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“Are you sure,” Liam asked him between gasps for air, “that you want to antagonize him?”
“Never been surer of anything in my life,” Nick confirmed. For reasons he didn’t feel like examining, he did not tell Liam about the kitten.
They sat quietly for a while, sipping at their hot chocolates and occasionally snickering. Nick didn’t know what was going on in Liam’s brain, but Nick was imagining the Cooper Springs Resort front lawn covered with dicks big and small—some cut, some uncut—he liked all cock, after all. He chuckled again.
“The dicks, or rather, dick”—Liam laughed—“explains why you’re here but not why you arrived soaked to the skin. Your place is only a mile from here. You should be drenched on just one side.”
Dammit.
Nick sighed and stared up at the popcorn ceiling.Probably some asbestos there.The problem with Liam was that he presented as kind of a hippie space cadet, but he was the exact opposite. Hewasa hippie, if there was such a thing in the twenty-first century, but he was far from stupid. Liam was one of the most observant people Nick had ever known. Not much got past him.
“Remember a while back? When I told you guys about a car I didn’t like?” Nick asked.
Liam nodded. He had an excellent memory.
“I’ve seen it a couple more times and today, on my way over, I saw it again. I thought I’d try and see where it was headed.”
“Nick…” Liam shook his head.
“I know.” He raised a hand. “You think I’m obsessing or something. Let’s skip past that part, can we? It turned down the street the mansion’s on. I didn’t get there in time to see where it went after that, so it doesn’t really matter, but that’s how I got wet. That, and the jackass driver hit a puddle and doused me.”
“Have you reported the truck to the police?” Liam asked.
“What are they going to do? They have enough on their hands—oh, shit.” Twisting around, he stared at his friend. “Did you hear that Blair Cruz is missing?”
Liam’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Yeah, I heard last night. The new police chief stopped by to ask if we’d seen anything, or anyone.”
“How?”
Nick shrugged. “I don’t really know much. Chief Dear said that she left a weekend sleepover early, I guess. I can see her wanting to do those. If I was”—he waved a hand—“however old she is, I wouldn’t want to be stuck as far out as they live.”
“Well, shit.” Liam huffed out a sigh. His shoulders slumped; all signs of amusement disappeared. “This is not good.”
Everybody in Cooper Springs knew the tragic Cruz family story. After Levi’s fisherman dad drowned, along with several others, Levi had been made guardian of his infant sister. Cooper Springs had rallied around them both with bake sales and rummage sales to help pay for Blair’s upbringing. Twenty-five years old at the time, Levi had inherited his dad’s property, an old farm with an adjoining apple orchard. Nick remembered his parents taking him there once, when he was a kid, for a fall festival, complete with lots of apple-related activities. He’d gotten carsick on the way home, which had not impressed his mother or father. Up until that moment, it’d been one of the better times of his childhood.
Nick couldn’t fathom what Levi must be going through now. His only relative missing? Christ. Nick’s family was Liam. If something happened to him, Nick would be rudderless, distraught. He wasn’t comfortable even thinking that anything bad might happen to Liam.
Liam spoke, dragging Nick out of his thoughts. “Do you think it’s possible this black car you keep seeing has something to do with Blair’s disappearance?”
“I mean, maybe? But there’s nothing solid. Probably just Crazy Nick overreacting, as usual. More likely, Blair ran away for some reason we don’t know and is in Aberdeen. Or she took the bus to Seattle.”
“You’re not crazy, Nick. I hate it when you say that. Let’s stick with peculiar.”
“Peculiar Nick doesn’t have the same panache.”
“I dunno, I think it does.” Liam smiled and waggled his eyebrows.
They went quiet again. Nick finished the last of his hot chocolate just as the dryer buzzed, so he started to ease himself up off Liam’s couch.
“I think you should go to the police.”
“Fuck.” He fell back onto the cushions. “Liam,no onewill believe me.”
“At least tell Lani,” Liam insisted.
Lani was Forrest Cooper’s younger sister as well as one of Cooper Springs’ finest.
