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“Just left, and nobody stopped me. You were being mobbed by the curiosity crowd. I saw my advantage and took it.”
“Ah.” Martin set about muddling the simple syrup with the bitters, then added a healthy couple of fingers of whiskey. He topped it off with a slender twist of lemon zest. “Here ya go.” Carefully placing Nick’s drink in front of him, Martin sat down at the end of the tiny table.
“Did you learn anything?” Nick finally asked.
Martin resisted smiling; Nick was nothing if not curious.
“Nope. Not really.”
“Huh.”
“I feel kind of bad for Chief Dear.”
“Why? Catching criminals is his literal job.”
Martin waggled his head. “Yes, but this is a small town. How big is the force, like ten people?”
“Eleven. If you count Carol Page, who sometimes answers the phones.”
“Okay, so eleven. And no money. There was this one guy there, riding him hard.”
“Oh?” Nick’s eyebrows lifted.
“The thing is, what he pointed out isn’t wrong—although, hopefully, CSPD doesn’t order their forensic kits off the internet.”
“He said that? In public? Seriously, who was this guy?”
“Liam didn’t know him. Vincent Barone said he was new to town. He and his niece live somewhere by the mansion. Uh, Dante Brown. Vincent had his niece in his class or something.”
“By the mansion?” Nick had lifted his glass but set it back down on the table.
“I think that’s what he said. Why?”
A shifty, possibly embarrassed, expression flitted across Nick’s face.
“Nothing.”
Setting his own glass back down, Martin watched Nick and waited. Nick looked out the window, but since dark had fallen, there wasn’t much to see now.
Martin had been studying the Book of Nick for weeks now. The first chapter was Be Patient. He wanted to believe that Nick was learning to trust him—and, after last night, that hope had begun to blossom.
NICK
Sir Martin Frobisher, an English privateer and explorer, brought back 1,350 tons of what hethoughtwas gold ore to Queen Elizabeth in 1578. Unfortunately for Sir Frobisher, the ore actually was mostly iron pyrite—fool’s gold.
Dammit.
Nick pretended he was looking at the cabins, even though all he could see were the outside walls of the one closest to Martin’s. In reality, he was remembering the black SUV and how it had disappeared down the street the mansion was built on. Possibly, hehadoverreacted. Maybe this jackass, Dante Brown, owned the car and Liam and everyone else were right—he was seeing things that just weren’t there.
In the weeks since the spotting the men-in-black Toyota Sequoia in Aberdeen, Nick had mostly put the SUV out of his mind—as well as the death of Lizzy Harlow. Hot sex did that to a man. And maybe the fact that when he’d told Martin about his suspicion that it was up to no good, Martin hadn’t questioned him. He’d taken Nick’s misgivings at face value. Just like that, without having to explain anything. And even though it had been a lost cause by that point, Martin had tried to follow the vehicle.
Martin, who was patiently waiting for him to say something. Martin, who was quickly becoming important. He’d been slipping under Nick’s defenses even before last night.
“Nothing, really,” Nick muttered. Hoping Martin would leave it at that. And he probably would, which is why Nick wanted to tell him.
He shifted his gaze back to Martin, who was sipping at his old-fashioned, acting like Nick’s weirdness was totally normal. Not judging or demanding. Just… waiting.
“There’s—” Nick started.
