Page 18 of Clean Hack

“That yours?” I asked almost on a grunt.

“Yeah,” he said in a clipped tone.

So I sort of sighed on the inside. I saw him almost as a little brother…an estranged little brother because we didn’t really talk all that much now. But still. I felt the need to insert some words of wisdom or something.

I opened my mouth without looking at him. Telling him that whoever this girl was, well, she wasn’t Rachel. She wasn’t the woman that killed his unborn child. And that he shouldn’t let his past cloud what he could have now and in the future.

Well, something along those lines anyway. I was sure what came out of my mouth wasn’t as great as how I imagined it in my head.

“Everyone’s got words of wisdom all of a sudden,” he said in a half pissed-off tone. I could tell that under the grumbling anger he was really thankful for my brilliant insight.

I slapped him on the back and got to my feet. Then let him know that if he needed me, he knew how to get a hold of me.

“Hey,” he called out just as I reached the front door. “How the hell do you always get here so quickly? I know you service all up and down the coast. And I also know that even if you have more than one place that you stay, that you still couldn’t get here as fast as you do. So, how the fuck do you know how to almost always be less than thirty minutes away when we call?”

I could see the confusion clear as day on his face as he tried to work out some sort of answer for himself.

“I have a psychic,” I said and sort of drifted off not even realizing that I’d said that out loud.

I shrugged, not really knowing any other way to explain it. Also, not sure that I wanted to. Part of me wanted to keep her as mine. But I didn’t have the first clue as to why.

Then I left, heading off to the closest place that I owned to get some damn sleep and praying that I had enough energy left in me to make it there.