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I wanted to ask a few hundred questions to figure out what the hell was going on in this town, but before I formed my first one, a black Escalade pulled into the spot next to where I’d parked. Ridge and four other men jumped out, looking like a well-coordinated team.
CHAPTER11
HAZEL
Ridge pushed his chair back from the small table he where he sat at the bakery. Our position was diagonal to how it had been the last time he interviewed me, but I couldn’t ignore the familiar feeling. How many times would I have Ridge Jefferson interrogating me?
He and his men were here so long my nerves no longer shook as he asked me questions. Corbin clutched my fingers tightly against his, giving me one last reassuring squeeze. He never left my side, not once while Ridge questioned me about what happened in the bathroom. Corbin held my hand the entire time.
I refused to give a second of attention to what that meant.
Nope.
Not at all.
Ridge stood looking over the table at Corbin particularly. They shared a moment, but it was like the one Corbin had with his twin brother, where it seemed as if they were speaking another language. Ridge was giving Corbin a command. From the way Corbin jerked his head in response, I assumed he understood and agreed.
It was weird.
Super weird.
Weirder than having a dude hang inside the bakery’s bathroom window telling me I had to give him the thumb drive or die.
“You two can go, but once you get those documents sorted, let’s consult before you make your next move. I want to be aware of whom to expect,” Ridge said, not taking his eyes off Corbin.
The gaze, which would have had me shaking in my ballet flats, didn’t faze Corbin. He nodded back. “Of course. I believe we’ll need strength for whatever happens after this.”
I froze and swallowed hard. My leg thumped against the table’s bottom.
Ridge laughed at my reaction to Corbin’s words. I didn’t find it funny. What exactly did they plan to happen next if he needed the brute strength of someone like Ridge?
“Well, it’s a good thing I have strength in spades.” Ridge turned a fraction of his body and paused before looking over his shoulder. “And my offer stands if you decide to settle.”
Corbin looked at me for another fraction of a second. If I hadn’t been staring at him so hard I might have missed it. His eyes fluttered in my direction and then went back to Ridge. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Another large beefy man wearing the same black polo shirt with the Pelican Bay Security logo in the corner, which looked much like the town crest I’d seen in various places in the city, stopped beside Ridge and whispered. The two of them looked at me and then continued their hushed conversation.
I bristled. How annoying.
The sight of the men who gathered in the bakery to handle my issue caused waves of guilt to crest in my stomach as if I carried an entire ocean of it. Pelican Bay was a small town, and I’d caused a commotion twice now. They probably couldn’t wait to run me out of Maine.
“Sorry I can’t remember more,” I said when Ridge turned away from the other man and gave his attention back to our table.
They came to a whole a lot of trouble for nothing. For all I knew, I created the man in my head. The only thing he’d done was pop his head through an open window, wave his gun a few times, and make a threat. Okay, actually, when I thought it out that way, it sounded pretty big.
He hadn’t even taken a shot at me, though. Nothing like what happened on the street the other day, but it was still scary.
I didn’t even provide anything useful to Ridge. The man wore a mask, and he had a normal man’s voice. Nothing distinctive. I couldn’t look away from his weapon to check out his face under the mask. It was just a red ball of a memory distorted from the mask.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ridge said, sounding sincere. “We’ll track the guy on the cameras and see where he headed after the bakery. Hopefully he removed the mask after he ran.”
This town must have a lot of cameras if they planned to track him far. Ridge sounded confident, and it helped stir my confidence.
Ridge thumbed his knuckle on the table twice with little taps. “Keep me posted on that info,” he said before officially turning and walking away.
When he was out of hearing distance, I turned to Corbin. “Should we call the police now?”
Not a single police car showed up at the scene or even drove by the bakery. Only a row of black Escalades gathered in the spaces in front of the shop. Shouldn’t police be here? Did that make it better or worse?
