Frowning, she asks, “You want to read my emails?”
“I want to see what he’s asking you and make sure you haven’t told him anything that could get your ass killed.”
“He’s not a criminal; I was just letting you believe that because it’s kinda fun to see you freak out. He’s one of the good guys—a Marine. And he even emails with proper grammar. He sounds really sexy.”
I give her a good glare for that one. I don’t even know why, to be honest, it just sort of happens. Somehow that makes me want to read the emails more. “Emails,” I repeat, nodding at her phone.
“God,” she mutters, like I’m a nag.
But she finds the email chain for me and hands it back over. I start at the beginning—her initial inquiry—and scroll on down. I was right about her having a profile picture—even worse, she’s in a skimpy fucking bikini flashing a peace sign like a perfect target—and by the time I get to the most recent email, I’m annoyed. This asshole isn’t even talking about locks anymore; he’s trying to get to know her—probably because he’s seen her trim, toned ass in a tiny bikini. I tell myself I’m only looking for recon purposes, but when I enlarge the picture, I also get an eyeful of New Girl’s apparently spectacular cleavage.
Without further thought, I swipe back and hit delete on the email chain.
It’s sort of an old impulse, the kind of thing I would’ve done to Mia when she was being a dumbass, but now this girl is sitting here trying to get herself murdered and the old impulse is triggered.
“Don’t talk to him anymore,” I tell her, sliding the phone back across the table.
She frowns with concern. “Did he seem fishy? I thought he seemed okay. He seemed to know what he was talking about.”
“With the lock shit, sure, but I doubt that guy’s a Marine.” This is pure bullshit; I have no godly idea if this guy’s a Marine, I just don’t think she should talk to him and I need a better reason than… well, absolutely no reason. “He probably just told you that to put your mind at ease—and it worked, didn’t it? Now he’s asking you personal questions and you didn’t even have enough sense to create a bogus email account to email this guy from…” I trail off, shaking my head. “Jesus, I don’t understand you women. Be more suspicious.” On second thought, I hold my hand out and she gives me her phone again. I go into her trash folder and grab the message I just junked and forward it to myself. “What’s his name on reddit? I want to check this asshole out.”
“Oh, my God, are you serious?”
I hand her the phone and slide my notebook over to my seat at the table, grabbing the pen and poising it over the empty sheet of paper. “I’m waiting. If this asshole shows up here to murder you, I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
“You’re crazy,” she informs me, but she’s smiling like she’s reluctantly amused by it. “Seriously, this guy isn’t going to track me down. He lives in Virginia.”
“Well, Mr. Virginia certainly asked enough questions. And you should change your profile picture if you’re going to be emailing random men you don’t know. It’s not smart to have a bikini photo as your profile picture. You’re inviting creeps to hassle you. I don’t know how that’s not common fucking sense.”
“You are so mean to me,” she says, shaking her head as she scrolls. “I don’t know why I even visit you.”
“I don’t know how you’re still alive if you do dumb shit like this when I’m not here to stop you.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I was trying to make my home safer. How else was I supposed to find out this information?”
“You could’ve asked me in the first place,” I inform her.
“You’re mean to me! I thought you’d be all huffy and tell me to go away. So, I asked my Marine. He was very nice to me,” she states, eyebrows rising haughtily.
I narrow my eyes at her. “He isn’t your Marine, he’s some random creep you met online who got a good look at your tits and thought ‘jackpot.’”
Her blue eyes sparkle with amusement as she hands me back her phone, now with a screen shot of the dude’s username. “That was dangerously close to a compliment. Careful, Morelli, I might start thinking you don’t hate me as much as you pretend to.”
“If you think I like you because I briefly thought about sliding my dick between your tits, I’m starting to understand why you believe this bozo is a Marine.”
“Oh, my God,” she says, sitting back and laughing as I jot down the details so I can look into this asshole once she leaves. “If he’s actually a Marine, tell me. I’m gonna ask him to come kick your ass for being so mean to me all the time.”