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“No,” she said. “You’ve got it wrong. Come on, Tyler, get dressed and I’ll explain it on the way to the station.”
I watched her, sensing something else at work. Her aggression was banked, and she wasn’t just being civil. No, she was apprehensive. And mad about it. And the longer I stared at her, the worse it got, until finally her hazel eyes were shooting out sparks.
“Please,” she said through clenched teeth and I smiled.
A supplicant Juliette. The fire ants went home and my day just got a whole lot better.
“Well.” I grinned and I could hear her grinding her teeth. “Since you asked so nice, Chief Tremblant, I would be delighted to head on down to the station to get my car and press charges against the juvenile delinquent who had the balls to try and steal Suzy.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Get dressed.”
I ducked back inside to grab a shirt.
“Who’s the girl?” Dad asked, standing at the living room window, lifting the curtains an inch so he could stare at the porch.
“No one,” I said, grabbing my shirt from the counter where I’d thrown it last night. It stank of blood and dirt and smoke and there was no way I was putting it back on and getting in a car with Juliette Tremblant. Bad enough my face looked like hamburger.
But all of my clothes were in Suzy.
“Give me a shirt,” I said, stepping into the living room.
Dad pointed to his open duffel on the couch, still looking through the window. “She looks like police.”
“She is,” I said, slinging through Dad’s shirts. There were a bunch of them, which made me nervous about his travel plans. Or lack thereof. “Do you even play golf?” I asked, finally picking a gray shirt from the golf-themed collection.
“What are police doing here?” Dad asked, tight-faced and still.
“Calm down,” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
Dad cocked his head and pursed his lips. “I’d almost say too bad. Shame for a woman like that to be wasted on a badge.”
Something red and boiling bubbled through me, making my hands twitch. My eye pound.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll handle her.”
Dad whistled low through his teeth and I wanted to put my fist through something.
“Later,” I said, shoving my feet into my worn down boots. “Try and stay out of trouble.”
“No guarantees, son,” Dad said, a big grin across his face. “No guarantees.”
“So,” I said as we approached the sedan and the passed-out would-be car thief in the backseat. “How much trouble will this kid be in?”
Juliette stopped at the curb. “You didn’t have any luggage last night. Where’d you get that shirt?”
Crap. Didn’t think that through. Chief Tremblant was no dummy, clearly.
I shrugged. “It was in The Manor,” I said, pushing at the too-big gray golf shirt. “That Matt guy must have left it.”
Juliette nodded, her jaw tight under the aviator sunglasses she wore. “You see anything strange around the house?”
“Strange?” I asked, painfully aware that I was lying to police already, much less Juliette.
I’m back in town less than a day, I thought, bitter and tired. And I’m already down this road with her.
Thanks, Dad.
“Broken windows?” Juliette asked. “Any sign of entry at all?”
Nothing except a sixty-year-old thief looking for a fortune in gems.
I shook my head. “Nothing as far as I could see,” I lied, the words uncommonly thick in my mouth. Part of being a Notorious O’Neill was the ability to lie like it was poetry, and I’d forgotten Juliette’s effect on that particular family trait. She made me sound as practiced as a choir boy lying to the Holy Father.
Something about her eyes, the way she looked at me as if she expected the worst but hoped for better—it was like static electricity. It made me want, so badly, to be a different man. And so the lies—they just curled up and quivered in my mouth.
Complicated. Complicated. Complicated.
“So,” I said, easing into the passenger seat, turning to look in the backseat. “About the kid—”
Bright sunlight splashed across the mess that was the boy’s face. Burns. Bruises. Stitches at his lip and eye. Somebody had gone to town on the boy, with fury. Hate, even.
Well. Shit.
Juliette started the car, the sound of the engine ripping through my head.
“What happened to him?” I asked through a dry throat. I turned back around to stare out the windshield at the trees and sunlight, birds and foxes at the side of the road, everything normal and right in the world.
But the boy’s face stuck in my head.
Juliette’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “His father,” she said.
“Did that?”
Juliette nodded and I swore. Richard was no prize, and frankly neither was my mom—but to do that? To a kid?
“He tried to steal your car to get away. He was going to pick up his ten-year-old sister and leave town.”
