Me: How’s my favorite researcher in the world?
Zelda: Leave me alone unless you have anything else on Burner Phone Guy.
Me: I take it you haven’t found him yet?
Zelda: Even my superpowers have limits. Without Hugo’s burner phone records or a name or at least a description, I’ve got a whole lot of jack bubkes.
Me: Define jack bubkes.
Zelda: I have a list of 1,217 people (856 of them are men) affiliated with this guy either through family, school, sports, or miscellaneous. That includes neighbors from every address I’ve found for him, neighborhood liquor store clerks, his father’s employees (both incarcerated and not), mail carriers, etc. Unless you have a way of narrowing it down, we’re shit out of luck.
Zelda: Any luck on getting your hands on the crime scene report? Maybe there’s something in there that’ll help.
Me: No. Nash is MIA since yesterday’s visit to Biker World. And now I have to go dress up like Nancy Drew.
Zelda: I have so many questions.
The library’s annual Book or Treat event turned out to be an excuse for Knockemout to gather for Halloween-themed snacks and drinks without the chaos of trick-or-treating, which would be here soon enough.
Every October, the street in front of the library closed to traffic for one night to make room for a band, dance floor, food trucks, and, of course, a mobile bar. Library patrons bought tickets to the party, business sponsors badgered by Sloane donated the food and drinks, and the library kept the profits.
Unfortunately for me, the scents of freshly popped pumpkin spice popcorn and hard cider weren’t helping me forget how annoyed I was. Not only had Nash bailed on dinner the night before, he’d failed to deliver anything from the crime scene report.
He also hadn’t called, texted, or even knocked on my door to demand another sleepover. Which I absolutely would have said no to.
According to the Knockemout grapevine, he, Knox, Nolan, and Lucian had holed up in Knox’s secret lair office.
This was monumental because, to date, the only person Knox had ever allowed to enter such hallowed grounds was Naomi.
Of course, the grapevine also had theories about why the four unlikely amigos were on lockdown. These included the secret disposal of a body, a twenty-four-hour high-stakes poker game, or—my personal favorite—Knox had finally pissed Naomi off over floral arrangements and now he was waiting out her wrath.
But I was pretty sure I knew the truth. The menfolk were strategizing, and they’d left me out of it.
Okay, yes. I preferred to do things on my own. And yes, I didn’t love being part of a team. But I was already involved. I was the only one running an active investigation. And those four macho shitheads still didn’t think to include me.
I realized I’d just crumpled the paper in my hand.
“Uh, here’s your receipt. Sorry about the mangling. Thanks for your donation,” I said, handing over the balled-up paper to Stasia. The stylist at Whiskey Clipper had just donated a jumbo-sized bag of hardbacks to the library’s book drive.
“You doing okay, Lina?” she asked, stuffing the receipt in her bag.
Damn. I really needed to work on my poker face.
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“If you’re worried about Knox and company, don’t be,” she said. “I heard they’re taking secret ballroom dance lessons to surprise Naomi at the wedding.”
I grinned. “You know what I heard?” I paused and looked both ways before leaning across the table.
Stasia leaned in too. “What?” she whispered.
“I heard they’re choreographing a flash mob dance. Something involving tearaway pants.”
“Oh. My. God. I can’t wait for this wedding!”
A few minutes later, I was spelled from my book donation duties by Doris Bacon of Bacon Stables, who had come dressed as the Horse Whisperer.
My community service had earned me one glass of spiced wine, I decided. And once I enjoyed it, I was going to go to Knox’s office and pound on the door until the Four Dumbasses of the Apocalypse let me in.
I had just acquired my wine when a pretty blond who looked vaguely familiar stopped in front of me. “Lina? Lina Solavita? It’s Angie from high school.”
Angie Levy, the second highest scorer on my soccer team and the reason I’d started going by Lina in high school because having two Angies on the team was confusing. She was a biology whiz who drove her dad’s hand-me-down Excursion that held half the team for ice cream runs. She’d lived on Diet Cokes and peanut butter crackers.
She was older now, prettier too. Her once long blond hair was now cropped in a swingy bob. She wore jeans, cashmere, and a chonky diamond on her left hand.
“Angie? What are you doing here?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“My husband and I work in DC. What are you doing here?”
“I’m just…passing through,” I hedged.
“You look amazing!” she said, opening her arms as if she were about to hug me.
“Thanks,” I said, warding off the hug by gesturing with my glass of wine. “So do you.”
“No. Really. You look wonderful. Stunning even.”
This coming from the girl who’d canceled my standing invitation to sleepovers at her house.
“Thanks,” I said again.
She shook her head and grinned, showing that long forgotten dimple. “I’m gushing. I’m sorry. It’s just I’ve thought about you so often over the years.”
I couldn’t think of a single reason why. She and the rest of the team, the rest of my friends, had essentially abandoned me.
It wasn’t like faulty heart valves were contagious, but being linked to me was apparently deadly for teenage reputations.
“Mom!” A boy with fiery red hair and milkshake staining his jacket launched himself into the midst of our conversation. “Mom!”
Angie rolled her eyes but somehow did so with affection. “Hey. Remember that whole manners conversation we had yesterday and the day before that and the day before that?” she asked.
The boy’s eye roll was an exact copy of his mother’s. He heaved a world-weary sigh before turning to me. “Hi. I’m Austin. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Austin,” I said, not quite able to smother a smile.
“Cool.” He turned back to his mother. “Now can I ask you my very important, worth-interrupting-you question?”
“Fire away,” Angie said.
He took a deep breath. “Okay, so Davy said there was no way I could beat him at the balloon dart game. Which is totally stupid because I’m way better at throwing things than he is. Only I didn’t do so good in the first round because he cheated and poked me in my tickle zone. Which is not fair. And I need a rematch.”
“So you need more than the ten bucks I gave you in the car that came with an explicit warning not to ask for more because you weren’t going to get another dollar out of me,” Angie summarized, shooting me an amused look.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yep!”
“Why didn’t you ask your father?”
“He’s in a grudge match with Brayden at Whack-a-Mole.”
Angie closed her eyes and then looked up at the night sky. “Is it too much to have asked for a little estrogen in my house?” she asked the universe.
“Mom,” Austin said on a desperate whine.
“Did you take the garbage out last night?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do all your homework for Monday?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you willing to pull the weeds in the front flower bed without complaining or asking for more money?”
His nod was even more vigorous. “I’ll even fold my own laundry for the week.”
“Five bucks,” Angie said, producing her wallet from her purse.
“Yes!” Austin pumped his fist victoriously.
She held out the bill but pulled it back when her son reached for it. “Hold it, buster. When Davy goes to throw his dart, wave and say ‘Hi, Erika.’”
Austin frowned. “Why?”
“Because your brother has a crush on her and he’ll be distracted.” She held out the five-dollar bill again.
He snatched it out of her hand, his freckled face lighting up. “Thanks, Mom! You’re the best.”
I watched him dash off into the crowd, cash held triumphantly over his head.
“Sorry about that. My entire life for the past decade has been nothing but interruptions,” Angie said. “Three boys who go to bed every night and wake up with all manners erased from their brains so you have to start over with feral cave babies every morning. Anyway. What was I saying?”
“I should probably head out,” I said, looking for an escape.
“Oh! I know. I was saying I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”
And we were back to awkward. “Ah. Yes. That,” I said.
“I always regretted not trying harder to force my way over those walls after…you know.”
“My cardiac arrest in front of half the town?” I filled in glibly.
The dimple flashed again. “Yeah, that. Anyway, even in the midst of my teenage narcissism, I knew I should have tried harder. I should have made you let me be there for you.”
“Made me?” My shoulders tensed. “Look, it was a long time ago, and I’m over it. I’m not going to blame a bunch of teenage girls for not wanting to hang out with the ‘dead girl.’”
“Ugh. If I were Wayne Schlocker’s mother, that boy would have been grounded until college.”
Wayne was an athletic, God’s-gift-to-girls-and-football turd. It didn’t surprise me that he’d been the one to come up with the nickname.
“You do know that Cindy punched him in the middle of the cafeteria for that, don’t you? And then Regina squirted an entire bottle of ketchup on him. The whole team started calling him Wayne Shit Locker after that.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course we did. You were our friend and you were in the hospital. What happened was never a joke to us.”
I had to ask. I needed the answer to my first unsolved mystery. “Then why did you just disappear?”
Angie cocked her head and gave me a mom look. “We didn’t. At least not at first. Don’t you remember? We were there every day while you were recovering. In the hospital, then at your house.”
I did vaguely recall swarms of teen girls crying, then laughing in my hospital room and then my bedroom. But the swarms had gotten smaller and smaller until there were no visits.
“You know what? It’s not important. It happened a long time ago.”
“The fault is mine. Teenage me expected teenage you to bounce back. To go back to normal,” Angie admitted.
But normal hadn’t been in the cards for me. Not for years after.
“I kind of expected that too,” I admitted.
“Instead of the ‘normal’ I expected, you went into a dark place. Which now, after Austin, I understand. I didn’t then. Neither did the other girls. And because we didn’t understand, we let you push us away.”
Another memory surfaced. Angie and our friend Cindy lying on my bed, flipping through magazines, debating how much cleavage was too much for a school dance. Me sitting in the window with bandages on my chest knowing not only wouldn’t I be showing cleavage, I wouldn’t be going to the dance.
Instead, I’d be traveling to see a specialist.
Worse, no one had asked me to the dance in the first place.
“God, is that all you idiots care about?” I’d snapped at them. “Dates and boob tape? Do you know how vapid you sound?”
I winced at the long-buried memory.
I’d felt abandoned, but I hadn’t accepted responsibility for the role I’d played. I’d all but evicted my friends from my life.
“What happened with Austin?” I asked.
“Leukemia,” she said. “He was four. He’s seven now, still in maintenance chemo. But the kid is amazing, minus being an asshole to the twins. I had this aha moment during a playdate we forced Austin into. My husband and I were trying to deliver as much ‘normal’ as possible.”
“My parents went the opposite route,” I said wryly.
“I remember it. Your poor mom would stick her head in your bedroom door every fifteen minutes when we were there. I thought it was over-the-top smothering at the time. But now?” She blew out a breath. “I don’t know how she was able to restrain herself. I thought we were going to lose him. And for a few minutes, your mom really did lose you.”
“Well, I’m glad your son is doing better,” I said, feeling all kinds of awkward.
“With the help of his friends. He and his two best friends were outside throwing rocks into the creek. Something upset him and Austin had a pretty epic fit. Called them names. Told them he didn’t want to play with them anymore. And you know what they did?”
“Started throwing rocks at each other?”
Angie grinned and shook her head. Her eyes glistened. “Those little doofuses hugged him.” A tear slipped free and slid down her cheek. She wiped it away hastily. “They told him that it was okay that he was feeling bad and that they were going to be his friend no matter how bad he felt.”
I felt a stinging in my eyeballs. “Well, crap.”
“Ugh. I know, right? You wouldn’t think little boys would have more emotional maturity than teen girls, but they did.” Angie swiped away another tear. “Anyway, that was a turning point for Austin. He stopped fighting his treatments so hard. His temper tantrums got fewer and farther between. And he started enjoying ‘normal’ again. That’s when I realized how badly we’d messed up that turning point for you. We didn’t dig in. We didn’t accept the bad and we weren’t patient enough to wait for the good to come back. And for that, I’m so very sorry. What happened to you wasn’t fair and neither was how we handled it. But because of you, I was able to be a better mom to my son when he needed me the most.”
I couldn’t blink, because if I did, the hot tears would escape and wreak havoc on my kick-ass eyeliner.
“Wow,” I managed.
Angie dug a wad of tissues out of her mom purse. “Here,” she said, offering me half of it.
“Thanks.” I took it and dabbed at my eyes.
“Well, I didn’t expect to be doing this tonight,” she said with a sniffly laugh.
“Me neither.” I blew my nose and took a swig of wine.
A handsome ginger guy in a ball cap strode up. “Hey, babe, the boys conned me into—oh shit.” He looked at Angie, then to me, then back to Angie. “Is this an I-need-a-hug-and-alcohol-right-now moment or a funnel-cake-will-fix-it moment?”
Angie let out a soggy laugh. “Definitely funnel cake.”
“I’m on it,” he said, pointing at her with both hands. “I love you. You’re beautiful. And me and the boys are so lucky to have you.”
“Extra powdered sugar,” Angie called after him. She turned back to me. “That was my husband. He’s pretty great.”
“I guessed.”
“Can I give you a hug now? Or I guess, more accurately, can you give me a hug?” she asked.
I hesitated for the briefest of seconds and then decided. “Yeah.”
I opened my arms and she walked right into them. It was weird how not weird it felt to be hugging an old friend who I’d thought I’d lost. Dozens of memories of better times surfaced and I realized how deep I must have buried them.
“Hey, Lina! Get your ass over here. We need you in the photo booth,” Sloane shouted from the sidewalk. She was dressed as Robin Hood, and the long feather in her green felt cap was already broken.
“Hurry up before my fingers get frostbite,” Naomi called, wiggling a boozy milkshake at me. She was dressed as Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet in an empire-waist gown with some impressive cleavage.
“Or before we bring all the boys to the yard,” Sloane added.
On cue, Harvey the biker raced up to them and started dancing.
I laughed and released Angie. “I’d better go.”
“Yeah, me too. Who knows what the twins conned my husband into.”
“Twins? You poor thing,” I teased.
“The worst. Don’t ever do it,” she joked. “Anyway, we live forty-five minutes from here. Do you think I could give you my number and we could get together someplace that doesn’t allow children?”
“I’d like that.”
“It’s great to see you. I’m glad you found some real friends,” Angie said with that proud mom smile.
We traded numbers and went our separate ways.
I submitted to two rounds of posing in the photo booth and sampled Naomi’s milkshake. Sloane handed me a copy of the printout and we laughed at the antics captured.
Real friends. That’s what Angie had called them. Naomi and Sloane had accepted all of me, including my less-than-perfect parts.
Was I still holding everyone at arm’s length? And was it time to change?
“We should dance,” Sloane announced.
“I don’t know if I can dance. These gussets make it hard to breathe,” Naomi said, fiddling with the ribbing under her boobs.
I felt a tingling sensation between my shoulder blades. There were only two things that created that kind of awareness: trouble and Nash Morgan.
I turned and found Nash flanked by Knox, Nolan, and Lucian, approaching like a team of stoic sentries immune to the merriment around them. The closer they got, the faster my heart beat.
Naomi threw herself into Knox’s arms. His eyes closed as he pressed his nose and mouth to her hair and breathed her in. Sloane glared at Lucian like he was the sheriff of Nottingham before smiling and waving at Nolan.
Meanwhile, I pretended not to notice Nash’s gaze boring holes in me.
“I missed you,” Naomi said as Knox released her. “Is everything okay?”
“Just dealin’ with some business. Didn’t mean to worry you, Daze,” Knox said almost tenderly.
“You weren’t really hiding a body, were you?” she teased.
“Angelina,” Nash said quietly. His gaze traveled my body. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“I’m Nancy freaking Drew and you’re late.” I put my hands on my hips and was trying to decide whether I was going to yell at him or ignore him when the universe delivered an answer for me. The band launched into the opening bars of Luke Bryan’s “That’s My Kind of Night,” and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be far away from this exact spot.
“Let’s dance.” I grabbed Sloane, who grabbed Naomi, and off we went, leaving the men staring after us.
“I don’t know the steps,” Naomi said.
“It’s easy,” I promised, dragging my friends into the center of the crowd of dancers as they lined up. “Besides, with those boobs, no one’s going to care if you miss a step. Just follow along.”
We slid in between Justice and Tallulah St. John on the left and Fi and her husband on the right. Sandwiching Naomi between us, Sloane and I fell into step with the rest of the dancers.
I’d fallen in love with line dancing in my early twenties thanks to a honky-tonk bar near campus. Country music still reminded me of those early years of freedom when I could just be a girl on the dance floor and not some medical miracle.
We were surrounded by denim, leather, and a parade of Halloween costumes. The sharp clomp of boots echoed off the asphalt. Colors blurred as we whirled around. I forgot about Duncan Hugo. About Nash Morgan. About work and what came next. I focused on Naomi’s laughter, the platinum gleam of Sloane’s ponytail as we danced.
But I could only block out the real world for so long. Especially with those blue eyes locked on me.
Every time I spun, my gaze was drawn to Nash and company standing on the edge of the crowd, legs braced, arms crossed. Together they formed a wall of unfairly hot masculinity. It should have gone against the laws of nature to allow so many perfect specimens of alpha male to occupy the same territory.
They were all frowning.
“Why are they glaring at us?” I groused between boot stomps.
“Oh, that’s Knox’s happy face,” Naomi insisted, stepping the wrong way before correcting her course.
Sloane clapped in time with the rest of the crowd. “That’s Lucian’s asshole face.”
Dancers whooped as the song came to an end. But just as we all broke ranks, the next song started and Justice claimed me, spinning me out and pulling me back. Laughing, I joined him in a two-step until Tallulah appeared. Justice spun me out again and grabbed his wife. I hooted with laughter as another pair of arms found me. It was Blaze, one half of my favorite lesbian biker couple.
Together we cut an enthusiastic rug, singing along with the rest of the crowd. I barely heard the indignant squeak over the chorus. But there was no missing the shrill “Get your hands off me, asshole.” Blaze and I came to a halt on the dance floor, and I spotted Sloane, baring her teeth and struggling against the grip of one of Tate Dilton’s friends.
