He pressed the call button to dial and the moment his phone connected with Vaughn’s, Lyle began to babble. “Don’t freak out. I know it’s late. I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way back,” Lyle promised. “Ten minutes at the most. I didn’t notice the time—”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“It didn’t ring,” Lyle told him, grateful that this, at least, wasn’t a lie. “I was un—” He cut himself off before he spoke “underground” and silently thanked good sense for catching him on time. “I was in a club. I met someone.”
He stopped his father’s string of sputters before they could become words. “It’s nothing serious. I know you said strangers would be a bad idea, but it just kind of happened. And he’s a nice guy. He showed me around the city and then we went to a place…a club he knows.”
