Chapter 42 Bastian
Bastian
The Hollow Point is packed with college students celebrating Thanksgiving away from their families, their voices rising and falling in waves of drunken enthusiasm.
There’s a beer pong game in the corner, but it hasn’t drawn much of a crowd yet.
If Kai and Haven hadn’t decided to brave a Jordan Family Thanksgiving today, I’d be with them right now, doing Lucifer only knows what.
Yet here I am, nursing a warm bourbon beside the one man in Agony Hollow who might actually have the intelligence to be dangerous.
Deputy Thatcher drinks like a man who doesn’t drink often.
He’s been nursing his Budweiser for twenty minutes, taking small sips, grimacing slightly each time like the taste offends him. His posture is so relaxed, it screams performance.
He’s trying to get me comfortable, and it’s taking everything I have not to drink enough so I don’t have a choice but to let him.
I have three missed calls from Ezra in as many hours.
The desperate neediness that used to be attractive now just makes my skin crawl. I should be focused on the deputy, cataloguing his tells, but instead I’m wondering why my former student-turned-liability is suddenly so obsessed with contacting me.
“Busy night,” Thatcher observes, nodding toward a group of students doing shots at the bar beside us. One of them is close enough that his jacket keeps rubbing my arm. “Wonder why these kids aren’t with their families?”
“Like we are?” I say dryly.
“Fair point.” He sets the bottle down, rotating it slowly on the scarred wooden table. “Must be strange for you, though? Being around students outside of class.”
“Happens all the time in these small college towns. I’m used to it by now.”
“Still.” His eyes sweep the room, cataloguing faces. “You seem…close to your students. More than most professors, I mean.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I don’t check it. I already know who it fucking is.
“I believe in mentorship,” I say, keeping my voice mild. “Nurturing young minds requires more than lecturing at them from behind a podium. It requires connection. Investment.”
“Investment.” Thatcher rolls the word around like he’s tasting it. “That’s one way to put it.”
My phone buzzes again.
“What about you?” I pivot smoothly, reaching for my bourbon. “What brings an officer like you to a college town like this? Seems like a waste of your talents.”
Thatcher’s mouth quirks, but it’s not quite a smile.
“Stepped on some toes back in my last posting,” he admits. “This was supposed to be a timeout. A temporary timeout. But trouble seems to follow me.” He shrugs, taking another sip of his beer as he glances my way. “Or maybe I follow it. Hard to tell sometimes.”
“So why stay?”
He’s quiet for a moment. His fingers tap against the bottle—index, middle, ring, repeat.
“I was planning to leave,” he says finally. “Had my transfer paperwork all ready to go. And then…”
His eyes meet mine again.
“And then Miss Parker stumbled out of the woods, drugged and disheveled,” I finish dryly.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t look away. “That.”
My phone buzzes a third time.
I take a slow sip of bourbon, letting the burn ground me. Whatever desperate plea Ezra’s crafting, it can wait until I’ve handled this.
“Enough of the small talk.” I set down my glass. “It’s obvious you have questions.” I wave my hand. “Ask away.”
His eyebrows lift, and it looks like he’s suppressing a smile. “You don’t want to call Mr. Barnes first?”
“On Thanksgiving? At the rate he charges?” I scoff. “Look, Deputy, I’m not staying for a third drink.” I lean back on my stool, shrugging. “If there’s something on your mind, now’s the time.”
Thatcher leans in and opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get a chance to speak.
“Professor Rooke!”
Someone jostles our arms, sloshing Thatcher’s beer and nearly sending my tumbler over the other side of the bar. I look to find one of my students—Oscar something, a freshman with more enthusiasm than brain cells—grinning at us.
“Dude, happy Thanksgiving, man!” He’s already slurring. “You gotta do a fucking shot with us!” he bellows, receiving a rousing cheer from everyone around us.
Damn it. I thought I recognized one of the drunken voices around us. I should have taken a table with Thatcher instead of sitting at the bar, but I didn’t want the deputy to think I was being circumspect.
Oscar disappears just long enough to retrieve shots from the group beside us, sliding them onto the bar between Thatcher and I.
I should refuse. I haven’t eaten today—too distracted by Ezra’s messages, by thoughts of Haven and Kai walking into whatever disaster awaits them, by the growing certainty that I’ve lost control of something I never really had control of.
But Thatcher is watching me. Measuring me. And some petty, prideful part of my brain refuses to back down from a challenge, even one as juvenile as this.
“Just one.” I pick up the shot glass.
When Oscar grabs one of the glasses and tries to hand it to Thatcher, the deputy waves him off. “I don’t think—“ he begins.
“Aw, come on, man! Don’t be a fucking pussy,” Oscar whines when the deputy eyes the shot like it might be poison.
“Son, I don’t do shots—“
Thatcher cuts off at Oscar’s sudden leer. “Keep calling me son, and I’m gonna have to start calling you daddy.”
He gives the deputy a lingering once-over that confirms several suspicions I had about Oscar when he first joined my class.
Bisexual.
Likes older men.
Entitled as fuck, and thinks he’s good looking enough to get what he wants.
Reminds me too much of Ezra, actually. This town is crawling with trust fund brats like him.
I suppress a snort of laughter at the way Thatcher’s face freezes mid-frown.
Oscar takes his shock as acceptance, shoving a shot glass into his hand before grabbing one for himself.
He claps a hand on my shoulder, squeezing with drunken affection.
“Come on, Professor. Show your boyfriend here how it’s done. ”
I swear to Christ, Thatcher’s mortification will live rent free in my fucking head for years to come. The man’s blushing.
The deputy tosses back his shot like he’s hoping it’ll give him amnesia. I throw Oscar a rueful smirk before we toss back ours together.
The cheap tequila burns going down. Oscar whoops, slaps the table, promises he’ll come back to catch up with us ‘fine gentlemen’ later, then staggers back to his friends.
I watch him go, already regretting the decision as the alcohol sears its way down to my empty stomach.
“What is it with these kids?” Thatcher mutters, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and grimacing.
“Too much money. Too many absent fathers.”
Thatcher laughs loudly, clamping his lips closed to cut off the sound.
Christ. Does he honestly believe I’m going to fall for his bullshit? I do admire his tenacity, though. I’m seconds away from dropping my mask and scaring the living shit out of him, if only so I can go home and open a bottle of something that doesn’t taste like disinfectant.
I push the empty shot glass aside. “You were about to ask me something.”
Thatcher widens his eyes, shaking his head like he’s regretting the shot as much as I am.
“You claim there was no study group,” he says slowly. “But I have a witness who claims to have spotted you outside a restaurant with Miss Parker.” He rolls his hand. “The Sunday afternoon she went missing.”
My pulse doesn’t change. My expression doesn’t flicker. I knew there was a possibility someone saw us, but the fact that it’s taken that person this long to come forward means they’re not sure.
“Do you now.” I take a sip of my bourbon without thinking. My face feels flushed, and I can still taste tequila in the back of my throat.
“I’ll admit, visibility wasn’t the greatest,” Thatcher says through a rueful grimace. “If you’ll recall, it was raining quite heavily that day.”
I don’t give him any indication that I remember. Instead, I just scoff lightly as I twist my glass on its coaster.
“Let me get this straight.” I tilt my head, incredulity creeping into my voice. “Your theory is that I picked Miss Parker up, kept her captive for a couple of days, then released her and framed one of my own students for it?”
Thatcher opens his mouth, but I just carry on speaking.
“Then I go and pay for the kid’s lawyer? After framing him?”
Thatcher laughs again. It’s an actual laugh this time—deep bellied, just as incredulous.
“Sounds fucking insane, doesn’t it?” he manages in a tight voice, before drowning out his laughter with a long swallow from his beer.
It’s the first time he’s sworn all evening. His cheeks are flushed, his movements slightly less precise than they were an hour ago.
“And yet here we are,” I observe dryly.
He shakes his head, frowning at the beer in his hand before taking another sip. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know when a case is off. Everything about the Parker situation just…” He makes a vague gesture. “It doesn’t add up, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”
“Many things in life don’t add up, Deputy. That doesn’t make them crimes.”
“No.” His eyes meet mine again, narrowed but not as intense as they were when we first sat down. “But it does make them worth investigating.”
My phone buzzes again.
This time, I pull it out. Glance at the screen.
Four missed calls. One text.
@jordan.ezra
Last chance, cunt
The tequila inside my stomach curdles.
“Everything okay?” Thatcher asks, a laugh in his voice. “Or is this the part where you ditch me for a family emergency?”
I slide the phone back into my pocket, my face perfectly neutral. “Former student.”
“On Thanksgiving?”
“Attention seeker,” I mutter into my glass. “Didn’t get enough validation growing up.”
“Seems like a lot of former students need your attention.”
“It’s a burden I bear.”
Thatcher chuckles. Takes another sip of beer. Then, with the casual precision of a sniper racking the slide on his rifle, says, “Speaking of former students…does Kai know about you and Ezra?”