Perfect Fling (Serendipity's Finest 2)

“The day she saw Cole and Erin talking at some coffee shop. She went ballistic. I guess that’s when she started targeting Erin specifically, but I didn’t know she’d hired someone to shoot her! I didn’t think she was violent.” Nicole lay her head in her hands and moaned. “I don’t know what to say.” She lifted her pain-filled eyes to Sam’s.

The way she kept focusing on Sam and not Cole, despite Cole’s connection to her sister, he knew he hadn’t imagined the connection there. Interesting.

“Do you know where she’s hiding out? Because this is a small enough town that we’d have had a sighting by now if she was living here,” Sam said gently.

Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”

Cole’s nerves jangled. “What is it?”

“Last time Vicky called me, it was right before the weekend. She was hysterical because she’d been setting up a special place for the two of you to live and she found out Erin was pregnant.”

“Where is this place?” Cole asked.

Nicole spread her hands wide. “I don’t know.”

“Who would?” Cole asked.

She shrugged, looking helplessly at Sam.

Sam cleared his throat. “We just need you to think. You said she’s setting up a special place. Would she use a Realtor? Does she have any friends she’d confide in?”

She pressed her fingers against her forehead. “Umm . . .”

“Anyone you can think of,” he encouraged her.

“No friends. She’s not good at keeping them,” she muttered.

“Real estate agent?” Cole asked.

She shook her head.

“Decorator?” Sam said, obviously grasping. “Someone who’d have the address for deliveries.”

“Well . . . there’s this antiques dealer she’s used for unique items in the one apartment she had on her own and both houses Victor owned.”

Cole exhaled a long breath. “Call him.”

“I don’t remember his name and I certainly don’t have his phone number memorized. I need to think, and I can’t do that with all of you pressuring me.”

Cole nodded and took a step toward the door. “Fine. I’ll go.” This woman represented the only shot they had at finding Victoria before she went after Erin again. She wouldn’t cooperate if he suffocated her. “Just answer one question for me?”

She turned in her seat. “What is it?”

“How dangerous do you think your sister is? How big a threat?”

She bit down on her lower lip. “Truth? I’ve never heard her so out of control before. That’s why I came here. To find her and try to make her see that she’s behaving this way because she’s off her meds. And to warn Erin.”

Son of a bitch. “Thank you for being honest.”

Nicole inclined her head. “She’s my sister. I want her to get help.”

Cole wanted her behind bars or, at the very least, padded walls, far away from Erin and his unborn child, but he couldn’t tell her sister that. They needed Nicole to keep them in the loop.

She didn’t trust Cole. Sam was another story.

Cole leaned his head against the wall, trying to think clearly. “Sam. A word?” Cole tipped his head to the outer room.