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“Drex, you can’t go—”
Gif said, “Rudkowski will—”
“Tell me, goddamn it!” Drex said, shouting above their warnings.
After another pause, Mike mumbled, “He’s married.”
Drex hadn’t seen that coming. “Married?”
“Married. Do you take? With this ring. I now pronounce you.”
Gif confirmed it with a solemn nod.
Drex divided a perplexed look between them, then shook his head and huffed a laugh of bitter disappointment. “Well, that shoots everything to hell, and you’ve wasted my morning. If we hurry down, the restaurant will still be serving breakfast.” He pushed his fingers through his hair.
“Shit! Here I was getting all excited, when what it looks like is that our lonely heart has struck out again and is still seeking his soul mate. But he’s not our man. Because a wife doesn’t jibe.”
“It did once,” Gif reminded him.
“Once. Not since. Matrimony, do you take, with this ring, hasn’t fit his profile or MO in years. Not in any way, shape, or form.”
“Actually, Drex, it does,” Mike said solemnly.
“How so?”
Gif cleared his throat. “The wife is loaded.”
Drex looked at each of them independently. The two men couldn’t be more dissimilar, but they wore identical expressions of fear and dread.
He turned away from them, and where his gaze happened to land was on his reflection in the dresser mirror. Even he recognized that, since he’d last looked, his countenance had altered, hardened, become taut with resolve. There was a ferocity in his eyes that hadn’t been there only minutes ago, before he had learned that a woman’s life hung in the balance. Delicately. And dependent on him to save it.
He kept his voice soft but put steel behind it. “Tell me his name.”
Chapter 2
Need help?”
Drex set the empty cardboard box on the curb, turned, and had his first face-to-face with his nemesis.
If this was indeed Weston Graham, he was around five feet eight inches tall and, for a man of sixty-two, extraordinarily fit. His golf shirt hugged firm biceps and a trim waistline. He had a receding hairline, but his graying hair was long enough in back to be pulled into a blunt ponytail. His smile was very white and straight, friendly, and wreathed by a salt-and-pepper door knocker.
Drex swiped his dripping forehead with the ripped sleeve of his baggy t-shirt. “Thanks, but that’s the last of them.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. I only offered to be nice.”
The two of them laughed.
“I’ll take one of those beers, though,” Drex said. “If you’re offering.”
His neighbor had crossed the connecting lawns with a cold bottle in each hand. He handed one to Drex. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks.”
They clinked bottles, and each took a drink. “Jasper Ford.” He stuck out his right hand and they shook.
“Jasper,” Drex said, as though hearing the name for the first time and committing it to memory, as though he hadn’t had to wring it out of Gif and Mike, as though he hadn’t spent the past week gleaning as much information on the man as he possibly could.
“I’m Drex Easton.” He watched the man’s eyes for a reaction to his name, but detected none.
