“All right,” Andrew agrees, softening some now. “Jay gets the rest of that bottle of whiskey, but why do I need him? Where are you two going?”
“To find Lucas,” I explain. “I need him to hack now more than ever.”
“He’s a stockbroker,” Andrew says. “What is all this talk about him hacking?”
“He’s an investment banker,” I correct. “And I’d tell you, Captain America, but then I’d have to kill you. Consider him an FBI asset and leave it at that.” I glance at my watch. It’s now five o’clock. “Isn’t Micki’s diner open until like ten?”
“Midnight,” he says. “They’ve become a late-night Thanksgiving tradition around here.”
“Perfect. We’ll meet you there when you’re done here. We can eat and debrief. Or we can come to your house. You don’t have company, right?”
He scowls because we both know I’m talking about Samantha. A moment later, he escapes that topic when his cellphone rings. He glances at the number and the pink of his cheeks tells me, it’s the Wicked Witch herself. “Micki’s,” he says, then answers the call with, “Police Chief Love.”
“I wonder if she calls him that when they’re alone,” I say, glancing up at Kane.
“Probably,” he says. “Meanwhile, the only thing you call me when we’re alone is asshole.”
“With love,” I assure him as we grab our coats and get the hell out of there.
By the time we’re inside Kane’s Mercedes and on the road, our exchange has sent me back to the text message Emma had sent to Jamie: One more time for the history books.
I’d read it and believed they were talking about sex. But Emma was getting married in a few weeks, supposedly in love with her fiancé. So much so that him missing a holiday clearly upset her. I’m not naïve enough to believe that means she wasn’t sleeping with only one man. Or that she might have been seeking refuge with an old lover. But what if that text message with Jamie wasn’t a booty call? What if it was something else?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Twenty minutes later, Kane pulls the car to a halt in front of Lucas’s dark house.
“Though I know you hate when people state the obvious,” Kane comments. “He doesn’t appear to be home.”
“Actually,” I say, popping my door open, “I could use a big dose of anything obvious right about now. I’m going to find out if he’s hiding from us or someone else, sleeping, or dead.”
“How about he’s just not home?” Kane offers.
“Right. That too.” I exit the Mercedes, straighten, my firearm at my side, tucked under my coat, and shut the door.
By the time I’ve raced through the bitingly cold wind blasting off the nearby ocean, and I’m ringing Lucas’s doorbell, Kane is by my side. There’s no answer. I ring the bell again and still, there’s no answer. Grimacing, and biting back words I’d rather save for Lucas, I snap up my phone and punch the auto-dial for Lucas. It goes straight to voicemail. Earlier, it at least rang. I’m really not liking how this is reading.
Fortunately, Lucas has one of those fancy front door keycode entry points, and I just happen to have the code. I punch it in and glance up at Kane. “Before you bitch about me knowing the code, it’s been the same for years.”
“You having his code for years doesn’t sound good, Lilah.”
“Right. Well, maybe not, but for the record, it sounded good in my head. And we both know you know I’m haven’t, nor will I ever, sleep with Lucas.” I push open the door and flip on the light. “Lucas!” I call out.
He doesn’t answer. I pull my firearm and head down the hallway. “Lucas!”
Still no answer.
“I’ll check upstairs,” Kane says, pausing by my side, just on the edge of the living room.
“Look for his laptop,” I say. “Where it is, he is.”
He nods and he’s already moving up the stucco-framed staircase, but Kane doesn’t pull the firearm I know he has on his person.
I shove mine back in the holster, any sense of real danger simply not present. With my hands free now, I walk the lower level of the house, flip on the rear light to survey the pool area, all areas free of any signs of struggle or dead bodies. There’s also no laptop. My last stop is the kitchen, which looks clean and unused. I walk to the fridge and open the door, scanning the contents.
“Looking for a jar of blood?” Kane asks, from behind me.
I turn to find him leaning his shoulder on the archway. “More like the turkey pot pie he said he ordered for dinner,” I say, shutting the fridge again. “And the coconut cake he was supposed to bring for dessert. None of it exists.”
“Unless he took it to someone else’s house,” Kane suggested.