Page 55 of Things We Hide from the Light
“You’re my brother. She’s my friend. That makes it my business.”
“Save your breath. Nothing’s happened…yet,” I added on a smirk.
“Yeah? Well, it better stay that way. You two don’t work. She’s all wanderlust and adrenaline and you break out into hives if you venture out of the county. You’ve got nothin’ in common.”
“Said the expert whose been engaged what? A handful of weeks? To a woman who is way too good for you, I might add. Thanks, Silver,” I said when she slid me a draft beer.
“Gentlemen, I suggest we table this discussion,” Lucian said. “We have other matters to discuss.”
The faster they spilled it, the sooner I could go home.
Lucian put his scotch down on the bar and nodded at my brother.
“Where does the investigation stand? Lucian thinks the feds are ignoring Duncan Hugo because they’re more interested in landing his fuckface father,” Knox said.
Okay, maybe I’d rather go a few rounds about me seeing Lina if the alternative was talking about Duncan Hugo. “It’s an ongoing investigation. No comment,” I said.
Knox snorted. “You can’t tell me you’re not running your own investigation. If the feds are focused on Daddy, then we’ll go after Junior. Only problem is, Junior’s so far underground no one knows where he is.”
“Our most likely theory is that Anthony helped his son leave the country,” Lucian said.
If the junior Hugo had split the country, that meant the odds of him coming back to finish the job were slim.
The relief I felt was immediately replaced with a wave of shame. As an officer of the law, I was programmed to fight for justice. As a Morgan, I was destined to just plain fight. Yet here I was, too depressed to spur myself into action.
“I’d have bet my brokerage balance that asshole doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together. But Naomi and Way insist he’s smarter than he’s given credit. Says when he had ’em…” Knox trailed off, his knuckles going white on the bar.
I realized that Hugo hadn’t just taken something from me, he’d taken from my family. And that still wasn’t enough to bring me to the surface of the dark.
My brother cleared his throat while Lucian and I did the polite, manly thing and ignored him.
“Way said he was sly like a fox with rabies,” Knox said finally.
The corner of my mouth lifted. Waylay would make a fine cop someday, but I doubted Knox would want to hear that about his little girl.
“He better hope for his sake his ass is in South America getting eaten alive by mosquitos,” Knox said.
“I don’t see a scenario where it would make sense for him to stick around. He’s most likely living it up somewhere far away from here.”
“But in case he isn’t,” Lucian said, “you need to be vigilant. You’re a loose end regardless of where he is. You’re the only one who can identify him as the shooter.”
“And how would you know that?” I demanded.
Lucian held up his palms, the picture of innocence. “I can’t help it if information falls into my lap.”
“What kind of information?”
“The kind that summarizes your dashcam footage.”
My jaw clenched. It was more of a reflex than any real emotion. “That leak better not have come from my end.”
“It didn’t,” he assured me.
“You remember anything yet?” Knox demanded.
I stared at the bottles behind the bar. People drowned themselves in those bottles daily to numb the pain, the fear, the discomfort that life doled out. Some numbed themselves in even more dangerous ways. Some never surfaced.
But I was already numb. I needed to feel. And no amount of alcohol was going to help me dig my way out of this all-consuming emptiness. There was only one thing that could. One woman that could.
