Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption (Road to Redemption #1)(56)
“Who’s this?”
“Ken, this is my friend Jackson Stiles. He’s a private detective in the area.”
He sits up straighter than before and adjusts his bobble head Superman he just knocked with his elbow. No smiles for me, I guess, but I try and make this friendly with a nod.
“Sup.”
As friendly as I f*cking can, that is.
He types a few things into the keyboard sitting in front of him, then another something into one sitting to his left. Both screens go black.
He never does answer me.
“Ken,” Green continues. “We’re looking for someone.”
“And?”
He folds some papers up and pushes them into his desk drawer.
How f*cking paranoid can you be?
Seriously.
“And…” Green looks frustrated. “Hold on.” She turns to me and kind of escorts me out of the office into the sea of cubicles that fill the floor.
“What?” I didn’t do shit. I swear.
“I think you make him nervous.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly have to tell him I’m a private eye. I mean, come on.”
“Why don’t you wait out here while I talk to him?”
I laugh. “I don’t f*cking think so.”
“He won’t talk if you’re in there.”
“Then we move on.”
She stops with the whisper-screaming when someone walks by. Green smiles. I’m not that f*cking polite, though. Once they’re out of earshot, she starts in on me again.
“Stiles. This is your best bet right now. I promise.”
“You don’t know that.” I’m done whispering.
“Yeah, I pretty much do.”
We could do this shit all night. But because I’m a high-road kinda guy, I digress. Plus, I really don’t see winning this one. She’s ornery, that one.
“Fine,” I tell her, setting my watch. “You’ve got a hundred and twenty seconds. Then I’m outta here.”
“Two minutes, gotcha.” She disappears back into the office and closes the door. I hear them talking, laughing, getting angry, but I can’t make out what the f*ck they’re saying. When Green emerges, she’s got a grimace spread across her face. I’m guessing that means she got nowhere. Which also means I was right, and now we can move the f*ck on.
No harm, no foul.
She’s quiet on the way downstairs, giving me time to think. One might assume I put that time to good use. One might be wrong. Mostly because I can’t stop envisioning her against the elevator wall earlier and how easy it felt.
Natural.
Jesus. Shake it off.
Her cell phone buzzes. She checks it, types something back, and slips it away like I wasn’t gonna notice.
“Connor worried about you playing this late at night?”
She huffs and shakes her head at me. “Just checking in.”
“If you’ve gotta get home, I can—”
“Nope, all good.” She smiles but doesn’t look at me.
Did she just lie to her boyfriend about where she is? And if she did, good for her.
“Hey, you can—”
“I’m starving. Can we grab something?”
Um. “To eat? Green, we’ve gotta find this kid.”
I know, I know. I’m one to talk about staying on point.
“Stiles, I have low blood sugar.”
“And?” I know.
I regret asking as soon as it’s out there.
“Which means if I don’t eat, I’m going to pass out, and if I pass out, you’re going to have to take me to the hospital, which is undoubtedly going to bring your search to a halt for the rest of the night.”
“You think—”
“Because when they do release me, and sometimes that’s not until the next day, you’re going to have to be there to drive me home because I don’t have any way to get there since you drove.”
“Okay.” Christ. Welcome to crazy town. Did she even breathe during that whole thing there?
She’s got a slight point, though. Maybe food will help clarify my thought process. Get it off her and back onto the task at hand. But we’re gonna need to be quick about it.
“Where to?”
She gives me some directions, and I’m thinking she’s got some pretty f*cking picky eating habits. By the time we’re close, we’ve passed about five fast food joints that were perfectly good eating options, but noooo. She has to get something from this specific Chinese food joint, specifically located in the most unspecific location I’ve never f*cking heard of in my life.
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, after she’s texted about ten times with some super-secret person on the other end of the cyber-verse, probably Connor—the douche, she turns her phone off altogether. I’m finally fed the f*ck up with her vagueness. I pull over and put the Chevelle into park.
“I’m not doing this shit any more, Green.”
“Stiles.”
“Either you pick a goddamn place on this street—”
“Stiles.”
“Or I’m turning us the f*ck around, and you can starve yourself stupid sitting right outside the closest walk-in clinic for the next three days for all I f*cking care.”