Page 62 of It Runs in the Family

For a second, I thought I’d heard him wrong, but then his words sank in, and I swung back around to face him. “Why would you say that?”

“Because she’s with some bad people.”

My heart began to race. “How do you know that?”

“Because I think she’s with my brother.”

I stared at him, speechless.

He drew in a deep breath and took a step backward. “We can’t talk about this here. I’ll be in touch.”

Then he walked out the door, leaving me standing there like a fool.

Chapter Seventeen

I stood rooted in place for a few moments, trying to wrap my head around everything he’d just told me.

His brother? He’d told me he had two sisters but hadn’t mentioned a brother. He’d also said he’d moved here from Dallas for work. Had those been lies too?

In a huff, I spun around and grabbed a dirty dish and plunged it into the soapy water. Granny didn’t believe in dishwashers, and while she didn’t let anyone help her while she was cooking, she tended to leave the cleanup to the rest of us. The sooner this all got tidied up, the sooner I could go home and sulk.

But I couldn’t go home, could I? Some mysterious man had tried to kidnap me the night before, and I was staying at Garrett’s house until he put up security cameras.

Just when I’d thought my life had sunk into the gutter, I fell into the sewer.

The door opened behind me, and for a moment I thought Boone had changed his mind about leaving the conversation on such a dramatic note and had come back to tell me what the hell was going on, but it was Ava and Mary Ellen, both carrying an armload of dishes.

“You two are on my shit list,” I snapped, pointing a soapy finger at them, a glob of bubbles landing on the floor. “You could have warned me!”

“Sorry,” Ava said with a grimace. “We thought it would be a fun surprise, but in hindsight I guess the whole showing-up-with-Billy part put a damper on it.” Her face lit up. “But on the bright side, he seemed more interested in you than he was in Billy.”

“Wow,” Mary Ellen said sarcastically. “That’s a high bar to clear.”

“Look,” Ava said, setting a stack of plates on the counter next to me. “I think Boone came with Billy so he could see you.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. He knows where I live. He could have just shown up on my doorstep.” But it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking this all the way through. Boone thought his brother was with Selena, and I’d told him I would probably see her at Sunday family dinner. Somehow, he’d figured out Billy was my cousin and snagged an invite. But why hadn’t he just told me from the beginning? Why the secrecy?

Ava shrugged. “What can I say? Men are weird.”

“I don’t like it,” Mary Ellen said with a frown. “Billy’s trouble with a capital T, and if your boyfriend’s hangin’ out with him, then he’s trouble too.”

“While I’m not gonna argue that he’s trouble, I will point out he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Ava said. “He’s so hot.”

I shook my head in disgust.

“We saw him come in here for a few minutes,” Mary Ellen said. “What did he want?”

Should I admit that he thought his brother was with Selena, and she was mixed up with some bad people? If my vision hadn’t already told me that, I would have figured it out after that man had come by Stop-n-Go.

But who was Boone’s brother? Could he be the creep who’d murdered me in the vision, or was he someone else, like the guy Selena had been with the other night?

Then a new thought hit me—had he known she was my cousin when he’d first approached me?

No, that couldn’t be true. How could he have known? It had to be a coincidence, right?

One thing was certain: I wasn’t going to tell Ava and Mary Ellen any of this. Including about the guy at the Stop-n-Go. Better to only share that part with Garrett.