Kai and I sit in stunned silence.
“Polite?” Kai mutters.
My phone buzzes. I check it automatically, thinking it’s a reply from Milo.
It’s not.
“Maybe weshouldcall your friend back,” Kai says. “Find out what he knows.”
I stare at the unanswered text on my screen as Milo’s words echo in my head.
…he’s dangerous…
“Is it wrong of me,” I say slowly, “to not want to know?”
Kai doesn’t answer, and that’s answer enough.
Chapter 42
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.
