You’d think we were Bee-Eff-Effs from the cutesy picture she sends.
Her in a little poodle skirt with her hair up in pigtails, covered in bubblegum Snapchat filters with puppy ears and a nose, hearts floating everywhere.
She poses and prances on a tree-lined, sunny street with a sunny smile, fingers up in a happy V sign.
Except she’s still got that switchblade, obvious even with the blade retracted. It’s clutched between her fingers like a third digit bisecting that V, a subtle middle finger.
And the house she’s prancing around so merrily—
Oh, crap.
It’s Mom’s.
My mouth goes dry with fear as I read the text below. Dick me around much longer, daddy’s girl, and I’m stopping by for tea with Mommy dearest.
It’s like she’s tightening a noose around my neck.
I don’t have much time to figure this out and find some way to placate her.
I’m frozen, just staring, struggling to breathe. My heart jolts like I’ve just taken that glittering knife to the chest.
Then the silence in the police station erupts into shouting, men snarling, the sounds of furniture slamming and skidding around in a struggle as subtle as a gunshot.
What now?
I realize it’s after dark. I’m not sure how I let so much time pass without noticing, but there’s a gut punch of guilt as I realize I must’ve made Langley stay late for my sake.
But what hits me harder is that I recognize one of the voices.
Alaska.
He’s not snarling, no, it sounds more like he’s trading barbs with someone who is. An unfamiliar voice calls him a “bastard whoreson.”
To which Alaska calmly replies, “Little redundant, dude. You wanna try something more creative? I’m afraid I can’t give you more than a C for effort.”
I don’t know if I should laugh or be worried as hell or just start crying when I’m surrounded by a million things going haywire all at once, and this is officially more than I can handle.
Let’s go for worried as hell.
Stuffing my phone in my pocket, I go rocketing out of my chair and into the main—well, the only other—room in the police station.
Just in time to watch a redheaded man I don’t recognize get muscled into one of two meager jail cells. Meanwhile, Alaska mildly walks into the other with the air of a man who’s complying so he doesn’t cause trouble for people who don’t deserve it.
His thick arms are bunched up in muscled knots of tension, tapestries of tattoo ink twisting like dark animals.
He’s handcuffed behind his back, I realize.
What the hell.
The stranger flings himself against the bars just as Langley slams them shut and locks up.
The redheaded guy looks bloodied, bruised, his face puffed and swollen. When Alaska turns to face out, I gasp.
He’s got a pretty mean black eye himself, gone purple with broken veins spidering around his socket.
Our gazes lock. His eyes widen.
Alaska stares at me for a smoldering second before darkness crosses his face. Something I can’t quite read, but it worries me nonetheless.
We need to talk, he mouths, slow and exaggerated.
I nod subtly.
Guess I’m using that eight hundred he gave me to pay bail, if I can’t talk fast enough.
I shift my attention to Langley.
“Hey, Sheriff, what happened?” I ask, trying to sound casual and curious and not one hundred and ten percent personally invested.
Langley snorts and strokes his thick Wilford Brimley mustache. “Just a little bit of a disorderly scrum in town. Lemme tell you, I was pretty danged shocked when these two passed a breathalyzer.”
Oh, no.
Alaska doesn’t seem like the type to go around getting tanked up and picking fights.
My mind goes one place. Considering the copper-haired man’s a complete stranger, not a townie, either he’s a tourist...
Or this is about the gold.
How many ways can Felicity Randall get screwed?
Oh, let’s start counting.
I take a moment to compose myself back in the break room.
Just enough to screw my head on straight and think through a game plan.
Is begging a game plan?
Cajoling?
Wheedling?
Bribing?
Um, I’ll stop short of the last. Barely.
I will, however, flutter my eyes like a cartoon skunk if I have to. Sheriff Langley’s always had a soft spot for me since he was the one who found my dad, but I guess I’m about to find out just how squishy that soft spot is.
Not to mention how much I can get away with by promising a lifetime of coffee on the house for him and his skeleton crew of deputies.
...does it count as a bribe if it’s not cash?
Ugh.
I gather up the folder with Dad’s file. Fingers crossed I can wrangle Langley into letting me take it home with me, along with Alaska.
Wearing my best casual smile and hugging the folder against my chest, I step out.
“Thanks for letting me look at this again,” I tell Langley.
He sits at his desk harumphing and grumping over paperwork, muttering like the two men—one sulking, the other stoic—in the drunk tank have just ruined his whole month.
“Say, would you mind if I borrowed this for a bit? I know you want to get home soon, and I just need it for another day or two. I can make copies at the library and I’ll bring it straight back.”
He lifts his head, peering, squinting at me.
“What’s so important in that file all of a sudden, Miss Randall?” he asks.
“Well, there’s been some legal stuff with the house. Turns out, it’s still in Mom and Dad’s joint names all these years,” I lie so smoothly it almost disturbs me. “Something about the insurance and accidental death versus suicide, yada yada yada. I’m trying to give them proof so they won’t demand the life insurance payments back and possibly screw up some of the title stuff on the place.”
“Well, that’s real crappy of them, dredging that mess up after all these years.” He frowns. “I can let you have ’em for forty-eight hours, but you bring those files right back to me. Every page. I could get in trouble, you know.”
“I won’t let that happen, Sheriff. Cross my heart. And your coffee’s on me for a week.” I wink at him, then feign a nonchalant glance toward the cells. “So what were those two even fighting over, if they weren’t drunk?”
“Who the hell knows.” He lets out an exasperated gurgle. “Something about an old mine or some gold? Meh. By then they were snarling and spitting like rabid bears and I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Had to nearly get my squad car between them to shut it down.”
I’m trying to listen, to keep up my pleasantly neutral expression, but everything after the word gold turns into blank white noise.
My chest constricts and my knees lock.
I smile until it hurts because it’s all I can do not to dart a frightened look at that redheaded man.
He must be working with Paye.
And she’s onto the gold.
They were watching us the whole time.
That’s why she just had to fire off another text from hell.
Jesus.
My throat sticks, dry like I’m swallowing a mouthful of sand. My smile feels like a clown’s painted-on grimace, but I try to look concerned as I glance at Alaska, raising my voice to be heard.