“We need to move out of this circus,” Riley muttered under her breath.
* * *
“You didn’t haveto tag along,” Weber complained as Nick opened the back door of the cruiser for Riley.
“Oh, but I did since you’re poaching yet another employee of mine,” he insisted. As soon as his old buddy was behind the wheel, Nick slugged him in the arm.
“Ow! Dick. What was that for?”
“That’s for introducing my mother to my girlfriend.” Nick punched him again in the same spot. “And that’s for making me take Riley to dinner at my parents’ tomorrow night.”
“That’s what adults in relationships do, jackass. They introduce their attractive psychic girlfriends to their parents.” Weber threw an elbow that caught Nick in the chest, which was sore from last night’s impromptu workout with Gabe.
Riley leaned onto the divider between front and back seats. “Excuse me. If you two are going to wrestle the whole way there, I think Nick should ride back here.”
Nick threw one last jab to Weber’s ribs as he pulled out onto Front Street.
Without looking, his ex-partner shoved Nick’s face against the window.
“Gentlemen!”
“Sorry,” they said in unison.
“Why are you having coffee with my mother, anyway?” Nick asked.
Weber shrugged. “We get together from time to time.”
“If you tell me you’re having an affair with her, I’m going to shave your eyebrows and half of your head.”
Weber grinned smugly. “Your mom thinks of me as the son she never had. I’m the good one,” he assured Riley in the rearview mirror.
“Mmm. I can tell,” she said.
Nick rolled his eyes and directed Weber across the river to Brian’s street in Camp Hill.
“Brian and Josie live here?” Riley asked with a legitimate amount of skepticism.
It was a little brick bungalow on a quiet street two blocks back from the main drag. There were flower boxes on the railing of the wheelchair ramp.
Nick liked to think that the house was like his cousin. Respectable and good-looking on the outside, but inside it was a den of debauchery.
Between Brian’s tech toys, Josie’s collection of antique weaponry, and the room with the sex swing, the freak flags flew proudly behind closed doors.
“They like to keep a low profile,” he explained, opening the door for Riley.
Weber popped the trunk and produced two cardboard boxes labeled “Evidence” and followed them.
Nick rapped his knuckles preemptively on the front door before keying in the code and opening the door. “Get your pants on, kids. The boss is here,” he called.
A steel-toed boot flew down the hallway and landed with a meaty thump on the hardwood floor.
Riley flinched, but Nick pulled her inside and enjoyed the sensory overwhelm that a first-time visitor experienced in Josie and Brian’s living room. The house was much like the couple. They didn’t exactly make sense together, but man, was it entertaining.
One wall was dominated by a huge flat screen surrounded by four smaller screens. A long, low cabinet beneath Screen-o-Rama housed every kind of entertainment equipment known to man, including the latest and greatest gaming systems and a state-of-the-art karaoke system with auto-tune. The whole room was wired with speakers that shook the entire house during televised mixed martial arts fights.
The opposite wall displayed Josie’s collection of katanas and throwing knives. Nick had been present the time Josie’s cousin Ling got hammered and threw a knife at her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend for grabbing the ass of their other cousin Valerie. Ling had missed. So Josie made her come back every day for two weeks to improve her aim.
“Someone better be dead.” Josie stomped into the room and glared at them. Her black hair was pulled up in a high ponytail. She was wearing a short, slinky robe over what appeared to be nothing else.
