It wasn’t as though Sullivan didn’t know everything else about him. The last book had been written just after he broke up with his ex, and that had made it in.
“That’s not a reason to invade his privacy, Boyd.”
“Suddenly you care about privacy? Didn’t you get your hands on Mac’s disciplinary file?”
“That was relevant.”
“So’s this. He could be Sammy.”
Sullivan exhaled a hard “huh” of breath that sounded as though something had hit him in the stomach. After a moment he roughly cleared his throat.
“I’d already booked my flight back,” he said. “I’ll move it forward. Send me everything you know about Morgan Graves, anything I can use as a starting point to find out who he really is. Boyd… do you think he—?”
Boyd hung up him. He’d already sobered up enough for regrets.
Chapter Twelve
THE BLUE,frothy concoction in the tall ribbed glass was a bubblegum milkshake, and Morgan had no idea why the fuck he ordered it. It looked like a teenage girl’s idea of what was cool and—he took a drink and grimaced—tasted like diabetes. The woman behind the counter, all boobs and blond hair, had given him a startled look when he asked for it. She probably didn’t get many people over thirteen who wanted one.
Morgan slouched down in the booth, his booted foot propped against the seat opposite, and idly stirred the drink with a straw.
It had been a whim, the same as asking for Shay’s car yesterday instead of fifty grand in cash for… whatever crime it was to pretend to be a dead kid to frame someone for your murder. Morgan had a feeling he got a better deal on the milkshake.
He was still a custom muscle car better off than he was that morning, he reminded himself. That would get him a new start, even if it wouldn’t quite cover a new life.
The saccharine idea of a new life with Boyd fluttered through his head—tangled sheets and the taste of Boyd’s skin on his tongue, clasped hands in public, and kisses on street corners that looked more like something out of a Lifetime-movie vacation village than the faded ex-mining town that was Cutter’s Gap.
Morgan snorted and pushed the milkshake away as though that sugary fantasy was its fault. What did he think was going to happen? Boyd would wait for him to get out of jail, Morgan wouldn’t fuck it up somehow like he always did, and they’d live happily ever after?
No. People like Morgan didn’t get dreams. They faced the truth. He’d fucked Boyd, and now he was going to fuck him over. Twice. Even Boyd, laid-back as he was, wouldn’t get past that. If he could, Morgan would just know he was one of those marks you could bleed dry over the years.
He let himself imagine that for a second—Boyd at thirty-five in a suit and expensive watch. He’d have a touch of gray at his temples, and he’d still open his wallet and go down on his knees for Morgan—
The rattle of the bell over the door interrupted Morgan’s fantasy before it went too far. He cleared his throat and sat up to check who’d come in. He didn’t need to bother.
“Captain Macintosh,” the server—Bettie, Bertie?—singsonged happily. “Your usual?”
“Yeah, coffee,” Mac said. “Get me a burger too? Make it—”
“Rare,” Bertie or Bettie said. “I remember.”
Morgan glanced over with a flicker of amusement and watched as Bertie leaned over the counter, boobs squeezed together and up against the V of her uniform. She smiled flirtatiously at Mac as he chuckled and passed a twenty over the counter.
“You know, you don’t need to pay,” she said as she plucked the cash from his fingers. “You could just take me out one night instead. Get me a couple of beers at the Bull Ring, and we could call it even.”
“Thanks for the offer, Bertie,” Mac said. “But, ah, that wouldn’t exactly look aboveboard, would it?”
She waggled her eyebrows at him. “So you’d plan to go below deck?” she said archly and then laughed at herself. “One day, Joe, you’ll see what you’re missing. Coffee and a burger, on the captain’s wallet.”
Morgan pushed the milkshake toward the far side of the table. “Double the order,” he said. She started as though she’d forgotten he was there, and then she frowned. He smiled at her. “Please?”
Mac glanced around at him and then pulled a second twenty out of his wallet. He handed it over. “On me.”
She looked curiously at him, the note folded between her fingers, but then she shrugged her soft pink-clad shoulders.
“Two burgers, two coffees,” she said. “It’ll be ten minutes.”
She headed into the kitchen, her voice sharp as she conveyed the order to the cook, and Mac tucked his wallet back into his jacket as he came over to the booth.
