Cold Shadow (Cold Country #2)(18)

He would find a willing man with dark hair and fuck his brains out. He would forget about this thing that had tied him up in knots for as long as he could remember. This thing for a Marine who hadn't meant the words he said more than a decade ago, the same one who didn't know he was alive today. God, he hoped one day was all it would take. He could hold out that long. He'd held out seventeen years, what was one more day?





Chapter Five




Sometime after six, Nathan realized he hadn't been out of the office the entire day. As ranking senior officer, running the place fell to him when the Sheriff was on vacation. And this Sheriff seemed to always be on vacation. Nathan hated paperwork with a fucking passion; he hated someone else's paperwork even more than that.

He wanted to go home, wanted to hear about the school party, wanted to fall into the pool and just let the water clear his mind. He wanted Quinn. He craved Quinn almost as much as he craved sunlight. He thought of Walker, wondering if he would see him tonight, and if he did, would he tell him if he'd uncovered anything?

Thinking about Walker reminded him of Natalie and the strange way she had been acting lately. Was she burning a candle for him? He was about to pick up the phone to give her a call when a commotion in the outer office erupted. Someone swore in a thick Spanish accent, some of the words were not pretty, but for the most part, he didn't understand a thing. Just the tone.

"What in the hell is going on out here?" he barked when he stepped into the main office. One of his deputies had a tall, Hispanic punk cuffed and was struggling to control him.

"This pig has no reason to arrest me. I was minding my own business," the kid spewed in perfect but accented English.

"He was loitering by the convenience store out near the plant. I've never seen him before." Deputy Caswell shoved the kid closer to Nathan as if those two reasons were enough.

"Since when do we arrest kids for hanging out in a parking lot around here? Hell, there's nothing else to do … " Nathan stopped mid-rant and grabbed the kid's chin angling his face up so he could get a better look at him.



       
         
       
        

Dressed in faded jeans and a sturdy plaid work shirt, the kid could be from anywhere. The hoops on either side of his bottom lip and the barbell piercing at the tip of his left eyebrow set him apart from most of the kids around here. His brown eyes gleamed with mischief, and the smile he gave Nathan hit him in the gut like a bolt of lightning. "Holy fucking hell. Caswell, take your prisoner into my office."

"Yes, sir." Caswell didn't notice that his prisoner stopped struggling as he pushed him down the hall and into Nathan's office. "Nathan, I was just, there is a no loitering sign in the lot, and with the murders, you know-"

"Just uncuff him and get out before I find a reason to suspend your ass." Nathan waited while the cuffs were removed and the door was firmly closed behind the deputy before he turned back to the punk kid with the slicked back hair and the gotcha grin. "Did you give my mother a fucking heart attack when you came downstairs in this getup and … shit, Drew, are those things real?"

Drew dropped into a chair, the laughter he was fighting in the outer office bubbled out of him. "Damn near it. If Natalie wasn't downstairs, she might have shot me. I should have warned her, I guess."

Nathan couldn't help it, he leaned over and tugged on one of the hoops in Drew's lip. The man yelped. "Shit, Drew, did you do that just for this gig because you thought all the barrio kids in Tennessee looked like the ones you see on TV?"

"I did that when I was fifteen. I use it when it suits my purposes. And I was a barrio kid for a while. I know what I'm doing." There was a subtle rigidness in his voice that Nathan had never heard before; the accent was there as well, just barely noticeable.

"Brown contacts, slicked-back hair, some facial piercings, and you look like a teenager. How the hell did you pull that off? Hell, I nearly didn't recognize you."

"I know. But you know what that means, right? Either I'm a genius … or you're an idiot."

"Well, I'm not going to cop to being an idiot, so I guess I have to bow to your genius. If I ask, will you tell me what you found out today?"

"Can I file false arrest and harassment charges for having just about every civil right in the book violated today?"

"Do you want to? I mean, Caswell isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier and all. I'll suspend him for stupidity if you want me to. This mess has everyone on edge, and you are a suspicious-looking character."