meant to say that out loud, but he couldn’t stop. “And you didn’t tell me you knew?”
“It could’ve worked out a different way.” But Nick didn’t meet his eyes.
“I thought I was doing it for you.” His voice broke annoyingly. “I mean, yeah, to catch the bad guy, but for you to be happy. I thought that was the long-range plan.”
Nick did look up then, his eyes dark and steady. “You can’t always have long-range plans. Sometimes you do the right thing in the moment and deal with the fallout.”
I had a plan where you were a cop again, and I worked with the animals, and we lived in a little house with Luger— He bit his lip and stayed silent. Nick did the right thing. I can’t be sorry that he’s not like Damon, thinking about us first, and everyone else second.
Lori came out of the bedroom with Joshie against her shoulder. She had the hood of her sweatshirt up, covering her neck, and rubbed the baby’s back with one gloved hand. “What did Her Highness the Sheriff want?”
Charlie said brightly, “She gave our guns back.”
“That’s something, I guess.”
“And didn’t arrest us for trespassing.”
“Better not, after you did her job for her.” She leaned her head to the side to avoid the baby’s waving fist. “Hush, Joshie. So what now? Are we done playing cops and robbers? Can we change sides? Joking!” She held up her hand as they stared at her. “Jesus, no sense of humor between the three of you.”
“That’s what I said.” Damon stepped out of the bedroom.
Brian jumped and glared at him. Luger’s only reaction was a wag of his tail. Traitor.
“Motherfucker! What are you doing here?” Nick demanded. “How’d you get in?”
“Might want to fix that window latch.” Damon strolled past them and hiked up to sit on the kitchen counter. “One last loose end to go. This is the big one, boys and girls. Pull this off, and you can safely go on with your boring little lives.”
“Pull what off?” Charlie crossed his arms. “Lori and Brian are done running cons for you. We’re done covering for you.”
“But are the cons done with you? Remember last night? Got the bruises to prove it, little brother?” Brian frowned at him. Damon laughed as Nick threw him a look. “Yeah, don’t want to do that again.”
“That was your fault,” Brian burst out. “You brought us to Turov.”
“And now we can fix it, for good. If you and Lori are up for it.”
“Up for what?” Lori asked.
“One last con against the con men.” Damon sounded as smooth and slick as ever, like every time he’d pulled Lori into his schemes.
But this time, Brian wasn’t just Dumb Bry, too oblivious to notice. “Explain everything.”
Damon raised one eyebrow. “Everything?” He waved a hand as Brian sputtered. “Chill. I’m going to tell you. The problem is that Turov had security at the marina when we got on the yacht, right? Not everyone who knew you two were on that boat took that information down to the bottom of the sea when she sank. And your inept not-hiding has made it damned obvious that you survived when everyone else on that boat vanished. Turov’s associates want to know how and why.”
“You said you had it covered.”
“I said I was working on fixing it. Since you refused to cut all ties and vanish…” Damon looked at Nick.
Lori said, “I like it here. I don’t want to run again.”
“Exactly.” Damon pointed finger guns at her like she said something brilliant. “So why didn’t the Kerrs vanish with Turov? Because we were never on that boat.”
Brian frowned. “You said they knew we were.”
“They knew someone was. The story I’ve been selling is that Wu, one of Turov’s competitors, bribed me to substitute two look-alikes for the two of you, to get his agents on the boat. And that’s why I jumped ship in the first place.”
“You knew they’d blow it up?” Charlie said.
Damon put on an innocent look. “I have no idea why he wanted them there. I was just doing a job and getting out of the way.”
“Not a bad plan,” Nick said. “Depending on how good the video footage is for identification.”
“I had it all worked out, down to the ID of the look-alikes, and they were good enough for the video. I even made use of the guy last night— no, not something you need to know— but the boss got hold of one of the men who was doing