I curled my toes under me. “I told you —”
“You lied to me. Do you think I can’t tell?” He scoffed at the very idea I might fool him. We were too close, knew each other too well. “Why are those men in your house? What is your connection to White Horse?” When I didn’t answer quick enough for him, he kept hammering at me. “You didn’t show up for work. You didn’t call. You screwed up, Luce.” He glared at the bay window where I noticed Santiago watching with quiet menace from the living room. “I thought White Horse left town after the Claremont case ended. I know you had a thing for Cole, but I thought that was over when he ghosted on you. What is this? A family reunion?”
He had no idea how close his barb had come to hitting the truth. “White Horse is…” think, think, think “… working for me.”
Comprehension sparked behind his eyes, and he hissed out a curse. “Maggie.”
“Maggie,” I agreed, and I didn’t have to fake the spike of agony the name conjured.
“Let her parents foot the bill,” he said gently. “They’ve got the cash to run this type of operation full-tilt. You don’t. I’m sure they’ve already hired someone. Did you ask them first?”
“They won’t talk to me. They were never big Luce fans, and they see this as proof of my bad influence over their daughter.” I let slip a fact I had refused to dwell on. “They blame me for what happened to Maggie. When I kept calling the house, Lila, one of the maids, gave me an earful about the harm I had caused the family.”
“A psychopath targeted her.” Again, he was right on the money. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“I don’t care if they blame me.” They should. I deserved every hateful thought that popped into their heads and some they lacked the imagination to conjure. “All that matters is we bring her home.”
“It’s been two weeks” was what he said, but what he meant was “she’s dead”.
An overwhelming majority of abductees were murdered within the first twenty-four hours, and we were well past that narrow window.
“I made a deal with Cole. I’m helping them work some minor cases, and in exchange he’s cutting their rate for me. I hired them for a month. After that…” I would be gone, and my coterie would be too. “I’ll talk to the Stevenses at that point if White Horse unearths any leads worth following. They can make the call to hire them to complete the job or maybe just pass the information on to their people.”
“Let me know what the final bill runs you,” he said. “Sherry and I will pay half.”
“Thanks, but I can’t let you guys do that. You’ve got Nettie to think of.” There was no way I was lying to his face and stealing from his family. “Let me handle this. She’s my best friend. It needs to be me.”
“If this is what will bring you closure, then I fully support it.” He hesitated a moment before adding, “Just don’t renew after the thirty days, okay? There comes a point where you’re going to have to let her go. You can’t run yourself ragged and spend every penny you’ve got chasing a ghost.”
A normal person would have hugged him then, but I had never been normal, and a hug would only convince him he was right about me teetering on the brink. There was no good way to explain the coterie was healing my touch aversion, that perhaps the lack of contact with my own kind had been the problem all along, without sounding one bump short of a pickle.
“I promise you, when the thirty days are up, I’ll let it go.” An easy promise to give considering I had no say in the matter past that point. “I’m sorry about flaking today. You know that’s not me.” Or it didn’t used to be. “Miller was tracking a lead in the swamp and got himself bitten. He came here seeking help. He’s lucky I came out to check on the house, or he would have bled to death before anyone found him.”
Rixton angled his head toward the doorway. “How did he get in?”
“I gave him a key.” I rushed to explain myself. “The guys came out to help with the bay window to save me a few bucks on installation. I offered to let Miller leave his tools here since the job ran late, and he was due in a client meeting that afternoon. I gave it to him so he could let himself in if he needed his equipment before we could meet up again.”
“Make sure you get that key back,” Rixton warned. “You can’t have an open-door policy with these guys, Luce. They could be ax murderers for all you know.”
Murderers, yes, but they required no axes. Their teeth worked just fine. “Dad approved of them.”
“For a job, yes.” Rixton’s glare nailed me in place. “Does he know they crashed in his house last night?”
I cringed. “Not exactly.”
“You need to call the shift office.” Rixton backed off a few paces. “Let them know you won’t be in tonight.” He took the steps. “If you need a day or two to get sorted, take them. You’ve got the time.”
No, I really didn’t. Two weeks. Fourteen days, give or take. “I’ll touch base with Albertson.”
“See that you do.” He crossed the yard. “Oh, hey. I found that note on your desk. I turned it in to Chief Jones during the shift meeting.” He winked. “You can thank me later.”
The spit dried from my tongue. On my desk? No, no, no. I had put that letter in a drawer. Right? Right?
I wasn’t ready. Not yet. But it was too late. My partner had just tendered my resignation.
Rixton would be crushed if he found out before I told him. Sleeping in had bought me a good sixteen hours before I was expected at work again. I would tell him then, I had to, in case the chief started sizing him up for a new partner before his old one turned in her badge.
God, the thought of Rixton with someone else was eating me alive. We were a team. A damn good one.
Why couldn’t I be normal? Live my small-town life, work my small-town job, have my small-town friends? Why had fate selected me for the destiny lotto? I had zero aspirations for greatness. I just wanted to do my job, come home, watch Discovery Channel, and imagine all the places I would never visit because they might be nice, but they weren’t Canton, Mississippi.
“Hey, Rixton, wait a sec.” Guilt soured my gut, made it churn with regret. “I need to grab a file.”
“Help yourself.” He popped the trunk with the key fob. “Do you think your house guests will want the rest of these donuts? I bought a dozen vanilla cream-filled, but I can’t finish them alone. Even I have my limits, few though they may be.”
“I have nothing edible in the kitchen.” I would have to remedy that if Miller required another overnight stay. “I’m sure they’d be thrilled to take a few thousand calories off your hands.”
Checking to make sure he got in the car and stayed there, I shoved up the lid on the trunk and started sorting through the heavy-duty plastic box we used as an on-the-go file cabinet. I didn’t have to search far to spot the envelope with the photos. One stack was missing, probably his personal set, but I took what was there and tucked them between the pages of the Hensarling fire report to hide them until I could secure them elsewhere.
“What’s on your agenda for tonight?” One manila folder looked like the next, but I tucked the file under one arm with the label facing inward to mask what I had taken. “Are you going to hit a burger stand and make bad life choices since there will be no witnesses?”
Gut roiling from my deception, no matter how necessary, I doubted I’d ever eat again.
“Burgers will probably happen. And fries. Maybe a hotdog.” He passed over a box that must have weighed three pounds. “I have to flush all the sugar from my system, and I bet those buns are super absorbent.”
I hated bursting his bubble but… “I don’t think that’s how it works.”