Page 151 of Blood Moon

Before his chest cracked opened from internal pressure, he turned his back to her and picked up the cup of coffee now grown cold. “Sounds like a plan.”

Epilogue

Six months later

Two things were different. No one was playing pool, and theMotorTrendthe bartender was thumbing through was a more recent edition.

“Beer, please.”

“Brand?”

“I’m not particular.”

The bartender uncapped a longneck. As he slid it toward John, he whispered, “Same booth as before. Maybe you’ll have better luck this time.”

Doubtful, John thought as he picked up the beer and turned toward the booth. He’d thought he’d prepared himself, but his first sight of Beth made his breath catch and his gut clench. He’d hoped that she might have grown a wart on her nose or had an outbreak of adult-onset acne.

No such luck.

Denying that desire was running rampant through him,he walked over, slid into the booth across from her, and set the bottle of beer on the table.

After a strained silence, she said, “I see you got my message.”

“I’m here.”

“I purposefully didn’t leave my name.”

“You didn’t before.”

“I figured you would know by the meeting place…”

She let that trail off, and, when he failed to comment, she picked up her glass and took a sip from the straw. As she returned the glass to the table, she said, “Mitch invited me to the christening tomorrow.”

Peachy. He would be put through this agony two days in a row. He was gonna kill Mitch the Matchmaker.

“They sent me a birth announcement,” she said. “When I called to congratulate them, Mitch described baby Andrew as a rock star.”

John hated himself for wanting to take a bite of her soft, pink smile. He grumbled, “He’s obnoxious over that baby. Brags so much, you can hardly stand to be around him. At least he’s shaved off that godawful mustache.”

“His bragging must make it difficult for you two to work together every day.”

How sly of her to slip that into the conversation. He didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up his beer and took a drink.

“Congratulations, John.”

“Thanks.”

“You should have been heading the CAP unit all along. You’ve certainly assembled a great team. In addition tobringing Mitch back into the fold, I heard you also talked Isabel Sanchez into joining your ranks.”

“Who’s feeding you all this information?”

“I heard a lot of local gossip from the production crew. They were here for several weeks, talked to a lot of people who were integral to the restructured Crissy Mellin story.”

“For several weeks they were a pain in the ass. They overflowed all the good cafes and caused traffic jams around the police station nearly every day.”

“I obtained a permit.”

He knew that, but didn’t say so.