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Nick smiled. Katie had been just a tiny thing the last time he’d seen her. Now he saw that she had her mother’s green eyes, her father’s stubborn chin. “Hi, Katie. I won’t say you were only this high the last time I saw you,” he held a hand up to the height of his knees, “because it’s probably annoying when grownups do that.”
She sighed. “Totally.”
“Tell your brother I know every single piece in that Star Wars Lego set, and if I come up there and find out he’s taking from it, he’s going to be in big trouble,” Ashley said.
Katie smiled, satisfied and obviously excited to impart the message to her little brother. She pounded up the stairs, shouting the message before she’d reached the second-floor landing.
Nick looked at Ashley. “Do you really know every piece of the Lego set?”
“Oh, hell no,” Ashley said with a laugh. “But Ethan is still young enough to think I’m psychic andhave eyes in the back of my head. I need every weapon I’ve got against those two.”
Nick grinned.
“Come on,” Ashley said. “I’ll get you a beer.”
He followed her into the kitchen and she opened the fridge. She handed him a beer, took one for herself, and tipped the neck to his. “Here’s to hoping you don’t freeze to death out there.”
“Gee, thanks,” Nick said.
He opened the door and stepped onto the deck. Kyle Duhamel stood with his back to Nick, smoke spilling from the open grill as he flipped one of the burgers sizzling on its rack.
“One of those for me?” Nick asked.
Kyle glanced over his shoulder. “You know it is.”
Kyle closed the grill and turned, pulling Nick into a hug. It was a much warmer welcome than Nick had gotten at Billy’s Bar and Grill when they’d met there a year earlier. Back then Nick had just started digging into the anomalies in Alexa’s case. Their chance meeting in Copley Square was still in front of him, although Alexa herself had been a source of interest to Nick since she’d walked into MIS’ office after the leak about potential illegality at MIS.
Billy’s was a cop bar, and it was safe to say hisformer colleagues didn’t approve of the potential criminality in Nick’s new enterprise. Nick had left with the realization that he was officially on the other team. It was a realization that should have come as soon as he’d founded MIS with Ronan and Declan, but there was nothing like the flinty stares of a bunch of resentful cops to drive the point home.
“How are you, man?” Nick asked.
“You heard Katie bellowing in there,” Kyle said. “That’s my life now.”
He tried to sound put out, but Nick heard the happiness in his voice, saw the contentment in his former partner’s eyes. He’d gained twenty pounds since they’d worked together at BPD, and his brown hair was starting to recede from his forehead, but he’d never looked better to Nick.
“She’s growing up,” Nick said. “Going to be a spitfire.”
“Like her mom,” Kyle grinned. “Doesn’t take shit from anybody.”
“Good for her,” Nick said. “Bad for you.”
Kyle laughed. “Don’t I know it.”
Kyle opened the grill and turned a couple of hot dogs, then flipped one of the burgers. “I take it this is about the woman?”
“It is,” Nick said.
Nick wasn’t surprised Kyle knew about him and Alexa. He guessed the incident at the hotel had been all over BPD. A former cop, one rumored to now be dirty, involved in a random siege on a hotel, leaving behind two dead bodies, himself shot and almost killed? That same cop’s house set on fire with a Molotov cocktail?
Nick had known their story was thin when they’d been interviewed by the police. He’d also known the police didn’t have enough evidence to prove something else was going on.
But it was too crazy a story not to get around the department. Add in a gorgeous Assistant AG — now reported missing — and Nick had probably kept the gossip mill turning at BPD’s water coolers for months.
“Heard she’s missing,” Kyle said.
She’d been gone twenty-four hours and the words were still like a punch to the gut. “I wondered if you knew.”
Kyle shrugged. “You know how it is.”
