Wade’s gaze sharpened. “You watching her now like some stalker? Is she going to file a report on you for being a peeping tom? Goddamnit, Kipp. Please tell me you’re not looking in her windows.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Hell, those cabins of yours are like a voyeur’s wet dream.” He squinted at me, and it was all I could do to keep from squirming in my seat.
“Of course I’m not.” Clearing my throat awkwardly, I straightened in my chair. “There are curtains. I’m just saying that she was working late. You can see the lights on.”
“That better be all there was to it. Last thing I need to hear is that my brother is some creepy perv.” He held up his hands at the look on my face. “Hey. Just saying. Boundaries.”
“It isn’t the point anyway.” I sighed, leaning back. “I don’t like what she does. And I have boundaries,” I added defensively.
“You don’t have to like what someone does for a living to be interested in them,” Wade said. “It isn’t mandatory. There are lots of people who don’t like cops, for instance.”
“You’re not wrong, but I don’t like the idea of people dissecting tragedy for clicks.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But not all true crime is the same. Some of it actually pushes cases forward to get the attention they need.”
“Could be true, I guess.” Fish pushed a little against my legs, whining. Giving him a pet, I stroked his ears, flopping them between my fingers. “I’m thinking about running a background on her,” I said. “Full sweep. Just to be safe.”
Wade squinted at me. “You can’t run it through OSP. What cause would you have?”
Giving a careless shrug as I sat back, I thought about it. He wasn’t wrong. There was no way I could run her through OSP, but that wasn’t what I intended. “She’s on my land,” I justified.
“It doesn’t mean that you should be running a background on her,” he said gently. “That’s your anxiety talking.”
“It isn’t my anxiety talking. I’m not an anxious person. You wouldn’t want to know?”
“If there was a reason to be suspicious, then I’d want to know,” he said. “Not just because her job makes me uncomfortable. You’re being an insecure dickhead.”
“Well, I’m still calling Redhawk and your buddy Rhodes,” I said mutinously.
Wade’s brows lifted in surprise. “You want to bring Rhodes into this?”
Rhodes was Wade’s friend from the military, but he ran a top-tier security company up in Washington, outside Seattle. Last year, he had helped East when Lila was introuble. I doubted he would say no. “He’s our guy for private backgrounds and off the books.”
“Our guy?” His eyebrow winged up. “If you’re contacting Rhodes, that should tell you something. If you need to go off the books, maybe you’re crossing a line.”
“I don’t think it’s crossing a line to make sure she’s not a psycho.” I scowled. “I’m not talking about surveillance. Just information.”
“Information is power,” he said. “You sure you want that kind of leverage over someone? Maybe you should talk to her like a normal person. Take her on a date.”
I leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t trust her situation. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” Wade asked quietly, obviously skeptical. He stood then, stretching, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner. “You know,” he said, back turned, “when I first started, I hated journalists.”
I snorted. “Still do. You complain about them all the damn time.”
“True. If you don’t want to ask her out, that’s fine. You don’t have to like her,” Wade went on. “You don’t have to agree with what she does, but you might want to ask yourself why this bothers you so much. Just think on it.”
Silence settled again, softer this time. Fish lifted his head, ears perking, sensing the shift.
“I’m not saying don’t be cautious,” Wade said. “I’m saying don’t let your badge turn into blinders. We should never be those types of men.”
He didn’t have to elaborate. Levi had given plenty of lectures on “those kinds of men”. We’d all come from different sorts of home situations, but a lot of them were heavy on abuse. Levi had wanted us to grow up treating women right.
I nodded slowly. “Alright. Good talk.”
“See you Sunday?” He smiled, not unkindly, as I stood and clipped Fish’s collar to the leash in my hand, the weight in my chest not gone but redistributed. Wade clapped a hand on my shoulder as I headed for the door.
“Invite her to dinner,” he called after me.
Flipping him off without looking back, I had to admit that Wade was right. Maybe this wasn’t really about her job after all.
