The woman was staring at me like I’d just suggested she French kiss a rattlesnake.
My day wasn’t even supposed to be started yet, and it had already gone to shit. I blamed her. And her asshole sister, Tina.
I also threw some blame in Agatha’s direction too for good measure, since she’d been the one to text me that Tina had just walked her “trouble-making ass” into the cafe.
Now here I was, at what counted as the asscrack of dawn, playing town bouncer like an idiot and fighting with a woman I’d never met.
Naomi blinked at me like she was coming out of a fog. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Agatha needed to get her fucking eyes checked if she mistook the pissed-off brunette for her bleach-blonde, baked-tan, tattooed pain-in-the-ass sister.
The differences between them were pretty fucking obvious, even without my contacts. Tina’s face was the color and texture of an old-ass leather couch. She had a hard mouth bracketed by deep frown lines from smoking two packs a day and feeling like the world owed her something.
Naomi, on the other hand, was cut from a different cloth. A classier one.
She was tall like her sister. But instead of the crispy fried look, she went in the Disney princess direction with thick hair the color of roasted chestnuts. It and the flowers in it were trying to escape some kind of elaborate updo. Her face was softer, skin paler. Full pink lips. Eyes that made me think of forest floors and open fields.
Where Tina dressed like a biker babe who’d gone through a wood-chipper, Naomi wore high-end athletic shorts and a matching tank over a toned body that promised more than a handful of nice surprises.
She looked like the kind of woman who’d take one look at me and hightail it to the safety of the first golf shirt-wearing board member she could find.
Lucky for her, I didn’t do drama. Or high maintenance. I didn’t do doe-eyed princesses in need of saving. I didn’t waste time with women who required more than a good time and a handful of orgasms.
But since I’d already stuck my nose into the situation, called her trash, and yelled at her, the least I could do was bring the situation to a fast conclusion. Then I was heading back to bed.
“No. I’m not fucking kidding you,” I stated.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You don’t have a car,” I pointed out.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. I am aware I don’t have a car.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re a stranger in a new town. Your car disappears. And you’re turning down the offer of a ride because…”
“Because you stormed into a cafe and screamed at me! Then you chased me down and you’re still yelling. I get in a car with you and I’m more likely to get chopped into pieces and scattered about in a desert than end up at my destination.”
“No deserts here. Some mountains though.”
Her expression suggested she didn’t find me helpful or amusing.
I exhaled through my teeth. “Look. I’m tired. I got an alert that Tina was causing trouble at the café again, and that’s what I thought I was walking into.”
She took a long hit of coffee while looking up and down the street like she was debating escape.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told her. “You’d spill your coffee.”
When those pretty hazel eyes went wide, I knew I’d hit the mark.
“Fine. But only because this is the best latte I’ve had in my entire life.
And is that your idea of an apology? Because just like the way you ask people if something’s wrong, it sucks.”
“It was an explanation. Take it or leave it.” I didn’t waste time doing things that didn’t matter. Like making small talk or apologizing.
A bike roared up the street with Rob Zombie blaring from the speakers
despite the fact that it was barely seven a.m. The guy eyed us and revved his engine. Wraith was knocking on seventy years old, but he still managed to nail an astronomical amount of tail with the whole tattooed, silver fox thing he had going on.
Intrigued, Naomi watched him with her mouth open.
Today was not the day Little Miss Daisies in Her Hair would take a walk on the wild side.
I gave Wraith the fuck off nod, snatched Naomi’s precious coffee out of her hand, and headed down the sidewalk.
“Hey!”
She gave chase like I’d known she would. I could have taken her by the hand, but I wasn’t exactly a fan of the reaction I’d had when I touched her. It felt complicated. “Should have stayed in fucking bed,” I muttered.
“What is wrong with you?” Naomi demanded, jogging to catch up. She reached for her cup, but I held it just out of reach and kept walking.
“If you don’t want to end up hog-tied over the back of Wraith’s bike, then I suggest you get in my truck.”
The disheveled flower child muttered some uncomplimentary sounding things about my personality and anatomy.
“Look. If you can stop bein’ a pain in my ass for five whole minutes, I’ll take you to the station. You can get your damn car, and then you can get out of my life.”
“Has anyone ever told you you have the personality of a pissed-off porcupine?”
I ignored her and kept walking.
“How do I know you aren’t going to try to hog-tie me yourself?” she demanded.
I came to a stop and gave her a lazy once-over. “Baby, you’re not my type.”
She rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t pop out and fall to the sidewalk. “Excuse me while I go cry myself a river.”
I stepped off the curb and opened the passenger door of my pickup. “Get in.”
“Your chivalry sucks,” she complained.
“Chivalry?”
“It means—”
“Jesus. I know what it means.”
And I knew what it meant that she’d use it in conversation. She had fucking flowers in her hair. The woman was a romantic. Another strike against her in my book. Romantics were the hardest women to shake loose.
The sticky ones. The ones who pretended they could handle the whole “no strings” deal. Meanwhile, they plotted to become “the one,” trying to con men into meeting their parents and secretly looking at wedding dresses.
When she didn’t get in by herself, I reached past her and put her coffee into the cup holder.
“I am really not happy with you right now,” she said.
The space between our bodies was charged with the kind of energy I usually felt just before a good bar fight. Dangerous, adrenalizing. I didn’t much care for it.
“Get in the damn truck.”
Considering it a small miracle when she actually obeyed, I slammed the door on her scowl.
“Everything all right there, Knox?” Bud Nickelbee called from the doorway of his hardware store. He was dressed in his usual uniform of bib overalls and a Led Zepplin t-shirt. The ponytail he’d had for thirty years hung down his back, thin and gray, making him look like a heavier, less funny George Carlin.
“All good,” I assured him.
His gaze skated toward Naomi through the windshield. “Call me if you need help with the body.”
I climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine.
“A witness saw me get in this truck, so I’d think long and hard about murdering me at this point,” she said, pointing to Bud, who was still watching us.
Obviously she hadn’t heard his comment.
“I’m not murdering you,” I snapped. Yet.
She was already buckled in, her long legs crossed. A flip-flop dangled from her toes as she jiggled her foot. Both her knees were bruised, and I noticed a raw scrape on her right forearm. I told myself I didn’t want to know and threw the truck into reverse. I’d dump her at the station—hopefully it was early enough to avoid who I wanted to avoid—and make sure she got her damn car. If I was lucky, I could still grab another hour of shut-eye before I had to officially start my day.
“You know,” she began, “if one of us should be mad at the other, it’s me.
I don’t even know you, and here you are yelling in my face, getting between me and my coffee, and then practically abducting me. You have no reason to be upset.”
“You have no idea, sweetheart. I’ve got plenty of reasons to be pissed, and a lot of them involve your waste-of-space sister.”
“Tina may not be the nicest of people, but that doesn’t give you the right to be such an ass. She’s still family,” Naomi sniffed.
“I wouldn’t apply the label ‘people’ to your sister.” Tina was a monster of the first degree. She stole. She lied. She picked fights. Drank too much.
Showered too little. And had no regard for anyone else. All because she thought the world owed her.
“Listen, whoever the hell you are. The only people who can talk about her like that are me, our parents, and the Andersontown High graduating class of 2003. And maybe also the Andersontown Fire Department. But that’s because they earned the right. You haven’t, and I don’t need you taking your problems with my sister out on me.”
“Whatever,” I said through gritted teeth.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. The Knockemout Police Department sat back a few blocks from Main Street and shared a new building with the town’s public library. Just seeing it made the muscle under my eye twitch.
In the parking lot was a pickup truck, a cruiser, and a Harley Fat Boy.
There was no sign of the chief’s SUV. Thank Christ for small miracles.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“There’s no need for you to come in,” Naomi sniffed. She was eyeing her empty coffee with puppy dog eyes.
On a growl, I shoved my own mostly untouched coffee at her. “I’m getting you to the desk, making sure they’ve got your car, and then never seeing you again.”
“Fine. But I’m not saying thank you.”
I didn’t bother replying because I was too busy storming toward the front door and ignoring the big gold letters above it.
“The Knox Morgan Municipal Building.”
I pretended I didn’t hear her and let the glass door swing closed behind me.
“Is there more than one Knox in this town?” she asked, wrenching the door open and following me inside.
“No,” I said, hoping that would put an end to questions I didn’t want to fucking answer. The building was relatively new with a shit-ton of glass, wide hallways, and that fresh paint smell.
“So it’s your name on the building?” she pressed, jogging again to keep up with me.
“Guess so.” I yanked open another door on the right and gestured for her to go inside.
Knockemout’s cop shop looked more like one of those co-working hangouts that urban hipsters liked than an actual police station. It had annoyed the boys and girls in blue who had taken pride in their moldy, crumbling bunker with its flickering fluorescent lights and carpet stained from decades of criminals.
Their annoyance at the bright paint and slick new office furniture was the only thing I didn’t hate about it.
The Knockemout PD did their best to rediscover their roots, piling precious towers of case folders on top of adjustable-height bamboo desks and brewing too cheap, too strong coffee 24/7. There was a box of stale donuts open on the counter and powdered sugar fingerprints everywhere. But so far nothing had taken the shine off the newness of the fucking Knox Morgan Building.
Sergeant Grave Hopper was behind his desk stirring half a pound of sugar into his coffee. A reformed motorcycle club member, he now spent his weeknights coaching his daughter’s softball team and his weekends mowing lawns. His and his mother-in-law’s. But once a year, he’d pack up his wife on the back of his bike, and off they’d go to relive their glory days on the open road.
He spotted me and my guest and nearly upended the entire mug all over himself.
“What’s goin’ on, Knox?” Grave asked, now openly staring at Naomi.
It was no secret around town that I had as little to do with the PD as possible. It also wasn’t exactly news that Tina was the kind of trouble that I didn’t tolerate.
“This is Naomi. Tina’s twin,” I explained. “She just got into town and says her car was towed. You got it out back?”
Knockemout PD usually had more important things to worry about than parking and let its citizens park wherever the hell they wanted, when they wanted, as long as it wasn’t directly on the sidewalk.
“Imma come back to that whole twin sister thing,” Grave warned, pointing his coffee stirrer at us. “But first, it’s just me in so far today, and I ain’t towed shit.”
Fuck. I shoved a hand through my hair.
“If you didn’t, do you have any idea who else would have?” Naomi asked hopefully.
Sure. I swoop in to save the day and drive her down here, but grizzled Grave was the one who got the smile and sweet words.
Grave, the bastard, was hanging on her every word, smiling at her like she was a seven-layer chocolate cake.
“Well now, Tin—I mean Naomi,” Grave began. “Way I see it, there’s two things that coulda happened. A—You forgot where you parked. But a gal like you in a town this small, that don’t seem likely.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed amicably without calling him Captain Obvious.
“Or B—Someone stole your car.”
I kissed my hour of sleep good-bye.
“I parked right in front of the pet shop because it was close to the cafe where I was supposed to meet my sister.”
Grave slid me a look, and I nodded. Best to just get this part over with, like ripping off a damn bandage.
“So Tina knew you were coming into town, knew where you’d be?” he clarified.
Naomi wasn’t picking up what he was putting down. She nodded, all wide-eyed and hopeful. “Yes. She called me last night. Said she was in some kind of trouble and needed me to meet her at Café Rev at seven this morning.”
“Well now, sweetheart,” Grave hemmed. “I don’t want to cast aspersions, of course. But is it possible—”
“Your asshole sister stole your car,” I interjected.
Naomi’s hazel eyes sliced to me. She didn’t look sweet or hopeful now.
No. She looked like she wanted to commit a misdemeanor. Maybe even a felony.
“I’m afraid Knox here is right,” Grave said. “Your sister’s been causing trouble since she got into town a year ago. This probably ain’t the first car she’s helped herself to.”
Naomi’s nostrils flared delicately. She brought my coffee to her mouth,
drank it down in a few determined gulps, then tossed the empty cup into the waste basket by the desk. “Thank you for your help. If you see a blue Volvo with a Nice Matters bumper sticker, please let me know.”
Christ.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got one of those apps on your phone that’ll tell you where your car is, do ya?” Grave asked.
She reached for her pocket, then stopped and squeezed her eyes shut for a beat. “I did.”
“But you don’t no more?”
“I don’t have a phone. Mine, uh, broke last night.”
“That’s all right. I can put a call out so officers will be on the lookout if you give me the license plate,” Grave said, helpfully shoving a piece of paper and pen in her direction.
She took them and started to write in neat, swoopy cursive.
“You could leave your contact info too, where you’re staying and such, so me or Nash can update you.”
The name set my teeth on edge.
“Happy to,” Naomi said, sounding anything but.
“Uh. You got maybe a husband or boyfriend whose contact info you can add?”
I glared at him.
Naomi shook her head. “No.”
“Maybe a girlfriend or wife?” he tried again.
“I’m single,” she said, sounding just unsure enough that my curiosity piqued.
“Imagine that. So’s our chief,” Grave said, as innocent as a six-foot-tall biker with a rap sheet could sound.
“Can we get back to the part where you tell Naomi you’ll be in touch if you find her car, which we all know you won’t,” I snapped.
“Well, not with that attitude, we won’t,” she chided.
This was the last fucking time I was riding to the rescue of anyone. It wasn’t my job. Wasn’t my responsibility. And now it was costing me sleep.
“How long are you in town?” he asked as Naomi scrawled her information on the paper.
“Only as long as it takes to find and murder my sister,” she said, capping the pen and sliding the paper back. “Thank you so much for your help, Sergeant.”
She turned to look up at me. Our gazes held for a beat. “Knox.”
“Naomi.”
With that, she swept right on out of the station.
“How can two sisters look that much alike and have nothing else in common?” Grave wondered.
“I don’t want to know,” I said honestly and headed outside after her.
I found her pacing and muttering to herself in front of the wheelchair ramp.
“What’s your plan?” I asked in resignation.
She looked at me and her lips puckered. “Plan?” she repeated, her voice cracking.
My fight or flight instincts kicked in. I fucking hated tears. Especially tears of the female persuasion. A crying woman made me feel like I was being ripped to shreds from the inside out, a weapon I’d never make public knowledge.
“Do not cry,” I ordered.
Her eyes were damp. “Cry? I’m not going to cry.”
She was a shit liar.
“Don’t fucking cry. It’s just a car, and she’s just a piece of shit. Neither’s worth crying over.”
She blinked rapidly, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or yell at me again. But she surprised me by doing neither. She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “You’re right. It’s just a car. I can get replacement credit cards, a new purse, and another stash of honey mustard dipping sauces.”
“Tell me where you need to go, and I’ll drop you. You can get a rental and be on your way.” I jerked my thumb toward my truck.
She looked up and down the street again, probably hoping for some suit-and-tie-wearing hero to appear. When none did, she sighed. “I got a room at the motel.”
There was only one motel in town. A single-story, one-star shithole that didn’t warrant an official name. I was impressed she’d actually checked in.
We walked back to my truck in silence. Her shoulder brushed my arm, making my skin feel like it was heating up. I opened her door again for her.
Not because I was a gentleman but because some perverse part of me liked being close.
I waited until she’d belted in before shutting the door and rounding the truck. “Honey mustard dipping sauces?”
She glanced at me as I slid in behind the wheel. “You hear about that guy who drove through a guardrail in the winter a few years back?”
It sounded vaguely familiar.
“He ate nothing but ketchup packets for three days.”
“You plan on driving through a guardrail?”
“No. But I like to be prepared. And I don’t like ketchup.”
