Nick cut off Brian’s words with a quick hand across his mouth, holding him still as headlights swung their way through the trees. Just a flash, and then they were gone. He realized it’d been someone pulling out to pass on the two-lane road. Letting go, he said, “Sorry.”
“No problem.” Brian straightened his shoulders, although he didn’t pull out of Nick’s hold. “What do you think will happen when Sam gets back here?”
“Who knows? Anything from kissing his girl goodbye and hopping into his truck, to him and a buddy burying a dead body.” It was probably a bit twisted that he wouldn’t mind the dead body. He suddenly missed his old life with a pang, despite the bad and the ugly of being a cop. Or maybe because of them? Sometimes he thought his tastes were warped, when being useful was much better with an adrenaline rush. Sitting here on the damp ground, waiting for a petty criminal to show up, shouldn’t be fun.
“I’d prefer no dead bodies,” Brian said.
Nick grinned against his hair. “That’s because you’re the normal one between us.”
They sat in silence for a while. Brian’s warmth was a good buffer against the cool night. New stakeout equipment— boyfriend heater. Nick set his chin on Brian’s shoulder.
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“When you and Charlie get more information, are you going to give it to the sheriff and let her take it from there?”
“Sure.”
“Promise?”
“When we have enough to be worth sharing, sure.”
“Are you going to ask her for a job?”
Yeah, probably.
“You should,” Brian said. “If she’ll take you. You’re a good cop. I feel bad that I turned you into a mediocre carpenter.”
“No problem. Wait, mediocre? What?”
His fake outrage made Brian chuckle.
“Anyway, you didn’t turn me. It was my own choice. Same as yours.” Another flash of lights at an angle to the tree-lined road made him tense up. “Shh.”
This time, the lights swung around and made their way down the drive toward them. Nick slid away from Brian enough to have room to move, pulled out his cell phone, and crouched. “Get down,” he told Brian. “Then hold real still.”
Brian bent low, behind the cover of the bush. They both froze as the lights pulled up beside Sam’s truck, revealing the new vehicle to be a smaller, newer pickup. The doors opened. Nick could make out the driver, a dark haired and heavyset man, silhouetted by the dome light. Nick hit his phone’s video to record.
Sam jumped out of the cab, closed his door and laughed, doing a fist pump. The new guy hurried around the front and grabbed him by his jacket, shoving Sam back against the truck with a thump. “You fucking moron!” The guy’s voice was high for his size, audible even though he was clearly trying to keep it down. “What’re you celebrating? What were you thinking? Nah, you weren’t thinking, were you?”
“Hey.” Sam seemed to be trying to get loose. “No harm done, right?”
“No harm?” The other guy thumped him again, glanced to his left toward the distant neighbors’ house, and lowered his voice. “You had one fucking job, right? Right?”
Sam broke free of the man’s grip and took a couple of steps back. “I did my job. You weren’t getting Farris to sign on to have us patrol him. So I gave him incentive.”
“You moron. We’re the Neighborhood Watch. They’re not supposed to think we’re the Mafia.”
“What?”
“Use your fucking brains. We stop by to ask if he wants to pay for extra patrols. He says no. I tell him okay, I hope nothing bad happens. And on the way down the fucking driveway you toss a match into his fucking bushes!”
“He’d gone inside. He didn’t see me.”
“He’s not as stupid as you are! He’s gonna know who did it. McNaught is gonna kill you.”
“He’s got no reason.” Sam sounded nervous, though. “Anyway, it burned out real quick.”
“And when Farris finds that burned-up bush in the morning? And goes around telling everyone the Watch is extortion? McNaught wants to win the next election more than he wants Farris to pay up, you moron.”
Nick clenched his teeth against an excited breath. Finally, some answers.
Sam whined, “It’s going too slow. I got bills to pay.”
“We’ve all got bills.”
“McNaught said we’d make some money. I ain’t seen a dime. I was just moving things along.”
“The fuck you were.”
“So maybe I didn’t do it smart—”
The older guy snapped, “No maybe! You know what I think? I think you get a creepy kick