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“Or you could do your goddamn job, look at the area, get the crime scene techs out here, and, you know, use your critical thinking skills to see that this was a horrible accident,” I corrected him.
“You’re coming with me…” He stepped forward, his hands already on his belt where most likely his handcuffs had once been. But his large girth hid them from sight and touch, meaning he just fumbled there looking like an idiot before pointing at the loitering deputies around him. “Arrest her.”
They all looked on as if they knew it was bad yet still felt the need to follow orders.
“For what, Officer?” Coffey asked. “You’re persecuting her because of her religious and philosophical beliefs?”
The sheriff didn’t respond, and his deputies started to shuffle from foot to foot.
“Or is it because, culturally, that’s something that she’s not comfortable with? It’d be like using a racial slur at this point. Her culture doesn’t allow pointing. It is harmful to them,” Coffey countered. “Either way, it doesn’t look good for you or your deputies if you pursue this any further. Not to mention, you’ve been more focused on her than the dead body—which is still sitting there, by the way, without a single one of you yet to look at or process any information. I think the press would be very interested in that. Then there’s the fact that this is one of the biggest circuses in the world. They have thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life to come here. They’re bigger than you are, and generally, that means you don’t mess with them.”
“And who are you to Miss…” He hesitated, having not gotten my name or any of our names. Which would likely be one of the first things an officer of the law would ask upon arrival at a death scene.
“You gonna do your job now?” one of my sisters muttered.
“I was already doing my job,” Bright snapped.
“Um, no, you weren’t,” I heard in the crowd of workers that’d solidly built up behind my back.
If there was one thing I could say about the circus, it was one large family. We might not all get along, or like each other for that matter, but we had each other’s backs, no matter what.
“Kissimmee Singh,” I answered.
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll add another charge to your already growing list if you don’t give me your real name.”
I felt Coffey’s arm tighten around my waist as if he was preparing himself for my launch at the stupid man in front of me.
I leaned back against him and replied to the sheriff.
“My name is Kissimmee,” I answered. “And you would obviously know ‘Singh’ is correct if you looked around the circus even a little bit.”
Because mostly ‘Singh’ was on every surface everywhere. The flyers. The tents. The poles. The porta potties.
Hell, it was even on a flyer that’d rolled right up to his leg and stuck to it during our conversation.
He’d never looked down at it once.
“That’s a stupid enough name that it could be fake,” Bright declared.
Coffey growled in his throat, but it was Zip who said, “What kind of name is fucking ‘Bright’ for a man who obviously isn’t?”
So we might give each other shit about our names, but we sure the hell didn’t allow other people to.
“That’s a last name,” Bright said defensively.
“Well, last name or not, you’re called it. And I happen to disagree with the meaning of the word,” Zip countered.
Bright narrowed his eyes at her, his face now red with anger.
“Um, sir?” one of the deputies asked. “This is a gunshot wound.”
My head whipped around.
Coffey stiffened against me.
The deputy who’d started doing his job finally pointed at the body.
I looked as well and saw that the deputy had finally flipped her over, and sure enough, there was a hole in her forehead.
My belly heaved all over again.
I turned in Coffey’s arms, ran toward the bushes that still smelled of my puke from earlier, and dry heaved.
Someone caught my hair, but I didn’t question who until I was done.
When I turned, it was to see Coffey looking at me sympathetically.
“I didn’t kill her,” I blurted.
His eyes were soft when he said, “Normally, when people kill other people, the sight of their dead body and their actions wouldn’t cause them to be sick.”
I placed my hand over my mouth. “What are you doing here?”
He pulled a handkerchief, a real, honest-to-God handkerchief, out of his pocket and handed it to me.
It was embroidered with his initials.
I curled it in my hands and said, “If I use this, it’ll need washing.”
He grinned at me. “That’s the idea.”
I wiped my mouth and raised my brows at him, waiting for him to answer.
He did, eventually saying, “My dad left me millions of dollars and the suggestion to get out of town while I still could.”
