Page 103 of The Lonely Road

Kaz looks up when I come in. “Left her bed like a thief, did you?”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

I sit next to him and nod at Miss Patsy. She knows I like it black.

She places a brown, thick mug of brown coffee in front of me and saunters away. She knows when men are talking business, and that’s none of her beeswax.

“Trafton.”

He doesn’t ask how I know it was him.

He already knows I know.

“He’s alone—no backup, no second car. Jessup didn’t send support.” He pauses. “He sent one man because he thought one man would be enough.”

I was the man he sent, and he didn’t think I was enough, which is why he paid Trafton.

This is what happens when you let your dick…heart, same difference, lead you. You fuck up the job, and you get Trafton.

“What’s your interest in Jessup?”

He raises his coffee like he’s toasting me. “I’m just a land developer, Brooks. I just keep my eyes open.”

Like I thought. FBI. He knows who I am. He’s known from the start. This means that he’s investigating Jessup. But the man’s a senator, and they are hard to pull down from their lofty pedestals.

I drink the coffee and wince. It’s terrible. But then Miss Patsy sucks at making coffee. She makes a mean martini, though.

“Mason.” He doesn’t call me Brooks as he normally does. “You leave the man alive.”

“Okay.”

“Alive,” he repeats

I look at him, my jaw clenched. “I’m not Trafton.”

He holds my gaze for a moment. Decides. “Meadowlark Motor Lodge. Highway 65, twelve miles east. Unit nine. He parks the truck around the back, thinking it makes him invisible. It doesn’t.” He sets his coffee down. “He’s been sloppy. He’s always been sloppy. That’s why Jessup pays him less.”

I pull out two dollar bills and set them down under the coffee mug. “I’m gone after this.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” He lets out a long sigh. “Well, it wasn’t a bad idea until you decided to go fall in love with the only lawyer we got left since Mac’s retiring in Wildflower Canyon.”

“I’m not in love with her.” It’s a big fat lie.

He chuckles. “I got experience saying that shit, too.”

“She’s going to lose the case.”

He raises an eyebrow. “She’s going to lose the preliminary case since I am assuming you got what you came looking for, which is why you’re leaving.”

“I’m keeping her safe.”

“I don’t think she’ll see it that way.”

“That’s why I’m leaving.”

“You could stay,” he suggests.

I scoff. “She’s going to know I sold her out, Kaz. She’s going to be done with me.”