Page 164 of Worth the Trip

“They were all yours.”

“Exactly.”

Nolani turned toward me. “You’ve built an impressive argument around clothing.”

“I like you in my shit. That cover it?”

Her laugh came quick.

Much better.

I squeezed her hand.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

“Secrecy does not automatically improve a plan.”

“Builds anticipation.”

“Encourages suspicion.”

“You suspicious while holding my hand and wearing my hoodie?”

“Legally unrelated.”

“That law degree you don’t have stays busy.”

“Somebody needs to protect me from your interpretation of evidence.”

I glanced over. “Verdict already in.”

“And what exactly was decided?”

“You like me real bad.” Her smile showed faintly in the window when she turned away. “Case closed.”

Sable & Spine occupied the corner of a renovated brick building near the shoreline, its wide windows framed in dark green and lined with flower boxes still wet from the storm. Mama had bought our birthday books there when Lennox and I were kids, and Miss Roslyn still kept a photograph behind the register of nine-year-old me missing a front tooth and holding an encyclopedia like I’d been appointed Secretary of Information.

I’d spent years trying to buy that picture.

Miss Roslyn called it preservation.

I called it blackmail.

Nolani read the gold lettering as I parked. “You brought me to a bookstore.”

“I did.”

Her whole face brightened before she could contain it.

That reaction alone justified the trip.

“This is the mysterious location?”

“One of them.”

“There are multiple?”