Page 81 of How To Catch A Killer … And Date His Best Friend

I laugh as I meet Hunter’s stare. “You hear that? She wants to fuck me on the bike. What have you got?”

“Ummmm . . . hello?” Lyra cuts in. “This is no time for your little pissing contest. What’s happening with the bike?”

Hunter rolls his eyes, and I laugh as I drop my stare back to Lyra. “Relax, Savage. I’m not selling the bike,” I explain, nodding out the window toward the dealership. “I just figured a car could be useful, especially now that I have you. Not to mention, Smooch. The last time I had to get him to the emergency vet, I had to balance his ass over my lap. Wasn’t pretty.”

Lyra nods, looking as though her brain just went somewhere else. “You’re not wrong,” she muses, looking out at the lot just as I am. “It would certainly be useful for some of those extracurricular activities you boys have.”

Hunter glances down at her, his brows pinched. “The fuck are you talking about?”

She shrugs. “You know, trunk space.”

Hunter snorts into his coffee and Lyra immediately gets to her feet, shoving in what’s left of her late lunch as excitement dances in her eyes. “Come on, let’s go look.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re wandering through the dealership like three people who absolutely shouldn’t be trusted around motor vehicles. The salesman approached us earlier, but upon hearing part of our conversation, he’s now hiding inside.

Smart man.

We hover around a brand-new car. Hunter is inspecting the engine, I’m looking at practicality and overall sex appeal, while Lyra is simply causing trouble.

She stands by the trunk, her arms crossed over her chest and a frown marring that pretty face.

“What is it?” I ask, unsure I want to know the answer.

“I don’t know if this is the right one for you,” she tells me.

“And why’s that?”

She lets out a sigh and then steps right up to the back of the Mustang before opening the trunk and gesturing inside. “It’s good for a woman,” she says before climbing right in and showing me how she fits inside the trunk.

“Jesus Christ,” Hunter mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose, already seeing exactly where this is going.

“But?” I ask as another salesman begins to approach.

She moves her arms and legs around, trying to make herself bigger and showing just how cramped it gets. “It really depends on your target demographic,” she muses. “Me? It’s cramped but could work. But say you wanted to shove . . . Hunter, in here. He’d never fit. Not unless you chopped him up into little pieces.”

The approaching salesman catches her comments before turning on his heel and quickly hurrying away, hiding himself behind a nearby vehicle.

But Lyra isn’t nearly done. She sits up in the trunk, her hand brushing over the carpet. “And this will never do. Could you imagine the mess it would make? You’d have to clingwrap all of Hunter’s body pieces before you shoved them in here, and even then, that’s no guarantee. I’d be asking about custom trunk linings. Maybe they could do it in rubber for easy cleaning.”

Hunter glances at her through a narrowed stare. “Clingwrap?”

“What?” she says, batting her lashes. “I saw it in one of those serial killer documentaries.”

I grin at her, and get back on track. “What would you recommend?”

Lyra shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not really a car girl, but definitely something with a wider opening. And more depth. Oh, and if you care about customer satisfaction, maybe something with a little more padding. It’s not very comfortable in here.”

Hunter sighs. “You two are the reason the city is having a meeting.”

She shakes her head. “Ahh, correction, that would be you two,” she says before climbing out of the trunk and moving in beside me. “I’m just saying, if somebody was hypothetically evaluating storage capacity, this one ain’t it.”

I look over the car one more time. “What’d you rate it out of ten?”

She considers the car. “If the trunk space wasn’t an issue, a seven.”

“A seven?”

Lyra nods. “Oh yeah, a strong seven.”