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Not to mention maturity levels.
“Did you want to ride with us, Carrie? Bertha?”
My mother and Carrie shook their heads. “No, we’ll go home. Zee can take care of her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fucking wonderful.”
Zee pinched my ass. “See you in a few.”
He was right.
He did see me in a few.
But not before Leed gave me a string of lectures.Chapter 18Find a man that’ll start your car for you on cold days. That, or remote start. Who needs a man, anyhow?
-Text from Jubilee to Zee
Zee
I walked in with a bag of tacos in one hand, and a couple of sweet teas in the other. My intention had been to come straight to the police station, but then I’d seen my favorite taco guy ever on the side of the road selling tacos—and swear to God, I knew Jubilee wouldn’t mind since they were her favorite tacos, too.
I’d just topped the top step when I heard the screaming.
Frowning, I walked into the front office of the police station—a place I’d been a million times before, it seemed like—and came to a sudden halt.
The office was in chaos.
From the corner of the room, I could see Jubilee, looking on wide-eyed, as a man struggled to get free from his chair that he’d been handcuffed to.
Leed was sitting in his chair, watching the festivities with disinterested eyes.
He glanced at me when I walked in, took one look at the bag in my hands, and shook his head.
“You know, I thought for sure she was going to claw her way out of that cage and kill me for putting her in there, but I think you might’ve just saved the day.” He laughed. “But this kid’s high off his ass on meth, and I don’t want her out here while he’s in here. I would’ve put him in the cage, but last time I did that, he beat his head against the wall so much that he split it open straight to his skull. Then kept going. And going. And going. I had to stop him because he started to break the brick.”
I walked farther into the room, then skirted around the man that was flailing against the ground, arms and legs straining to get free, and up to the bars.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
She looked at the bag of tacos in my hand. “If that’s Miguel’s tacos, then yes. I’m fine.”
I grinned and handed the bag through the bars. “Take what you want and hand me back the rest.”
She did, setting the bag on the table as she painstakingly chose four tacos, all different kinds, and handed me the bag back.
“Is that sweet tea?” she asked hopefully.
I grinned. “It is.”
She wiggled her fingers in the air excitedly. “Sweet!”
I grunted out a laugh and handed that through the bars, too.
“Don’t step back,” Leed said. “You might trip on him.”
I looked down to see the man, still struggling, inching his way toward me.
I kicked him back by placing my foot on the wooden frame of the chair.
I gave him a little bit harder of a push than I’d intended to, causing him to slide across the floor, underneath a desk.
“Whoops,” I said.
Leed chuckled. “Why don’t you just let her out and take her home? Eat that there.”
I turned around and caught the keys he’d already lobbed at my head.
“Thanks for watching her for a while,” I said to Leed as I fit the key into the lock and turned it.
Jubilee didn’t stop eating her taco that she’d already unwrapped.
Instead, she gestured toward the table.
“You had him take me away because you saw something,” she muttered through bites of taco. “What’s going on?”
Why was this girl so damn smart?
“I got a call from your dad,” I sighed. “There’s been someone living in your attic.”
She frowned. “I got that part…but just sayin’, I think I would’ve known if that was happening.”
I pulled out my phone and swiped it open, keying up the text messages that had been passing back and forth between me and her dad.
“Look.” I showed her the first picture. “That’s of your attic. That bed in the corner was slept in. There’s milk that goes bad in the fridge in three days’ time, oh, and let’s not forget the fresh cum rags that dot the floor.”
She gagged and looked at the taco she was eating.
“Let’s talk about this after tacos,” she instructed.
I shrugged and gestured for her to continue, neither one of us talking until we’d devoured the entire lot.
“You know how awful y’all are?” Leed asked from the other side of his room.
I looked over at him as I licked the cheese off my fingers.
“You back on that diet?” I asked.
Leed rolled his eyes. “I have diabetes, bitch. It’s not a fuckin’ diet.”
I grinned, loving giving him shit.
Leed and I had grown up with each other. He’d been that nerdy guy in the bunch of kids that had grown up with us and had never really grown into being more social as he aged.
