Shay laughed. “If you con someone who deserves it, you’re still a con.” He turned around to pour hot water into the cups and then held one out toward Morgan. “Besides, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
Grains of coffee floated on the surface while the creamer thickened into off-white clots around the edges. Morgan held it in both hands while Shay drank his with the confidence of someone whose coffee hadn’t killed them yet. He gave Morgan a hard, humorless grin over the rim of the cup.
“What?” he asked. “This not going the way you expected?”
Morgan shrugged and held his tongue. That smile felt like bait, and yeah, this wasn’t how he expected it to go. The uncertainty made his neck sweaty and his fingers itch to check under the desk for a recording device taped to the leg.
When he didn’t bite, Shay filled in the silence for him.
“Let me guess? You thought I was going to warn you off?”
A second shrug. “Didn’t figure you’d be thrilled I fucked Boyd.”
Shay made a sour face. “You had your cock out. That’s not sex,” he said. Morgan guessed that Boyd had changed his mind about having a dirty little secret, not that it mattered. “But you aren’t going to be around long enough to hurt him, are you? I mean, that’s why you’re here. The plan was you listen to me tell you to get out of town, then you pitch a dollar amount that would make that happen. Am I warm, or am I boiling?”
After the brawl last night, Morgan figured he’d defanged his temper, at least long enough for his ribs to heal. It turned out he had a little left in the tank. He curled his lip in a sneer as he got up from the chair and gave it a shove to slide it back under the desk.
“You’re a dickhead,” he said. It always stung more when someone insulted you with the truth. But he didn’t have a price in mind. He’d planned to play that by ear. “I’m done here.”
Shay grabbed his arm on the way past and tightened his fingers.
“What’s your price?”
Morgan gave him a thin slice of a smile. “What for? Hand job or sex?”
A horrified flush crawled up Shay’s face from chin to temples, and he let go of Morgan’s arm as though he were scalded.
“I didn’t…. That wasn’t…,” he stammered uncomfortably. After a second, he pulled himself together and glared at Morgan. “Go to hell.”
“Long as it isn’t here,” Morgan said as he tugged his T-shirt straight. “Next time I see Boyd, I’ll give him your regards. Oh and, ah, in case you’re wondering? He gets it on the house.”
He flashed Shay a humorless grin and went to walk away. This time he got halfway across the shop before Shay got his voice back.
“I’ll pay it.”
The magic words. Morgan stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t proud of it, but he wasn’t surprised either. Money talked, and more importantly, it walked. Guilt scraped down Morgan’s spine, but…. The last thing Boyd would want was for Morgan to end up in jail, he told himself. Besides, he tossed the sop to his conscience, give him a few months in Mexico to get his feet under him, and he’d start paying Boyd back.
It was a lie—well, not yet, but Morgan knew himself—but his conscience took what it could get.
Morgan turned around. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.
“You’re going to pay me to sling my hook?”
Shay took a gulp of his coffee, despite the heat that made him grimace, and wiped his hand nervously over his mouth. There were scars on his wrists, long and white as they disappeared up into his long-sleeved jersey.
“No. To tell the truth,” Shay said. His voice was tight, clotted with emotion. “Notyourtruth.Thetruth. About what happened to my brother.”
Morgan flicked his eyes around the space with reflexive paranoia. He didn’t actually have anything to confess, but it would be his luck to go down for a lie. But it would be an easy payday. He’d heard enough about sad Sammy Calloway to come up with a good story. He’d get the money, and Shay would get… whatever it was the guy thought he’d get out of this.
The memory of a split lip and the electric-shock jolt of anger he’d felt that night flickered across Morgan’s mind. He didn’t care if Boyd had shrugged it off. He hadn’t. Empty pockets and a nice, raw lie might be just what Shay deserved.
But Morgan made a mistake and looked into Shay’s clouded blue eyes. He couldn’t do it. Whatever he thought of Shay, he couldn’t bring himself to add more to whatever he hauled around with him.
“Look, Shay, I don’t know,” Morgan said. “Whatever fuckup happened in the DNA lab, I’ve never been to this town, and I don’t have a clue what happened to your—”
“That’s okay,” Shay said. “You don’t need to.”
Morgan hesitated as his brain tripped on that. “What?”
