My fork doesn’t pause. I make sure of it. Even though my chest spasms and the food gets stuck in my throat. “Boston? My Boston?”
“I have some contacts up there. Figured if someone was following you, it might be connected to everything with your dad.”
Contacts. In the city where I was blacklisted. Where my career was dismantled by people I never saw coming.
“What kind of contacts?” I ask, keeping my voice light. Curious girlfriend. Nothing more. “Did you see my dad?”
Is he okay?
“Just people who owe me favors.” He waves a hand. “Nobody you’d know.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
I glance at Lance. His face is neutral, but I can see him cataloguing the vagueness, the hand wave, the deflection.
“Boston’s a big city,” Lance says, taking a sip of water. “You narrow it down to anyone specific?”
“I’m following some leads.” Art’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, types something, sets it down. “It might be connected to your dad’s firm, Gin. Some of the people he represents have ties up there.”
“Ties to what?”
“To the people who might want leverage on him.” His eyes meet mine, and he reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. “I’m handling it, okay?”
There it is.The door closing. I’m handling it. Don’t worry. The same phrase he’s used every time I get close to something real. There was still some little part of me hoping that he wasn’t involved in this, and I’m not sure how to handle the fact that it seems like he is.
“I don’t want you worrying about this. Has there… He hasn’t been around anymore, has he?” Art adds, pulling his hand back.
“You mean the guy who wasstalkingme? No. But that’s the thing about stalkers, sometimes they’re good enough to not be seen.”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what he was doing.”
“We don’t know it’s not,” Lance says.
Art’s phone buzzes again. “Shit. Hold on.”
He’s standing before I can stop him, pacing into the hallway, his voice a low murmur.
I look at Lance across the table. Art’s plate has maybe three bites missing.
“He didn’t mention a single name,” I say quietly.
“Nope.”
“And ‘contacts who owe him favors’ in Boston.” I push food around my plate. “Who owes Art Penngrove favors in Boston? He’s a mayor’s son who likes to buy up property.”
Lance doesn’t answer, but his expression says he’s asking the same question.
Art reappears, grimacing. “Sorry. Where were we?”
“You were telling us about Boston,” I say. “What your contacts found.”
“Right. Look, it’s still early. I don’t want to jump to conclusions.” He drums his fingers on the table. “But maybe it’s over if that guy hasn’t been back.”
My fork pauses. “It wasn’t like it was just an inconvenience, Art.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
