Page 27 of Montana Mystery

“He’s gone,” I said.

“Go into the coffee shop. Wait for ten minutes and then Jude will pick you up outside. He has your car.”

“Noah—”

“We’ll talk about it at the hotel, Kate.”

I pressed my lips together. He was pissed and I couldn’t exactly blame him. This was not what we’d agreed to do, but it was the right thing to do. He wanted information, and I could get it. It was that simple.

Hopefully, once we could talk about it, he would agree. Slipping my hands into the pockets of my jacket, I walked toward the coffee shop in the gathering darkness to wait for Jude.

Chapter 10

Noah

“Shit,” Liam said from the driver’s seat. “He’s gone. I’m sorry, Noah.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, thrusting down my frustration. “It’s not your fault.”

Max—I was already growing to hate the name—was more clever than I wanted to admit. There was no way he could have known he was being followed, and yet he still took a circuitous route that had us second-guessing every turn.

The center of Missoula was a residential mess with random diagonal roads and drivable alleys running between or behind most houses. Unless you had every single one of them memorized, keeping up with someone who knew them was impossible.

We didn’t. So he lost our tail without even trying to.

“Let’s not waste more time,” I said. “We don’t know when that asshole is going to message her, and I need to talk to her before that happens.”

“Go easy on her,” Liam said. “She’s trying to help.”

“By throwing herself straight into the lion’s den? That’s not helping. That’s setting up for disaster.”

Liam glanced over at me. There was just enough light left for me to see there wasn’t any humor in his face. For Liam, that was a rarity. It also meant I should probably listen to whatever was coming next.

“Are you angry because she volunteered herself? Or because that asshole put his hands on her?”

“I—”

The instant dismissal on my lips died.

Wasn’t it possible to be both? Of course it was. But was her volunteering the reason I had rage like lava swimming through my veins?

I sighed. No. It wasn’t. If I’d been in Kate’s position and been offered the opportunity to get the information I needed with relative ease, I would have said yes too. But those three words when I’d heard her fear...

He’s following me.

The terror in that whisper wasn’t something I wanted to think about. In that whisper lived every woman’s worst nightmare. And I hadn’t been close enough to do shit. He’d touched her without her consent. Not just once, but twice.

There was nearly a red film over my gaze when I played the sight over in my head.

“Are you going to judge me harshly if I tell you it’s the second?”

A humorless laugh. “No. And if you’d decided to break cover to fix that situation, I would have gone with you. No matter the consequences.”

We drove in silence, the streetlights lighting us up like images captured in a strobe.

“But, Noah,” Liam said, “don’t take your anger at him out on her. Is it a bad idea? Yeah, probably. And you should talk about that. But be careful.”

“Yeah.”