Wicked in Love

Chapter 17 - mine

Cameron

"Shit."

The loud single knuckle rap on the window made me curse under my breath. A man in his late forties or early fifties peered at me through the tinted window of my parked truck, squinting his eyes as though he was trying to get a better look at my face.

When he stepped back, I opened the driver's side door and climbed out.

"Good afternoon," I said.

He tipped his hat, eyeing me suspiciously. "Afternoon. Are you lost?"

"That's the third time someone asked me that." I had no idea why I wanted to smile. And I had no idea why I said that.

I remembered the five-hour long drive I did from a work site to Mike's house to make sure Kara wasn't hurt. It was after midnight when I arrived. Mike had opened the door and asked me in a kind tone, "You lost, son?"

But someone else had asked me that question before. When was it? Who asked it? It was at the edge of my memory, but before I could grab it, the man said, "You must have a habit of getting lost."

He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I said, "No more than my habit of finding my way out."

Unless I didn't want to.

He removed his work gloves, tucked them behind his pants pocket. "I spotted your truck ten minutes ago when you pulled up. What can I do you for?"

He'd been watching me.

He lived in a gated subdivision, and I was worried security wouldn't let me in, but I was using the company truck, and they might have assumed I was one of the many contractors building new homes in the area. They let me in without any trouble. Some security.

Even before I pulled up my truck in front of his house, I had been debating whether to knock on his door or drive away. But that nightmare with Kara unconscious at the bottom of those stairs—the same stairs that had been in my nightmare for years— kept haunting me.

She should have never been there, and the thought that whatever was after me would come after her and hurt her made me push aside my crippling fear and tackle it once and for all. I was just about to jump out of my truck when the man had knocked on my window.

"I'm looking for Detective Joel Moore," I said.

"Retired," he said. "You're talking to him. How did you get this address?"

"Your father, Romeo, sent me."

He took off is hat. His heavy brows knitted together with alarm. "Is my father okay?"

"He's alright. I came by to ask you something."

He visibly relaxed and put his hat back on. "Whatever could it be about?"

"It's about a case that happened a long time ago. In the house on your father's street." My hands started to shake, so I tucked them in my pockets. "There was a shooting."

"A shooting," he repeated.

"Involving a young boy."

"That was over ten years ago." His dark eyes shone with irritation. "What do you have to do with it?"

Everything. I had every damned thing to do with it.

"I was—"

"Never mind that." He blew out an annoyed breath. "Look, man. You said my father sent you? Sometimes he sends students here as though I'm some sort of a mother database of information, but I just don't want to deal with that anymore, alright? Interview someone else for your project."