Mr Right Next Door

They’d been scrambling just to follow her, to get Nick on her plane for the States and get agents in place waiting for her in the Atlanta airport when she arrived. They didn’t even know yet if Kim Cassidy was her real name. They didn’t know if she was working with Weyzinski or just an innocent victim.

Nick had to find out.

He followed her and the cop through the baggage-claim area until they stopped at an empty carousel. He hoped he’d at least have time to grab his checked bag before she found hers and took off.

“My car’s waiting at the curb?” Nick asked, knowing Harry would have tried to arrange things that way.

“It’s there. Bright red Lexus convertible. Sorry about the color, but the car will flat-out fly if you need it to. Try not to hurt it, okay?”

Nick sighed. “That was not my fault, Harry.”

A car chase on a freeway near L.A. six months ago had ended badly and he was still catching hell for it. Nick’s right knee had plowed into the dashboard. It still bothered him at times, usually when it rained.

“I don’t suppose you can get someone to hold her bag in the back for a while?”

“We’re working on it. Sorry, buddy. I didn’t get here until fifteen minutes before her plane touched down. But I’m getting a sheet on the cop right now. Okay… Looks like he is her brother.”

“Okay. So she wasn’t two-timing him with the guy on the ship.”

One point in her favor.

And if she was announcing that she was in love like that, as she arrived home from her trip, odds are it was with Weyzinski.

“Yeah, here’s the brother’s driver’s license photo and hers. Definitely the same guy who’s with her now. Looks like he’s been on the force for seven years now. Somebody talked to his supervisor in Magnolia Falls. Tried to make it all sound routine, but I don’t know, Nick. Maybe the department just didn’t like the idea of him flashing his badge around the airport without them knowing anything about it. Could be that. Could be something else. But they definitely didn’t like someone asking questions about one of their guys.”

Okay, so it looked like he wouldn’t be asking for cooperation from the local law enforcement agencies anytime soon. And he was going to be tailing a cop’s sister.

No problem.

“Don’t see any red flags on his service record, except something about a brawl in a bank a couple of years ago,” Harry said. “Wait… Damn.”

“What is it?”

“Their father was a cop. Shot and killed trying to stop a convenience-store robbery when our blonde was just a baby.”

Great.

Cops took care of their own. They took care of the families of cops. And more than anything else, they took care of the families of fallen officers.

Harry started laughing.

“Oh jeez, Nick. Are you ready for this? The town is all of twenty-four-hundred people. You’re entering a different world, my friend. You will not fit in well.”

“You don’t know that,” Nick argued. “I can fit in anywhere.”

Small-town America.

How hard could it be?

He’d blend with the best of ’em.

“She’s lived there her entire life,” Harry continued.

“So everybody knows her. Should be easy to get information on her.”

“If you can get ’em to talk.”

“I can get anybody to talk,” Nick boasted.

“She has not only the brother, but two sisters. Our pretty blonde is the baby of the family.” Harry laughed. “Looks like she’s been babied her whole life, doesn’t she?”

Nick felt an odd little kick in the gut at that.

A pretty, impossibly young pampered blonde who looked like a million bucks in a yellow string bikini, and who was probably used to getting her way in everything, indulged in every whim. God help him.

“Oh, man. All three of her siblings are married and living right there in Magnolia Falls,” Harry said. “This will not be good.”

Nick sighed.

Okay, so it didn’t sound good.

A cop for a brother, dead cop for a father.

A ton of relatives.

A tiny town.

A whole police force that would be looking out for her if anyone got wind of what Nick was doing in town.

Harry laughed some more.

“Guess what she does?”

“No clue,” Nick said, but he wasn’t going to like it. He could already tell.

“Elementary school art teacher. Isn’t that sweet?”

Nick swore.

He had a nice, maybe sweet, definitely innocent-looking elementary school teacher, the baby of a family of four, the daughter of a slain police officer, in love with a guy Nick was sure was a crook.

And Nick had to use her to find the crook.

“She’s gonna love you before you’re through,” Harry said.

“Yeah.”

This was why he got the big bucks.