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He’d said something about a brain. She knew that much. But everything else had gotten lost into the warmth of his arm against her back. How that tempting aroma surrounded her.
She blinked, praying he hadn’t noticed how she’d all but sniffed him like a dog, only to groan inwardly when that sexy, traitorous mouth of his kicked up into a smirk. “Are you sure it’s just the three of them and not all four of you?”
“Ouch.” He removed his arm as he placed his hand on his chest. “Someone’s showing their claws.”
“Not quite.” She nodded toward the entrance. “But we’ll have to save that discussion for later because that’s Greer.”
The men turned as Deputy Hudson walked through the doorway, her long auburn hair twisted up into a messy bun. She wasn’t wearing her usual uniform, opting for jeans, a sweater and a wool jacket. She waved to Mac, weaving her way through the crowd before stopping at the table. All four men stood, and Chase held out the chair to his right for her.
Greer arched a brow but accepted his offer, looking straight at Mac. “And they say chivalry’s dead.”
Chase cleared his throat as he reclaimed his seat. “It’s a show of respect. Nothing more.”
Greer smiled. “Easy there, flyboy. I’m just yanking on your chain.”
Chase thumbed toward Foster. “He’s the flyboy. I’m the medic.”
“Ah, that means you’re Chase Remington, right? And he’s Beckett.”
Foster coughed. “Why does everyone say my last name like that?”
Greer shrugged. “Like what?”
“Like it’s the town’s new curse word.”
“Atticus might have used it like that for the past couple months. I guess it’s caught on.”
“I’ll have to remember to properly thank him.”
Greer nodded at the server when she held up a coffee pot. “Which means you must be Kash Sinclair and Zain Everett.”
Zain frowned. “I’m not sure if we should be impressed or concerned you already know all our names. I’m pretty sure we haven’t actually met.”
“Nope, but I make it a point to learn a bit about everyone in town. Though, you boys made it easy. Ex-military with impressive records. I didn’t even need to venture past page two.”
Kash coughed, rubbing his chest when his coffee must have gone down funny. “You have multiple pages on us?”
“Can’t be too careful after what went down last year.” She gave Mac a slight nod. “That’s a black mark on my record, and I won’t let anything like that happen again on my watch.”
Foster eyed Greer, and Mac felt an odd pang in her chest. Surely, she wasn’t jealous of Greer because Beckett had smiled at the other woman. Though it wasn’t the same way he smiled at her, was it?
Beckett must have felt Mac staring at him because he shifted his gaze, and damn — the way his face lit up. As if he’d won the lottery. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on Mac’s part, and he beamed at everyone like that.
Greer accepted the coffee mug, taking a cautious sip as she relaxed in the chair. “So, Beckett. Mackenzie said you had some unwanted visitors the other night.”
Foster nodded. “Two, according to Mac. And we’re fairly certain either that crew or another one has been inside before. What my buddies had brushed off as me pranking them but wasn’t. Though, it’s strange. They don’t appear to be taking anything, just the odd object not put back correctly.”
Greer nodded, scribbling some notes on a pad she’d removed from her pocket. “There’re four buildings on the property, right?”
“And from what we can tell, they’ve been in each one.”
She reached into her inner pocket, removing a stack of folded papers. She slid them across to Foster, waiting until he’d opened them. “So, I did as Mac asked and looked into the recent history of that house you inherited. Seems your father reported a series of suspicious incidents starting shortly after they purchased it a year, ago. But based on the rather flimsy files, it was all just brushed off as kids or vagrants looking for a place to stay. As you know, the house was vacant for nearly twenty years before it finally came on the market.”
Foster drew his finger along one of the sheets, then passed it to his buddies. “There’s barely anything in here? Did Sheriff Thompson even drag his ass out there?”
“Hard to tell. I’d only been here about six months, and I’d been relegated to all the remote jobs. For that first year, I hardly spent any actual time in town, always driving out to check on bogus poaching reports. Or seemingly non-existent petty crime. But I had the same reaction you did, so I dug a bit deeper. Have any of you heard of a man named Dr. Elias Carrington?”
Chase nodded. “Isn’t he the sketchy doctor who engineered that drug the military was hoping would be a game changer for PTSD patients? Vexarin I think?”