Chapter 3 #2
The door hinges squealed. He shot upright. “Sabrina?”
But it wasn’t her. Peanut sat in the threshold, his gray fur as black as a shadow in the darkness, and his silhouette looking as round as a soccer ball.
“Shit.” Hew scrubbed a rough hand over his face and told himself to lie back down. Go back to sleep.
Sabrina was a grown-ass woman capable of making her own choices.
Himself was a traitorous bastard, though. Because himself whispered, Ya could always check to see where she is.
All of them had trackers on their vehicles in case of theft or in case emergency services needed their exact location. It was a safety measure, not a spying measure. And yet…
He tossed back the covers. After pulling on his jeans, he assured Peanut, “It’s not ’cause I’m jealous. I just need to make sure she’s okay.”
The cat slow-blinked and then lifted a leg behind his head to bathe his fuzzy butt. Hew couldn’t help but feel that it was the feline version of calling bullshit.
The rain had picked up during the night. It spat angrily against the windows of the old brick building, and the low hiss was why Hew didn’t hear Graham until they nearly plowed into each other at the bottom of the stairs that led from the second floor to the third.
Graham held a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand. The other jumped to his chest in startlement.
“Lord a’mighty.” His north Georgia drawl echoed through the quiet of the building. “Ya don’t sneak up on a guy who carries a gun. I mighta dropped the hammer on you, Birch.”
Hew smirked. “Ya packin’ heat in your Fruit of the Looms, Coleburn?”
Graham had a habit of walking around shirtless even in the middle of the day. In the cold light just before dawn? Hew counted himself lucky the chowderhead had thought to put on boxer briefs before raiding the fridge.
“Jet lag’s got my circadian rhythm more twisted up than a snake in a shoebox,” Graham admitted with a scowl of annoyance. “You?”
“Maybe,” Hew answered evasively. “Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Heard from Sabrina?”
“Why would I?”
“She’s not back, and it’s not like her to stay out all night.”
Graham’s unconcerned shrug irritated Hew. The man’s words were even more annoying. “Maybe she decided to go to her boyfriend’s house.”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“No?” Graham tilted his head. “Boss and Becky said she—”
“She’s been on a few dates with the guy. That doesn’t make him her boyfriend.” Why was Hew’s vision turning black around the edges?
“Right.” Graham held up his turkey-leg-free hand in surrender. “Sorry. Her lover, then.”
The black around the edges of Hew’s vision started crackling with lightning.
Graham chuckled. “You should see yourself. Your eyes are bugged out of your head so far, ya look like a horny toad tryin’ to shit a chicken bone.”
Hew wiped his expression clean. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”
He heard his own accent turn the word idea into idear. New Englanders had a haphazard way of dropping the R sound off some words and adding it to others.
Graham rolled his eyes. “From the moment Sabrina Greenlee walked through that front door, you’ve been calf-eyed over her.”
“You want to try that again in English? Instead of whatever possum-wranglin’ dialect that was?”
Graham shook his head sorrowfully. “What’s that one singer say? Forgive my northern attitude? Y’all spend so long buried in snowbanks up there, even your jokes come out frostbit.”
“Is it the jet lag that’s turned you into a Chatty Cathy?”
“Nice try changin’ the subject.” Graham smiled knowingly.
“I don’t know what the subject is anymore. Noah Kahan? Chicken bones? Calf’s eyes?”
Ignoring him, Graham said conversationally, “Ya know what? I’m ninety-eight percent sure ya don’t wanna have this conversation right now. But I’m one-hundred percent sure I don’t care. You’re crazy about Sabrina. But for whatever reason, ya don’t have the sac to face it. Why is that?”
“Doesn’t matter what I feel.” Hew ground his jaw. “Because she doesn’t like me for anything more than a friend.”
“You ever asked her?”
Graham was off in his percentages. Hew one-hundred percent didn’t want to have this conversation.
“I don’t need to. She’s made it clear in a thousand different ways. And the fact that she’s datin’ some chowderhead who could’ve auditioned for a role as a Munchkin back in the day is the clearest indication of all.”
Graham blinked. “Sabrina’s lover has dwarfism? Boss and Becky didn’t mention that. Not that it matters, but it’s just interestin’ and—”
“Stop usin’ that word.”
“Which word? Dwarfism? I think it’s the correct terminology and—”
“Lover,” Hew hissed. “It makes me want to blow groceries.”
“Well, how would you describe the guy Sabrina’s screwin’?”
Hew had to shove his hands deep into his front pockets to keep from wrapping them around his teammate’s throat. “Sabrina isn’t screwin’ him.”
Then, he remembered she might very well be screwing the bastard right at that very moment and that he’d come downstairs to see for himself if she was.
“Ah.” Graham rocked back on his heels. “Now I get it.”
Hew was hanging on to his patience by a thread. “Get what?”
“Why you’re headed over to the computers.” Graham hitched the turkey leg toward the bank of monitors and blinking towers that were daisy-chained together to form a supercomputer capable of performing tasks Hew couldn’t begin to understand. “You’re gonna spy on her.”
“It’s. Not. Spyin’.” Each word was uttered through a jaw clamped down like a steel trap.
“No? What would you call it then?”
“Checkin’ to make sure she’s okay.”
Graham snorted, and Hew took that as a period on the conversation.
Turning on his heel, he marched toward the bank of computers. After pulling out a rolling chair and, he was prompted for a password and typed in 60065. It was the numerical representation for boobs.
Ozzie—BKI’s own hacking genius and one of the original Knights—had a sixteen-year-old boy’s sense of humor.
As Hew brought up the tracking program, he glanced over his shoulder to find Graham standing a few feet away.
“Ya goin’ to stand there gawpin’ like a jackass at a clambake, or ya goin’ to come help?” he muttered.
“I’m worried when ya see Sabrina over at her boyfr—” Graham stopped and tried again.
“Lov—” He caught himself a second time and finally settled on, “I’m worried when ya see Sabrina over at the Munchkin’s house, your brain will explode.
I really don’t wanna wash gray matter out of this shirt. It’s my favorite.”
Hew rolled his eyes at the sight of Graham hooking a thumb back at his bare chest.
A few keystrokes later, a glowing red dot showed on a 2D map. His chin jerked back when he didn’t recognize the road's name. He used the mouse to expand the map until he saw the state line and the distance Sabrina had traveled.
It wasn’t unusual for her to cross over into Wisconsin. The scenery was far more serene there. And the lack of traffic on the winding roads afforded her the ability to concentrate on her thoughts instead of her driving.
What was unusual was that it looked like she was stopped in the middle of nowhere.
“The fuck?” He leaned closer to the monitor.
“What?” Graham strode forward.
“You think Martin lives in the woods in Wisconsin?”
“Who’s Martin?”
“The Munchkin.”
“Right.” Graham bent over Hew’s shoulder and hit several keys that switched the map from 2D to 3D. “Huh,” he muttered as he straightened. “Looks like she’s parked inside a stand of trees. The only structure nearby is a farmhouse. And that’s half a mile away.”
Fear grew in Hew like a malignancy as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He scrolled to Sabrina’s contact information, hit the button, and held the device to his ear.
It rang.
And rang.
When her voicemail picked up, he cut the call as broken glass filled his lungs. It shattered up into his throat, making breathing impossible as he stared hard at Graham’s now concerned expression.
“Something’s wrong,” he wheezed.