Stone led the way, creating a path for them, like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Shit,” he said as they made it through the exit and onto the riverboat’s main deck.

Diesel glanced around him, looking for threats. “What?”

“We left two perfectly good beers on the table back there.”

Diesel snorted a surprised laugh. “You asshole. I’ll buy you another beer.”

“You’d better,” Stone said, then grunted. “Sorry, man,” he said to a customer coming in.

The man looked them over, his expression oddly wary. “You work here?”

“Nope,” Stone said, without breaking a smile. “We’re cops.”

Diesel had his hand out, ready to slap Stone upside the head, when the man, who looked to be about thirty-five, stepped aside. “By all means, Officers. Is everything okay in there?”

“I might not pick tonight to gamble,” Stone said. “Especially if you have any unpaid parking tickets.” Without blinking, he passed by, leaving the stranger looking confused and alarmed.

Diesel sighed. “My friend is not well. He’s not a cop.” That he himself also wasn’t a cop he left unsaid. And he wasn’t sure why. “But he is right about choosing a different night to gamble. Sorry,” he added, shaking his head at Stone’s back in exasperation. “Like I said, he’s not well.”

“I hope . . . your friend gets help?” the man said uncertainly.

“Me, too. Have a nice evening.” Diesel jogged after Stone, still shaking his head as he got into the passenger seat of Stone’s Escalade. “You are going to get us in so much trouble one of these days.”

Stone just grinned and started the engine. “Where to?”

Home, Diesel wanted to say. But he bit it back, because the home he’d been visualizing had a cozy kitchen where the woman he craved was sipping her tea and smiling across the table at him as a dog snored at their feet.

“My house,” he said, hearing the terseness in his own voice. “I left my truck there.” And his computer. He hadn’t wanted to risk the sensitive information held on his hard drive, so he’d left his laptop locked up. “I took a cab over here.”

Stone pulled out of the parking lot just as two black-and-white cruisers raced in. “Your house it is.”

Lawrenceburg, Indiana
Sunday, March 17, 10:15 p.m.

Grant Masterson watched the two men walk away, feeling like he should know the guy who’d claimed to be a cop. He had one of those faces that was familiar in a déjà vu kind of way. The other guy—the actual cop—was massive, bald, and tattooed. Yet even though he spoke in a low growl, he was curiously soft-spoken.