I didn’t bother replying because I was too busy storming toward the front door and ignoring the big gold letters above it.
“The Knox Morgan Municipal Building.”
I pretended I didn’t hear her and let the glass door swing closed behind me.
“Is there more than one Knox in this town?” she asked, wrenching the door open and following me inside.
“No,” I said, hoping that would put an end to questions I didn’t want to fucking answer. The building was relatively new with a shit-ton of glass, wide hallways, and that fresh paint smell.
“So it’s your name on the building?” she pressed, jogging again to keep up with me.
“Guess so.” I yanked open another door on the right and gestured for her to go inside.
Knockemout’s cop shop looked more like one of those co-working hangouts that urban hipsters liked than an actual police station. It had annoyed the boys and girls in blue who had taken pride in their moldy, crumbling bunker with its flickering fluorescent lights and carpet stained from decades of criminals.
Their annoyance at the bright paint and slick new office furniture was the only thing I didn’t hate about it.
The Knockemout PD did their best to rediscover their roots, piling precious towers of case folders on top of adjustable-height bamboo desks and brewing too cheap, too strong coffee 24/7. There was a box of stale donuts open on the counter and powdered sugar fingerprints everywhere. But so far nothing had taken the shine off the newness of the fucking Knox Morgan Building.
Sergeant Grave Hopper was behind his desk stirring half a pound of sugar into his coffee. A reformed motorcycle club member, he now spent his weeknights coaching his daughter’s softball team and his weekends mowing lawns. His and his mother-in-law’s. But once a year, he’d pack up his wife on the back of his bike, and off they’d go to relive their glory days on the open road.
He spotted me and my guest and nearly upended the entire mug all over himself.
“What’s goin’ on, Knox?” Grave asked, now openly staring at Naomi.
It was no secret around town that I had as little to do with the PD as possible. It also wasn’t exactly news that Tina was the kind of trouble that I didn’t tolerate.
“This is Naomi. Tina’s twin,” I explained. “She just got into town and says her car was towed. You got it out back?”
Knockemout PD usually had more important things to worry about than parking and let its citizens park wherever the hell they wanted, when they wanted, as long as it wasn’t directly on the sidewalk.
“Imma come back to that whole twin sister thing,” Grave warned, pointing his coffee stirrer at us. “But first, it’s just me in so far today, and I ain’t towed shit.”
Fuck.I shoved a hand through my hair.
“If you didn’t, do you have any idea who else would have?” Naomi asked hopefully.
Sure. I swoop in to save the day and drive her down here, but grizzled Grave was the one who got the smile and sweet words.
Grave, the bastard, was hanging on her every word, smiling at her like she was a seven-layer chocolate cake.
“Well now, Tin—I mean Naomi,” Grave began. “Way I see it, there’s two things that coulda happened. A—You forgot where you parked. But a gal like you in a town this small, that don’t seem likely.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed amicably without calling him Captain Obvious.
“Or B—Someone stole your car.”
I kissed my hour of sleep good-bye.
“I parked right in front of the pet shop because it was close to the cafe where I was supposed to meet my sister.”
Grave slid me a look, and I nodded. Best to just get this part over with, like ripping off a damn bandage.
“So Tina knew you were coming into town, knew where you’d be?” he clarified.
Naomi wasn’t picking up what he was putting down. She nodded, all wide-eyed and hopeful. “Yes. She called me last night. Said she was in some kind of trouble and needed me to meet her at Café Rev at seven this morning.”
“Well now, sweetheart,” Grave hemmed. “I don’t want to cast aspersions, of course. But is it possible—”
“Your asshole sister stole your car,” I interjected.
Naomi’s hazel eyes sliced to me. She didn’t look sweet or hopeful now. No. She looked like she wanted to commit a misdemeanor. Maybe even a felony.
“I’m afraid Knox here is right,” Grave said. “Your sister’s been causing trouble since she got into town a year ago. This probably ain’t the first car she’s helped herself to.”
Naomi’s nostrils flared delicately. She brought my coffee to her mouth, drank it down in a few determined gulps, then tossed the empty cup into the waste basket by the desk. “Thank you for your help. If you see a blue Volvo with a Nice Matters bumper sticker, please let me know.”
Christ.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got one of those apps on your phone that’ll tell you where your car is, do ya?” Grave asked.
She reached for her pocket, then stopped and squeezed her eyes shut for a beat. “I did.”
“But you don’t no more?”
“I don’t have a phone. Mine, uh, broke last night.”
“That’s all right. I can put a call out so officers will be on the lookout if you give me the license plate,” Grave said, helpfully shoving a piece of paper and pen in her direction.
She took them and started to write in neat, swoopy cursive.
“You could leave your contact info too, where you’re staying and such, so me or Nash can update you.”
The name set my teeth on edge.
“Happy to,” Naomi said, sounding anything but.
“Uh. You got maybe a husband or boyfriend whose contact info you can add?”
I glared at him.
Naomi shook her head. “No.”
“Maybe a girlfriend or wife?” he tried again.
“I’m single,” she said, sounding just unsure enough that my curiosity piqued.
“Imagine that. So’s our chief,” Grave said, as innocent as a six-foot-tall biker with a rap sheet could sound.
“Can we get back to the part where you tell Naomi you’ll be in touch if you find her car, which we all know you won’t,” I snapped.
“Well, not with that attitude, we won’t,” she chided.
This was the last fucking time I was riding to the rescue of anyone. It wasn’t my job. Wasn’t my responsibility. And now it was costing me sleep.
“How long are you in town?” he asked as Naomi scrawled her information on the paper.
“Only as long as it takes to find and murder my sister,” she said, capping the pen and sliding the paper back. “Thank you so much for your help, Sergeant.”
“My pleasure.”
She turned to look up at me. Our gazes held for a beat. “Knox.”
“Naomi.”
With that, she swept right on out of the station.
“How can two sisters look that much alike and have nothing else in common?” Grave wondered.
“I don’t want to know,” I said honestly and headed outside after her.
I found her pacing and muttering to herself in front of the wheelchair ramp.
“What’s your plan?” I asked in resignation.
She looked at me and her lips puckered. “Plan?” she repeated, her voice cracking.
My fight or flight instincts kicked in. I fucking hated tears. Especially tears of the female persuasion. A crying woman made me feel like I was being ripped to shreds from the inside out, a weapon I’d never make public knowledge.
“Do not cry,” I ordered.
Her eyes were damp. “Cry? I’m not going to cry.”
She was a shit liar.
“Don’t fucking cry. It’s just a car, and she’s just a piece of shit. Neither’s worth crying over.”
She blinked rapidly, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or yell at me again. But she surprised me by doing neither. She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “You’re right. It’s just a car. I can get replacement credit cards, a new purse, and another stash of honey mustard dipping sauces.”
“Tell me where you need to go, and I’ll drop you. You can get a rental and be on your way.” I jerked my thumb toward my truck.
She looked up and down the street again, probably hoping for some suit-and-tie-wearing hero to appear. When none did, she sighed. “I got a room at the motel.”
There was only one motel in town. A single-story, one-star shithole that didn’t warrant an official name. I was impressed she’d actually checked in.
We walked back to my truck in silence. Her shoulder brushed my arm, making my skin feel like it was heating up. I opened her door again for her. Not because I was a gentleman but because some perverse part of me liked being close.
I waited until she’d belted in before shutting the door and rounding the truck. “Honey mustard dipping sauces?”
She glanced at me as I slid in behind the wheel. “You hear about that guy who drove through a guardrail in the winter a few years back?”
It sounded vaguely familiar.
“He ate nothing but ketchup packets for three days.”
“You plan on driving through a guardrail?”
“No. But I like to be prepared. And I don’t like ketchup.”
A PINT-SIZED CRIMINAL
Naomi
“What room are you in?” Knox asked. I realized we were already back at the motel.
“Why?” I asked with suspicion.
He exhaled slowly as if I were on his last nerve. “So I can drop you at your door.”
Oh. “Nine.”
“You leave your door open?” he asked a second later, his mouth tight.
“Yeah. That’s the way it’s done on Long Island,” I deadpanned. “It’s how we show our neighbors we trust them.”
He gave me another one of those long, frowny looks.
“No. Of course I didn’t leave it open. I closed and locked it.”
He pointed toward number nine.
My door was ajar.
“Oh.”
He put the truck in park where it sat in the middle of the lot with more force than necessary. “Stay here.”
I blinked as he climbed out and stalked toward my room.
My weary eyes were drawn to the view of those worn jeans clinging to a spectacular butt as he stalked toward my door. Hypnotized for a few of his long strides, it took me a hot minute to remember exactly what I’d left in that room and how very much I didn’t want Knox, of all people, to see it.
“Wait!” I jumped out of the truck and ran after him, but he didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.
I turned on the speed in a last-ditch effort and jumped in front of him. He walked right into the hand I held up.
“Get your ass out of my way, Naomi,” he ordered.
When I didn’t comply, he brought a hand to my stomach and walked me backward until I was standing in front of Room 8.
I didn’t know what it said about me that I really liked his hand there. “You don’t have to go in there,” I insisted. “I’m sure it’s just housekeeping.”
“This place look like it has housekeeping?”
He had a point. The motel looked like it should give out tetanus shots instead of mini bottles of shampoo.
“Stay,” he said again, then stalked back to my open door.
“Shit,” I whispered when he shoved it open. I lasted all of two seconds before following him inside.
The room had been unappealing, to say the least, when I’d checked in less than an hour ago.
The orange and brown wallpaper was peeling in long strips. The carpet was a dark green that felt like it was made out of the scrubby side of a dish sponge. The bathroom fixtures were Pepto Bismol pink, and the shower was missing several tiles.
But it was the only option within twenty miles, and I’d figured I could rough it for a night or two. Besides, I’d thought at the time, how bad could it be?
Apparently pretty freaking bad. Between the time I’d checked in, stowed my suitcase, plugged in my laptop, and left to meet Tina, someone had broken in and ransacked the room.
My suitcase was upended on the floor, some of its contents strewn all over the carpet.
The dresser drawers were pulled out, closet doors left open.
My laptop was missing. So was the zippered pouch of cash I’d hidden in my suitcase.
“Sucker” was scrawled across the bathroom vanity mirror in my favorite lipstick. Ironically, the thing I didn’t want my grumpy Viking to see, the thing that was worth more than whatever else had been stolen, was still there in a crumpled heap in the corner.
Worst of all, the perpetrator was sitting on the bed, dirty sneakers tangled in a clump of sheets. She was watching a natural disaster movie. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but I put her solidly in the Child/Pre-Teen category.
“Hey, Way,” Knox said grimly.
The girl’s blue eyes flitted away from the screen to land on him before returning to the TV. “Hey, Knox.”
It was a small town. Of course the town grump and the child felon knew each other.