Perfect.
Last to go on the bottle was a label. I wrote Nick’s name on it in cursive, then plugged the neck with a cork.
I set it on the shelf behind the GABRIEL bottle.
A knock sounded on my door. Aggie ambled in. “Brought you some cookies.” She put a plate with three cookies on my desk.
“Thanks.”
“They turned out better than the last batch. Nice and gooey in the center. Just how I like them.”
She paused in the middle of my room, and I got the distinct feeling she wasn’t here to share cookies.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This boy…”
“Nick.”
“Nick.” She sat on the edge of my bed. I leaned against the desk. “You don’t really know him from school, do you?”
I shifted and looked at the floor. “No.”
“He a good kid?” she asked in a way that said she already knew the answer, but wanted to hear my opinion. Aggie was a fan of letting me make my own decisions. Freedom to grow and make your own mistakes, she’d often said. At first, I’d felt constricted by the freedom, as if there were too much of it, too many choices, for it to actually mean something.
“‘A good kid’?” I echoed.
Hearing someone refer to Nick as a kid seemed silly. He might have been under twenty, but he seemed further from a kid than a house cat from a cougar.
“Yes,” I answered, even though I didn’t know if it was true.
She eased off the bed, wincing when she made it upright. Her hips had been bothering her for a long time. But she didn’t like to complain about them. In fact, I couldn’t recall Aggie ever complaining about anything.
“Just be careful, huh?” she said, and winked at me as she shuffled past. “Oh, and…” She turned around briefly, to wag a finger at me, “he’s not allowed in your bedroom with the door shut.”
Okay, so maybe she drew the line at some freedoms.
A giggle burst from my throat at the thought of what she was implying.
Aggie wagged her finger a second time, a smile on her face. “I’m serious!” she said.
“I know. Of course, Aggie. No closed-door escapades.”
She shook her head as she left, chuckling to herself.
But when I was alone again, I couldn’t help but picture Nick in my room, sitting on my bed, here among my things. The door closed. His ridiculously blue eyes on me and only me. What that might entail.
The fire in my face said it all.
19
NICK
I WATCHED TREV ENTER THE BAR FROM across the street, hidden in the shadow of an alcove. I didn’t want to find myself cornered inside if he arrived with Riley or any other Branch agents. At least here I could keep an eye on the street.
Trev had arrived alone in the same black Jaguar he’d been driving a few months back. He’d done something weird to his hair, though. Half shaved, half long, like someone had started buzzing it from the bottom up and then quit before it was done.
He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved henley. No combat gear. No stock Branch uniform. I didn’t miss the bulge of a gun at his back, though.
He went inside, the door creaking closed behind him, sealing the noise of the bar with it. I waited. A few other vehicles drove past. A minivan. A Jeep. A motorcycle. Another minivan. I scanned the roofs of the buildings.
Nothing.
I jogged across the street, pressed my back against the bar’s exterior, hands loose at my sides.
The door opened, and Trev came out.
I stepped into him, grabbed him by the arms, whirled him around the corner of the building, and slammed him into the darkness of the next street, into the brick wall of the bar.
Trev countered quickly with a gut punch. My lungs emptied in a gasp of air. He brought his left hand up, slamming my bottom jaw into my top, and my teeth clacked together. He kicked me in the knee. I went down, rolled, pulled my gun out from beneath my shirt, and pointed.
Trev already had his Glock on me.
“What is this?” he asked, cool, calm, as even as ever.
“Why were you so close?” I asked.
“If you’d given me five minutes, I could have told you.”
I spat blood to the sidewalk, felt a split in my lip when I ran my tongue across it.
“Are you alone?” I asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yes.”
We remained that way for several long seconds, me on the sidewalk, aiming a gun, him standing two feet away, gun trained on my head.
“Fine.” He turned the gun away, hands up. “Let’s talk.”
I got to my feet, glad he was the first to give in. “Want a drink?”
“No.”
“Well, I do.”
“Smells like you’ve had enough already.”
I scowled at him as I passed.