I’m gonna go ahead and say she gets great pleasure out of Mom’s hatred of the bird.
“Nonna,” I say shakily. “Please put it back in its cage.”
She gasps. “Gio is-a not-a an it!”
“Hot wench!”
I get up and walk to the other side of the room. I stand by the bookcase, my arms folded and my eyes narrowed. Gio flies to me. I stalk toward Dad’s chair, and he follows me again. Everywhere I walk, he follows me.
“Nonna! Put him in his cage or I’m leaving!”
She considers this for a moment. “You-a won’t. You have-a a party to-a plan!”
I meet Amelia’s eyes. Hers widen, her cheeks paling.
Oh yeah. She has seriously cold feet. Props to her though. If I were her and Nonna was pulling this shit with me, she’d be… Well, she wouldn’t be alive in this room. That’s for sure.
“Yeah. I haven’t planned a thing. Haven’t even thought about it,” I admit.
Nonna gasps. Good Lord, the woman is gonna pass out from too much oxygen at this rate. “You-a what?”
“I haven’t planned it.”
“Noella!”
“I’m sorry if people dying is inconvenient for you,” I drawl, rolling my eyes.
Drake’s phone rings, and he excuses himself. Why is it always his phone? This isn’t fair. I want mine to ring and let me escape for ten minutes. Hell, I’d call my fucking self.
Why have I never done that?
“Noella! Amelia can’t-a get-a married without a party-a!”
“She can,” Amelia squeaks up.
“No no!” Nonna exclaims, waving her arms around like she’s being electrocuted.
Seriously. I’m waiting for them to come flying out of their sockets and slap me silly for my uselessness.
“She must-a have-a a party!”
Drake reenters the room with a grim look on his face. “Noelle, Brody, can we talk?”
Yes. Hell yes. Let’s go. Let’s go talk on Mars.
I shoot Amelia an apologetic smile then Devin a hard look. Grow a pair, ya damn fool. He looks away, shame coloring his cheeks.
Ever seen a twenty-nine-year-old, olive-skinned man blush?
It. Is. Hilarious.
He takes Amelia’s hand as I follow Brody out to the front yard. The echo of Mom snapping at Nonna to, “Put that goddamn bird in his cage,” is cut off when I kick the front door shut.
Oh, silence. You wonderful thing.
Drake runs his fingers through his hair. He does it every time he’s stressed, I realize. It’s something that happens a lot, which is the reason for the unruly, messy bundle of dark curls that never look tamed.
“Annabelle was raped. The DNA samples of semen Tim pulled were rushed through and compared to the samples removed our two other victims. They match—both sets. She wasn’t killed at the scene but dumped there with her car.”
“How did they get her car there? And why dump her?” Brody asks, leaning against the wall and chewing his thumbnail.
“The blood was old.” Drake pushes his hands into his pockets and pulls his shoulders back. “Tim guesses that she was abducted, injured, then forced to drive to an unknown spot. She was drugged, raped, and the ritual was performed. Blood traces were also found in the trunk along with some hair that Tim’s assuming belong to Annabelle, so the idea is that she was driven and dumped relatively off the beaten track. If her car hadn’t been left so obviously, she may not have been discovered for another day at the very least.”
I frown. If her body was supposed to be hidden, why would the car be so obviously left? Unless…
“What if they were interrupted?”
“Huh?” Brody lifts an eyebrow in question.
“When they were dumping her body. What if they meant to drive away with her car and leave it somewhere inconspicuous so it was at the side of the road, but someone saw them and checked it out? No one in their right mind parks up there in the middle of the night.”
Drake’s attention is fully on me. “So you’re saying…”
“They parked and dumped her body, but someone drove past and looked to see if the driver of the car was okay. It was too risky to drive away in it because the person who saw might remember, so they dumped it.”
“The ideal place to dump a car is a twenty-four-hour supermarket,” he reasons. “But then you’re on surveillance cameras… If the car was seen parked randomly earlier in the evening miles away, then it would raise red flags.”
“So would a car driven into a bunch of trees,” Brody snorts.
“Hey.” I hold my hands up. “I never said they were smart.”
“Murderers rarely are…” Drake muses, looking somewhere over my head at the dark-red tiles of my parents’ roof. His phone rings again in his pocket, and he looks disheartened as he answers it. “Sheriff… Uh-huh… Really? ... Uh…” He looks at me. “Yeah… She won’t do it alone… All right. I’ll tell her.” He hangs up and slides his phone back into his pocket.
“I’m not pretending to be a hooker to attract a murderer,” I say, pointing at him when he grimaces. “I mean it. I can’t take the shoes right now.”
He rolls his eyes. “One cut to the foot and the world is ending.”
“Right. From the guy who panicked like a virgin at an orgy because he thought he hurt me earlier.”
“I was not a virgin at a fuckin’ orgy.”
“All right, but I’m still not doing it. You’re no fisherman, and I’m not bait!”
“Can I tell you what was said before you freak the fuck out?”
“Too late.”
“Fuck me, Noelle. Be quiet!” he finally growls, covering my mouth with his hand.
I lick his palm. Tastes like man sweat. Yuck.
He frowns at his hand before wiping it on his jeans then covering my mouth again. Futile man sweat. Excellent.
“Brook Meyers has been seen at the fair.”
Brody pushes off the wall. “As in the guy we’re looking for?”
“Yep,” Drake confirms with a nod, looking at him. “Problem is, he knows it.”
Oh no.
I shake my head as he pulls his eyes to mine. “Oh,” I mumble against his hand. That was supposed to be no.
Drake nods. “Yes. Sheriff wants you to find him and call us in. You can call your team and pull them in to help you. The second he sees me, he’s gonna run.”
I stare him down. His eyes are hard, but they’re pleading. Really, what does he expect me to say? No? Brook Meyers could give us another step up the ladder that’s becoming this incredibly fucked-up case.
I grab his wrist and tug his hand away from my mouth. “Fine,” I agree. Sharply. I’m not happy about it and I’m going to make sure he knows. “But you take me to my house so I can get shoes that won’t have my foot cut open every time I step on uneven ground, and while I’m there, you can help call my team and explain to them.”
His lips curve up on one side in an amused smirk. “All right, cupcake.”
“And I still really fucking hate that nickname.”
“Why do you think I use it?”
“I hate you.”
He opens the door to his truck and helps me in, a smile twisting his lips. “Only on days that end in Y, right?”
I can’t help but smile back, despite the sliver of annoyance I feel. “Right.”
Getting my team to help me scout Brook Meyers was an awesome idea. Until we took into account that two of my team members are six feet tall and built like brick shithouses.
Mike and Dean aren’t exactly the guys you want following someone inconspicuously.
Needless to say, they were promptly sent home, and Alison was recruited in their place.
Luckily for us, she isn’t working and Mom was all too happy to escape Nonna and Gio to babysit for this noble, police-worthy cause.
It’s okay, Mom. We’re only hunting down a potential rapist—because hey¸ Toni was sixteen. Texas state law constitutes their hanky-panky as statutory rape, no matter how consensual Brook Meyers insists it was.
Fact is, Toni Thompson isn’t here to state otherwise.
It’s a good thing I snuck my gun into my purse. Slightly inconvenient, but if I’d have gotten changed, Drake would have known instantly what I’d done.