Chapter Thirteen
Nixon
My fucking hip hurt.
And it pissed me off not only to be in pain but to be in pain in my hip like some crotchety old man.
"What'd you do to your leg?" Atlas asked, having blown back into town sometime early that morning. Which likely meant that something had gone south with whatever woman he'd been away with. His life story. But he had a fresh tan and absolutely no stress.
Being back in town meant he would likely take on jobs for a couple weeks before he would take off again without warning.
Atlas, you could say, was not someone to carefully sock his money away, build up a healthy retirement fund.
He was too afflicted with wanderlust, too restless to stay put for any length of time.
He managed to keep his place year-round—a townhouse that he was out of more than he was in—but the rest of his income seemed to go toward traveling.
Me, well, I got plenty of moving around to last my lifetime back when my family and I ran our own little criminal empire.
Retired from that, I was genuinely happy to have roots, a home base.
Sure, a vacation would likely be good, but I could never live half my life on planes and boats, in hotel rooms. For a family raised so close, we all turned out vastly different.
King with his dogged ambition. Me with my uncertainty. Atlas with his wanderlust. Rush with his phone sex business. Scotti with her family life and florist shop.
"It's my hip," I admitted, voice a growl.
"Yeah?" Atlas asked, lips twitching. "What happened? You sneeze too hard, old man?"
"Fuck off," I grumbled, slapping the file I had been adding pages to onto a pile with all the others. "I got hit by a car."
"What?" he asked, a hair more serious. Which, for the normal person, would be nothing. But for Atlas, it was practically grave.
"I was on a case. Trying to talk to this stalker chick. She peeled out, and hit me with her back quarter panel."
"You've always had such a way with the ladies," he told me, lips curved upward.
"I wasn't trying to fuck her, At, I was trying to tell her to fuck off."
"But she told you to fuck off instead."
That she did, actually.
And in as many words.
Repeatedly.
Then with action.
With more than sufficient force.
I was half pissed and half impressed.
It wasn't often someone was willing to hit you with their car.
Sure, it wasn't on purpose. She seemed to be a complete shit driver, to be honest. And, to her credit, she had paused to make sure she hadn't done any serious damage, before she disappeared.
Though, what she thought she was accomplishing by racing off was beyond me. Her plate was on her car, traceable.
One could go ahead and assume she wasn't a pro. Unless the plates were fake. But judging by her reaction to me, I thought not. She was some normal, garden variety stalker.
Usually, with women, it wasn't that big of a deal to handle. They tended to be pissed about some cheating or a lack of child support or some other domestic issue. You went ahead and had a talk with them—with King, or Atlas, or Rush, likely a talk about how they deserved better, that they shouldn’t waste their time with such a piece of shit, etc.
etc. etc., while I told them to fuck off and move on with their lives already, always being the more blunt out of all my siblings—and they let it go.
Not like the guys who couldn't accept that some woman didn't belong to them just because she once dated him or simply smiled at him at the grocery store.
So I figured that as soon as King's contact at the DMV got back to us with a name, it would likely just be another day, then I could close the case, move on. Maybe catch a couple easy cases that just involved updating security systems or something like that.
"Can't imagine why she'd be stalking the prick she has been staking out. He hardly seems like someone a woman would feel attached to."
"Oh, women. Such mysterious creatures,” Atlas agreed.
"Speaking of mysterious creatures," Kingston said, walking in, glancing at Atlas lounged on the couch in my office. "What brings you back so early? Did you hit on some cartel guy's woman again?"
The fact that he had to add on 'again' told you a lot about Atlas and his tendency toward getting himself into interesting sorts of trouble when womenfolk were involved.
"I had my heart stolen by a rich divorcee," he told us, clutching his chest, eyes closing.
"And then?" King prompted, brow raised.
"And then... she transferred her affections to a cabana boy in a banana hammock.
" He was clearly real hung up on it. "I was out of cash, so I headed back home.
Figure you can always use some extra hands around here.
Got any new cases?" he asked. "Aside from the one that has women running over Nixon with their cars, of course.
Because he is clearly doing a bang-up job there on his own. "
"You got run over?" King asked, slipping effortlessly into dad-mode.
"I got clipped when I approached the target. Not a big deal. I have Shelly running her plate numbers. It will be over in a day or two."
“Her?” King asked, lips twitching as he tried to hold back a grin.
"I know, right?" Atlas asked, not bothering to hide his smile. "I mean he has an awful track record with the fairer sex in general. But he must have been extra charming to get hit by one."
"Are you guys done?" I asked, yanking open my top desk drawer, grabbing for a bottle, pills dancing around before I uncapped it and threw back a few.
"Yeah, King. Geesh, ease up on the guy. Can't you see he is late for his cane-fitting appointment? Fuck, leave a guy alone, would you?" he asked, unfolding from the couch, clapping Kingston on the shoulder before moving off into the main area of the office.
"Nice to have some levity back in the office," Kingston admitted. It bothered him, I knew, to have Atlas gone a lot of the time. Not because he wanted his help at work, but because he liked having his family close by. He liked to watch over everyone. That was just King.
"But only when the jokes come at my expense, huh?" I asked, rubbing my hip.
"All jokes aside, did you get checked out? Nothing serious?"
"It's bruised to high hell. I went down on it hard. The side she hit is fine."
"So I'm assuming the case isn't going as planned?" he asked, sitting on the couch Atlas had vacated.
"The plan was there was no stalker. But I'm figuring this will be easy enough. The female stalkers usually aren't that dangerous."
"Except when they whack you with their vehicles."
"Well, I probably freaked her out," I admitted, knowing it was never a good move to approach a woman all alone at night for any reason. Even if it was to tell her to stop being such a fucking creep.
"She was hot, wasn't she?" Atlas asked, appearing in the doorway again, taking a bite out of a piece of sub. My sub. That I had brought in with me.
"She's a stalker," I reminded him.
"You notice how he didn't answer my question?" he asked King, shaking his head. "She must be a hottie."
Fine.
She was.
It hadn't exactly been the best lighting, but what I had seen was, yes, hot.
She seemed long and lean with deep eyes, golden undertones to her Asian skin, and a shock of nearly white-blonde hair. I couldn’t imagine how gorgeous she'd be in good light.
And that voice.
She had a voice you could only describe as sultry.
Fiona would have begged her to work for her phone sex business with a voice like that.
"You're an—“ I started, cut off by the deep vibration across my desk from my phone.
It was just a text.
The one I had been waiting for.
Shelly was quick this time.
Name: Reagan Amida Hoffman.
"Got a name? "King asked as I turned to my computer, tapping the information I had into one of the best trusts of personal information. Facebook.
She popped up quickly, her profile a picture of herself with her arm around a slightly darker-skinned man, both of them beaming at the camera. And, judging by the glassy looks to both their eyes, a little drunk.
"Told you she was a hottie," Atlas said, coming up behind me. And I could hear him devouring my fucking lunch. "Why is she stalking your client if she's got a man?"
That was a good question.
The two in the picture had their arms around each other. Close. Happy. Possibly good friends. But if a woman had a man in her main profile picture, it usually implied more than friendship, didn't it?
"She have her work address listed?" Kingston asked, checking the time on the wall.
"You're gonna love this," Atlas told him. "She's a hottie. And she works at a whiskey company," he volunteered. "Gee, King, do we know anyone who is really into some good whiskey?" he asked, and King let the smile spread that time.
"Shame he already made such a shit impression, huh?" Kingston asked.
"Right. Because I should be dating a fucking stalker."
"I mean, with your moody ass, you can't afford to be picky, can you?" Atlas asked, dodging back a foot to avoid my arm that flew out toward him.
"I think I've had enough brotherly love for the day," I declared, annoyed that I had to plant my hands on my desk to pull myself onto my feet. "I am going to confront her so we can close this case."
My gait was stiff and slow as I made my way across the office.
It didn't get any better the more I walked either, but I figured that once the case was done, once the client was happy with the results, I could spend some time on the couch with an ice pack and a bottle of whiskey, give myself a chance to recover.
Reagan Hoffman worked at a place called Devil Tears Whiskey, a luxury brand that I hadn't tried yet since it had a three-digit price-tag. While I enjoyed a good glass of whiskey, I didn't feel like any bottle of booze should go for well, well over a hundred bucks.
There were two main headquarters, I learned when I sat in my car researching on my phone to avoid my brothers. One was in California. The other was right here on the outskirts of Navesink Bank.