ever thought the woman was being sincere. Laken hadn’t changed since high school. She’d simply gotten better at disguising her true motives. “I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay with everything that’s happened. I mean, being forced to hunt down your own mother… That must be so painful.”
“You didn’t touch a nerve,” Norah said, unable to hold in a sigh. For a short while, she’d thought this coffee date wouldn’t be excruciatingly uncomfortable, but now she knew the truth. It was going to involve Laken trying her best to dig her manicured nails into Norah’s family business so she could rip everything open, exposing them for the entertainment of their former classmates.
She knew she couldn’t sit there much longer without saying something that was truly rude. Glancing at her bare wrist as if she were wearing a watch, she abruptly stood and shouldered her backpack.
“I need to get to my appointment.” As Laken stared at her, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, Norah grabbed her coffee cup and turned to leave. “Bye,” she tossed over her shoulder, not able to conjure up a “good to see you” or an “it’s been fun.” Both would’ve been lies.
“Wait…” Laken said faintly, but Norah didn’t stop, barely slowing to toss her paper cup into the recycling bin.
As she charged through the door into the autumn sunshine, she felt as if a fifty-pound weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Except for her abrupt departure, Norah thought she’d handled the time with Laken pretty well, and now it was over. She just had her session with Dash to look forward to.
Feeling the corners of her mouth tip up, she resisted the urge to bounce with every step. It was hard though. Excitement bubbled through her, lifting her buoyantly until she felt as if she could just float to the gym. A tiny, serious voice in her head warned her that the higher she flew, the farther she had to fall, but she ignored it and simply wallowed in the joy of leavingLaken behind for the prospect of punching Dash.
***
She arrived early. Uncomfortably early. Instead of looking at her nonexistent watch, she should’ve checked her phone and then hid out in an alley for forty minutes, because when she stepped inside the gym, it was packed. She froze, feeling claustrophobic. After previously training with just Dash, the movement of a dozen people—all big men—along with the clamor of clanging weights and grunts and the heavy pulse of rock music was overwhelming.
Norah wasn’t sure how anyone could function with all the distractions, much less learn something. She took a step back, bumping her heel against the door. Her close proximity to the exit reassured her. No one had noticed her yet. All she had to do was slip back outside, linger in the alley for a while, and then return after Dash had kicked everyone out.
Her gaze swept over the place a final time as her hand reached for the door handle. Before she could put her escape plan into motion, however, she spotted Dash…and his eyes were locked on her.
Mentally cursing, she debated whether she should continue her plan to bail and pretend that she’d forgotten a vital item in the car or something. The only problem was that it wouldn’t take forty minutes to retrieve a lost item, so she would just have to deal with walking into the crowded gym again if she did that. Grumbling under her breath, she resigned herself to staying. Now she just had to run the gauntlet of sweaty, curious strangersto get to the other side of the gym where Dash was waiting.
Straightening her shoulders, she locked her gaze on Dash.Just think of it as a video game, she told herself. Dash was the prize she needed to capture, the treasure chest waiting for her at the end of her quest. All she had to do was weave her way through the mats and benches and weight racks while ignoring the grunting beings between her and her pot of gold.
Not allowing herself to hesitate a second longer, Norah strode forward, not taking her eyes off her prize, even as his expression turned quizzical. She only made it halfway when a muscular form stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“Hey, pretty lady. You must be new.”
Without engaging or even looking up at his face, she slipped around the obstacle and fixed her eyes on Dash again. His expression was now slightly amused, the right side of his lips twitching upward in a tiny, lopsided smile.
