having to step between his legs to get close enough to do so. No doubt he’d done that on purpose. “You’re my boss, you know,” I reminded him, throwing the bloody paper towels in the garbage.
He opened his eyes, and his pupils dilated. “Yeah.” His hands settled on my hips. “Right now, I don’t care.”
“I do.” Even though those hands felt pretty good, I grasped them and stepped away. Oh, I wasn’t dating Aiden, but his mouth had been all over mine just the night before, and messing around with my boss was a mistake, anyway. “Tell me about Cheryl.”
With another exaggerated sigh, Nick pushed from the chair and headed for the living room, knocking boxes off the sofa so we could sit. Then, giving me a look, he went and poured two full tumblers of bourbon.
I took the drink and sat, waiting for him to do the same. Then I turned to face him on the sofa. “Talk.”
He took a deep drink, and his throat moved nicely. “Cheryl is dead. Probable overdose.” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have cut her loose.” He partially turned to face me, bending his knee on the sofa. “She was only eighteen. A kid.”
I sipped the drink, and warmth exploded down my esophagus. This was the good stuff. Even so, familiar anxiety tingled through me. “Overdose? What’s your gut feeling about that? Deliberate or accidental?”
He tipped back more of his drink. “She didn’t seem suicidal.” With the bandage over his eye, he looked like a tough guy—the kind a nice girl wanted to tame. “There wasn’t a sign of struggle at the scene.”
He’d visited the scene and studied another dead kid. No wonder he was drinking.
“Was there a needle in her arm?” I asked, thinking through television shows and overdoses.
“No.” His gaze caught on the liquid swirling in his glass. “My guess is pills, but we won’t know until after the autopsy, which the coroner is doing as we speak.”
That was fast. Seriously, although it isn’t like our county had a lot of homicides or suspicious deaths. Even so.
“The coroner is my uncle on my mom’s side,” Nick said, looking up.
Yeah, that figured. The Basanelli family was as big as mine. Unlike Aiden’s family, of which he was it. Why he kept popping in my head while I was staring at a half-dressed and very sexy lawyer with whom I had a lot in common, I didn’t want to examine. Must’ve been that kiss. Or the million fantasies I’d had through the years. “Nick? How about you level with me?” Maybe I could get more out of him in his current drunken state.
He sighed and took another big drink. “As soon as I know something, I’ll share.” His chin dropped, and his eyes darkened. “My source on Jareth Davey came back empty. The guy is in the wind. No clue where he is.”
The switch in topics threw me, and I covered by taking another drink of the potent brew. “I’ve never known where he is,” I admitted. “Don’t care. There will be another card from him that arrives sometime today in my post office box, from somewhere different than before, and then I won’t hear from him until Christmas.” I forced a smile, one I hoped looked brave. “So I breathe easy until then.”
Nick shook his head and then winced as his wound no doubt hurt. “No. We have to know where he is.”
Awareness pricked through me, and my hand tightened on the glass. “Why do you care?” He was way too invested, and it wasn’t because I worked for him now.
He exhaled, and his shoulders drew down. “I was there,” he said softly, his gaze back on the glass.
I blinked. Once and twice. “You were where?”
“At the river.” He met my gaze evenly. “We were working on new dirt bikes, and I saw him on his four-wheeler. Knew he didn’t belong on our property, but I didn’t do anything. Didn’t say anything. I thought about it and went back to my bike.”
The words registered and I picked through them. “Before he took me.”
“Yeah.” Self-disgust twisted Nick’s lip.
Oh. Man. One day screwed up so many people. “Nick. You had no clue he was going to kidnap somebody. He could’ve just been a tourist out for a ride. It was camping season.”
Nick shrugged. “Yeah, but he didn’t look right. Maybe if I would’ve confronted him, maybe if I would’ve said something to my dad about the guy trespassing, then it wouldn’t have happened.”