Page 82 of Out Of A Fix

I rolled my eyes before facing forward.

“You don’t get it because you have no idea what I was like, what my kids were like, before you showed up. But things feel normal again. I feel like me.”

“That has to do with you and the kids, you get that, right?”

“I know exactly what it has to do with,” he said ominously.

I would have asked questions and then described how fixers cleared the road, that he was the one who would have to drive it even if it got bumpy again after I left, but at that moment, a door opened and Richard Conti stepped out.

When he saw me, there was not a sliver of concern in the man’s expression, but when Luke leaned around me, he jolted and ducked back inside his room.

“Interesting,” I said, bolting forward, reaching the door quickly and putting my shoulder into it. The fact that it gave so easily was terrible. “This is why I have long screws in all the deadbolts at home,” I explained to Luke.

“I appreciate these teachable moments,” he teased before trying to go around me into the room.

I wasn’t letting that happen and stepped in front of him, making certain he couldn’t get by even as I faced an empty room.

Moving fast, I took up position to the right of the bathroom door. “Mr. Conti, I need you to come out and speak to me.”

When Luke moved right in front of the door, I shoved him sideways to the left, to safety.

“What’re you doing?” he barked at me.

“Did it occur to you that he could have a gun, and if he does and shoots at the door…”

It didn’t even take him a second. “Oh,” he muttered, staying where he was.

“I’m not coming out to be killed.”

That was dramatic.

Luke looked at me and whispered, “Killed?”

“I have no idea,” I told him.

“I’m calling the police,” Conti called out.

“Well, that 911 call will have to be routed to the police department in Newcastle, because at the moment there’s no law enforcement here in Eena.”

Groan from the other side of the door.

“Neither of us will hurt you, Mr. Conti.”

“He will. Catie’s ex-husband will. He killed my brother.”

I huffed out a breath. “He didn’t kill anyone.”

“My brother is gone!” he cried from the other side of the door, sounding sad and broken, and my heart went out to him.

“Mr. Conti,” I began gently, pulling my ID and my conceal and carry, and sliding them both under the bathroom door, “my name is Nash Miller, and I was hired by Abel Roarke, Caitlyn Duchesne’s brother, to protect his ex-brother-in-law, as well as their three children, from the men she’s testifying against. We don’t know that they will try and pressure her that way, but I’m here as a preventive measure.”

Nothing from the other side of the door.

“You do know your brother entered protective custody with Caitlyn, don’t you?”

The door was thrown open, and a handsome man, tall with black hair graying at the temples, heavy laugh lines, and sharp, angular features was staring at me in absolute shock.

“This was eighteen months ago,” I explained. “Did your brother not let you know before he entered the program?”