Ginny’s father raised a hand and beckoned them up the stairs with a wave of two fingers.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” Ginny whispered as they hurried up the grand staircase. “And if you have to say anything, agree with whatever I’ve said.”
“So, you’re my real lawyer as well as my fake girlfriend?”
Ginny shushed him. They reached the landing, and the older man approached, his dark eyes sweeping over Shepherd.
“Dad, this is my fiancé, Preston Shepherd. Shepherd, this my dad, Bradley Kent.”
“Fiancé?” Bradley Kent repeated, his gaze swooping over Shepherd a second time. “When did that happen?”
Ginny and Shepherd exchanged a look. “Recently,” she said.
“OK. Well.” Her dad finally looked away from him. “You were expected here about thirty minutes ago.”
Ginny squeezed his hand, and Shepherd realized his mouth was open. He closed it. “Sorry. Something came up.”
“Something came up?” Her dad crossed his arms. He was still pretty built, for a guy old enough to be his fake girlfriend’s father. “What could have possibly been more pressing than the kidnapping of your mother?”
She licked her lips. “We were …”
“We had to eat,” Shepherd’s mouth said without input from his brain. He grimaced, the heat of Ginny’s glare burning his cheek.
Mr. Kent clicked his tongue. “You discovered a dead body and were able to eat breakfast immediately after?”
“McDonald’s,” Shepherd said, helpfully.
The three of them stared at each other. None of them moved, none of them so much as even blinked—a perfect juxtaposition to the hubbub down the stairs.
Finally, Mr. Kent shrugged. “Yeah, OK. Come on; the family’s all waiting for you in the office.”
Shepherd’s shoes squeaked on the marble flooring of the upstairs hallway. He did not think about Mr. Martin’s bloodon his soles. Or that guy’s head on his bat. Or the fire at his heels.
Definitely not the fire.
What Shepherd needed right then, more than at any other time in his life, was a drink. Specifically, a Key Lime Coolada, made for him by Noah, his best andonlyfriend. Ginny was no longer a friend. He was pretty sure she was some kind of demon, and not even the fun, succubus kind.
There were family portraits on the walls. Not photographs, but real portraits, painted memorials of fake, smiling faces, small, pale bodies standing before a massive fire.
Not the fire.Think of anything but the fire.
Like his baseball bat, and that guy’s dented head.No, don’t think about those, either.
Ginny squeezed his hand, and when he looked down at her to see why, she was raising an eyebrow at him in question. “I’m OK,” he lied.
Mr. Kent opened a wide, mahogany door without knocking. It must’ve been soundproofed, because the instant it was open, voices came flooding out. They all shut up once Ginny dragged Shepherd inside.
He felt their eyes before he saw them. His nervous system reacted like a mouse does before a lion—skittering in terror, looking for a hole to hide in. His heart tumbled into his lower stomach, and he clenched all of his muscles, certain he was going to have to jump out of a window to escape. But Ginny squeezed his hand again, and he blinked, and her family weren’t lions at all.
It was worse. They were lawyers.
FOURTEEN
There were two well-dressed men sitting on either side of an expansive wooden desk, complete with its own ship in a bottle, which was a thing that Shepherd never realized existed in real life. One was younger, and he looked as someone would if Ginny had opened up a filter on her phone and taken a picture of herself as a man. He had the same red hair, though cut short, and the same blue eyes. His jaw was larger, but he was clean-shaven, and his tie hung loose around his neck. The man behind his desk looked like a king from medieval times. A harsh lord who overtaxed his peasants. He was thin and wiry, with little hair to speak off on the top of his head, made up for in abundance by a hearty white beard and mustache, split only by the harsh slash of his mouth.
Lounging on a couch on the other side of the room were two beautiful women. Both of them were blonde, with perfect noses and perfect figures and perfect tans. They were wearing short tennis skirts with matching tank tops and bright white tennis shoes; their thick hair was piled in high ponytails on top of their heads.
His ex-wife would’vehatedthem.
