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Fuck. Me. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut with a steel-toed boot.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Do you know the guy?”
I looked to Mac, who was waiting for the answer.
“Yeah, I fucking know the guy.”
Nix and Miranski eyed me.
“He’s my brother.”
12
MAC
* * *
“Do you think it’s true?” Hardin asked as we climbed from his truck in the diner lot.
After we’d left Sam’s apartment, we’d gone back to the shop to work but didn’t say much. My best friend was a thinker, and I knew when not to talk. I had no idea what to say anyway, stuck in my own fucking thoughts. I’d walked Sam to her car, kissed her goodbye, but she was not only in a rush to get to the hospital but was stuck on everything the detectives had stirred up. She hadn’t known Hardin and the guy who was fucking with her were related, and now that she knew… she couldn’t be with us to work it out. She had to go deal with a busted spleen.
It was a total shit show I wasn’t sure how to get out of. I couldn’t fucking believe it was Mark who was putting the moves on her. He was a total man whore, but he was all about consent. Or so I’d thought. I believed Sam, but I’d known Mark my whole life. He’d left for college when Hardin and I were in elementary school, so the two of them had reconnected and begun to really hang out after Hardin finished college and moved back to Cutthroat. Still, that had been over a decade of time to get to know someone. Or at least we’d thought we’d known him.
Or we’d thought we’d known Sam.
Jesus.
“I have no fucking idea,” I replied, running a hand over the back of my neck as we strode toward the diner’s entrance.
Hardin knew Mark would be at the diner at three, supposedly to try and hook up with their breakfast waitress from this morning. Hardin wasn’t a texter, and for this mess he wanted to have a little chat with his brother face-to-face.
This was a total kick to the gut because it was a no-win situation. Mark was an asshole, or the woman we were falling for was a liar. Either way we were screwed.
And Hardin? I’d never seen him so fucking messed up. The guy who’d been fucking with our woman was Mark. His fucking brother. I tried to put together the laid-back guy we drank beers with and the handsy fucker Sam had described.
It was hard to believe. Mark was a womanizer, no question, but was he a chauvinistic asshole who crossed the line? Why would Sam lie? She had no clue about men—that was blatantly obvious—and being talked to inappropriately, fuck, touched inappropriately, it would have freaked her out. But HR didn’t buy her allegations, so either that made them exaggerations or the hospital’s HR sucked. She’d been alone her whole life, and if HR ignored legitimate claims, then she must have felt even more isolated.
She’d learned of my time in juvie from the guy who’d been messing with her, which meant Mark. Yeah, he’d known about all that. She’d said he’d seen us kiss when I dropped her off this morning and had tossed my past out there to push us apart. That meant Mark had sabotaged me and Sam. Because he wanted her for himself?
To make it even worse and a fuck-ton scarier, Nix had pointed out how much Sam looked like Erin Mills. Did Mark have a thing for blondes? Had he been involved with Erin and it had gotten out of hand?
The idea of Mark sexually harassing women was bad enough, but the fact that Nix even made the connection to a murder… holy fuck.
And that didn’t even cover the slashed tire or the break-in. Was that Mark, too, and if so, how?
My head was fucking spinning. Who to believe, the woman we wanted or family? Sam had given her side, so it was time for Mark’s.
Nix and Miranski wanted to talk with Mark, but Hardin planned to get to him first. We pushed open the diner’s entry door, then searched left and right down the long line of booths.
And there he was, in the back corner. Just as Hardin had expected, a woman sat across from him, but her back was to us. A blonde.
I followed Hardin, and Mark smiled when he caught sight of us.
He stood, gave Hardin a man hug and a slap on the shoulder. “Twice in one day? Join us. You remember Sarah, right?”
Mark dropped back into the booth, but instead of sitting across from Sarah, sat next to her, forcing her to slide in farther.
Hardin took Mac’s old spot, and I grabbed a chair from a nearby empty table and swung it around.
