“Then you aren’t looking hard enough,” she sputtered and wiped the tears of hilarity from under her eyes.
I snatched the card out of her hand and leaned over to shove it in my nightstand drawer. “All right, that’s enough. If you’re going to keep making fun of me, you can leave now.”
“Okay, okay.” She forced her giggles down and puffed out her cheeks. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m stopping now. Promise,” she insisted when I arched a skeptical brow. “So what happened?”
“Well, remember how I told you I felt someone watching me?” She nodded. “When I came out of the bathroom, I spotted my next mark and was moving in, but that Weston guy stopped me before I could lift the Patek Philippe he was wearing—”
“Wait.” She lifted her hands up to stop me and shook her head. “You mean, you nearly got your hands on a watch that cost more than a car?”
“Almost.”
Her spine curved as she slumped down. “Damn. That would have been a godsend.”
“Tell me about it. But if West was to be believed, the guy I was about to steal it from was no better than O’Brien. It would have been trading one devil for another.”
“I guess you’re better off with the devil you know,” she admitted sullenly.
“That was my thought.” I finished off the beer and sat the empty can on the nightstand. I’d hoped the booze would make me feel better, but talking the whole night out with my sister had only kept it at the forefront of my mind. I needed a whole freaking case. Unfortunately, every dollar I had was earmarked for something, and beer definitely hadn’t made the top ten on my list. I needed to ration what I had.
“Okay,” Serenity breathed. “That’s all right. You still made a good bit tonight. And I’ve been working on that district court judge. I’ll just step up the timeframe.”
“And I’m going back out there,” I assured her. “Tonight just wasn’t my night. I’ll have better luck next time.”
She smiled in relief, like my assurance was all she needed to feel better about my failure tonight. “Exactly. See? It’s all good. We’ve totally got this. Now, tell me everything about this Weston Scott guy. And by everything, I mean describe in vivid detail just how hot he was.”
And just like that, my big sister was back to her carefree self. I’d play along for now and hope like hell that everything worked out.
Six
West
“Lunch is on us, brother,” Trick Wanderly offered. “It’s the least we can do to thank you for all the help you gave us on this case. Especially since you were doing it as a favor.”
I was sitting at a table in Evergreen diner, a Hope Valley institution, with Trick and his partner, Hayes Walker. The two were detectives with Hope Valley PD and had been lead in the investigation into Alex Markoff. The case was now closed, and the two of them were looking forward to putting Markoff in their rearview. Meanwhile, I was looking forward to being able to focus on something else for a change. Or more to the point, someone else.
It had been a week since that evening at the hotel bar, and I hadn’t been able to get that damn woman out of my head. Stella Ryan. Of course I’d scoped out her license for a name—and maybe a bit more—before I’d handed her wallet back to her that night, and now that I had the time, I fully intended to look into the woman who’d caught my interest and refused to let go.
“Not a problem,” I told Trick before sopping up the last of the gravy on my plate with a dinner roll. “We’re happy to help, you guys know that.” This wasn’t the first time they’d come to us for help, and I highly doubted it would be the last.
“Yeah well, maybe one day our captain will cotton on to all you guys do and finally start a fund so we can actually pay for your help.”
Hayes scoffed. “Yeah, I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one. Cap likes to bury his head in the sand when it comes to the help Alpha Omega gives us. As long as it’s by the book and doesn’t fuck with the prosecution’s case, he pretends these cases solve themselves.”
I chuckled around the rim of my glass before gulping back some of the iced tea inside. “Maybe one of you’ll do this town a favor and test for the spot when that old geezer finally retires.”
“Not a goddamn chance,” Trick declared on a laugh. “The politics that go with the job aren’t worth the pay increase.”
“And I’ll probably end up retiring before him,” Hayes stated. “That bastard’s gonna outlive everyone out of spite. He’ll die behind that desk. I’d much rather die in my bed with my wife wrapped around me.”
“Amen to that, brother.” Trick saluted in agreement before turning his attention to me. “Speaking of wives.”
I didn’t bother suppressing my groan. “Jesus, not again.”
“Nona’s wondering when you’re finally gonna settle down, man,” he said, speaking of his wife. For the past year or so, Nona, along with my boss, Linc’s wife, Eden, and their whole crew of gossipy girlfriends had been on my ass to settle down. With the rest of my Alpha Omega brothers and our friends within the police department all settling down over the years, their focus had shifted to the ones who were still single. That just left me and my buddy Hunter McCann, and those damn women weren’t cutting either of us any slack.
“She can just keep wondering then,” I told him.
“Come on, brother, just let her set you up. One date, it’ll get her off your back.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
Hayes snorted into his water glass, giving his head a shake. “Told you he wouldn’t go for it.”
“You need to listen to him,” I told Trick as I pointed at Hayes. “It’s obvious he’s the smart one in this partnership.”
Trick knocked his knuckles on the table before standing from his seat and reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. “Go ahead and fight it all you want, man. We all did in the beginning, and now there are more of us happily tied down than single.” He gave me an ominous smile before finishing with, “It’s only a matter of time.”
After lunch, I headed back to the office, shooting Roxanne, our receptionist, a wink that had her rolling her eyes as I turned down the hall that lead to my office. Once my computer booted up, I got to searching.
I started with social media, finding Stella Ryan’s profile easy enough and breathing a sigh of relief that it was open to the public. Getting past privacy settings would have been easy enough, given all the tricks of the trade that came with working at Alpha Omega, but that felt a little too intrusive, bordering on stalkerish. That was a line I didn’t want to cross just yet.
Her page didn’t reveal much of her personality, her posts were pretty generic as far as the text went, but it was obvious from the photos she shared she was incredibly close to her family.
It was easy to see Stella was the baby of the family, with an older sister and brother who—according to the photos—liked to put her in a headlock whenever a camera phone was in sight. From the looks of it, he also had a wife and kid, the latter filling up Stella’s feed more than anyone else. Obviously she loved her little niece and from the way the girl clung to her in the photos, the feeling was mutual.