The Right Kind of Trouble

by Shiloh Walker

  “That’s…” She licked her lips. “Gideon, that’s insane.”

  “Is it? How did they get inside the museum? The alarm system didn’t go off. It’s Saturday, so the museum wasn’t even being worked on. That system is keyed into the department. I would have known. You would have known. How did they get in?”

  Her eyes went blank.

  “There’s an explanation—” She started. She took a deep breath and blew it out. Some of the anger had faded, and he watched as the fear began to leech its way into her eyes. He hated to see it but he’d rather she be aware now. If she was aware, then she’d be more careful.

  “Then what is it?”

  Her gaze fell away.

  A moment passed and she shoved past him.

  “Don’t make me stick a cop on your ass, Mac,” he warned her.

  “Fuck off, Chief.”

  “Moira, damn it, would you just listen—”

  She spun back around, her eyes wild once more. “I am! You wanted me scared, fine. I am. I’m terrified and now I feel like somebody ripped something out of me too. Maybe you figure I got it coming.”

  “What…” He sputtered and shook his head. “Look, just … you need to get some rest. You’re exhausted and…”

  “Stop telling me what to do!” Her voice cracked as the words came out. “Go do your fucking job so I can go back to my house, Gideon! You hear me? Do your job and find this son of a bitch. If you were any good at being a cop, you should have already found him anyway!”

  Gideon stiffened.

  All around, people sucked in collective gasps as her words rang out across the gathered crowd.

  She blinked, shoulders rising and falling. Then, abruptly, she spun on her heel.

  And crashed straight into Brannon’s chest.

  “Hold up, sis,” he said, looking over her shoulder to meet Gideon’s gaze. Brannon gave a single, short nod.

  Gideon read an entire conversation in that look.

  I’ll take care of her.

  She won’t be alone.

  She didn’t mean it.

  Yeah. He knew all of that.

  Still, he had a hollow heart as he turned away and focused on the smoldering remains of the museum.

  He needed to do his fucking job.

  And she wasn’t wrong. If he was any good, he would have figured this out already.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Moira stood at the window staring out at the small town where she had lived all of her life. She loved it.

  McKay’s Treasure was, in a way, every bit as much her home as McKay’s Ferry was. It was her home and the people were her family.

  Granted, she didn’t always like all of them.

  But she knew them. Well, she thought she knew them and she felt like she could trust most of them to an extent.

  Don’t you get it, Mac?

  Gideon’s voice was a haunting whisper in her ear and although he hadn’t said it to be cruel or callous, she felt like curling in on herself and hiding.

  This kind of obsessive hate doesn’t come without somebody knowing you.

  Swallowing, she leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the smooth pane of glass, her hands spread wide on the smooth wood of the window frame. Slowly, she drew in a breath, holding it a moment before she let it out.

  You might have known him all of your life.

  She wished she could hate him for what he’d said, wished she hadn’t felt each word like a knife strike. But now, with her mind cleared, she couldn’t do anything but think.

  Moira had been blessed—or maybe she’d been cursed—with an overabundance of logic. Some people might look toward the end goal. Others might look at the things on the journey. Moira had always been able to see those things on the journey as well as the roadblocks and what lay at the end. It was that end that had finally helped her to make the agonizing—and now she understood—wrong decision to push Gideon away all those years ago.

  One day, she’d have to explain.

  One day soon.

  She’d been so angry with herself, an anger she’d buried down deep, deep inside, but every day it had grown.

  The misery that had settled inside her that night when she’d answered the door to find the chief of police, along with Gideon, Ella Sue, and her baby sister, had festered and spread, blooming into a deadly, poisonous thing that had infected her every waking moment—and almost all of her sleeping ones as well.

  She’d never been able to show it, either.

  Not Moira McKay, the head of the fine, upstanding McKay family—what a fucking joke.

  The three of them—Moira and her siblings— had almost been the downfall—no.

  “I was almost the downfall.” It had started and almost ended with her. All because she had been too proud, too arrogant to see how much help she’d needed. And too pathetically spoiled that day her parents had died. They’d wanted to arrange for Ella Sue to have guardianship of them but Moira had insisted on having her date.

  It had taken years, but she’d finally forgiven herself.

  Forgiven Gideon too—though she never should have blamed him to begin with. It had taken her even longer to understand that she shouldn’t have blamed herself, either.

  Tears burning her eyes, she closed them. Those tears fell like acid down her cheeks as memories of the days, weeks, months, and years that followed beat at her.

  If she’d just called Gideon and told him they needed to change up their plans, maybe Mom and Dad would have been alive, maybe not. She didn’t know.

  That was the reason she’d hated herself for all those years and why she’d pushed him away—she didn’t deserve to be happy. That was what she’d believed, why she’d pushed him away.

  Some selfish part of her had thought maybe he’d realized the ugliness that was festering in her and that he would come to hate her, and she hadn’t wanted that. Another part of her had wanted him to be happy even if she’d never allow it for herself. But no matter which way she’d looked at it, eighteen years ago she’d seen no happy ending for them. Not together.

  So she’d pushed him away.

  It had only been in the past couple of years that she realized how stupid she had been and only in the past few months that she had taken the next few vital steps—forgiving herself.

  Forgiving him … well, that had been the first—and easiest—thing to do, something she’d done years ago without even consciously realizing it. He’d done nothing wrong.

  It was her own lack of guilt that had taken all this time to accept.

  She’d mentioned the stubbornness of Scots and Southerners to Gideon just days ago—had it even been a full day? She wasn’t sure, but while she was possessed of that annoying logic, her own stubbornness had blinded her to so many things until recently.

  Now, though, with the blinders ripped away, that frustrating and nagging logic was pointing out small little details from the past few months.

  Neve’s arrival in town.

  The trouble she’d had.

  Shayla’s odd death.

  Hannah’s accident.

  They’d attributed all of Neve’s troubles to Clyde, save for the drugs. Brannon had hired an investigator that had turned up proof that William hadn’t even hit the state yet when that happened.

  Somebody else had done that—somebody who didn’t know Neve intimately.

  You could have known him all your life.

  “No,” she murmured. “He would have known that.”

  Neve’s fear of needles was legendary. It was one thing that had been joked about often enough that it had even reached Moira’s ears when her little sister had still been in high school—At least they don’t have to worry about her doing those kind of drugs you shoot up. She’d pass out before she even touched the damn thing.

  It had alternately embarrassed and enraged her, the way they’d talk about Neve, but then Moira would go home and Neve would be in trouble again, or money would missing from yet another store in town—or some ot
her thing that had always been tied in with her baby sister.

  Tucking the drugs into the back of her mind, she swung her focus to another element—another piece of the puzzle.

  Hannah. She didn’t know exactly where things stood with that. Brannon had pushed for information and Gideon had shared some of what he had. Some, not all.

  Whoever had attacked Brannon, whoever had chased Hannah that night in the winery, might as well have been a ghost. Senator Henry Roberts was connected to some of Hannah’s troubles—some—not all. He sure as hell hadn’t been the one chasing them through the winery. He’d been very busy being dead and all.

  William couldn’t have killed Shayla.

  Neve’s head spun as she ticked off one detail after another, pushing each one off to the side once she’d decided it wasn’t pertinent to what was going on now.

  She had facts, she had information—Brannon had pushed for some, Gideon had given what he’d felt he could. The man and his badge, she had to give him credit, he stood by that badge and the oaths he’d taken. But she had access to other information, thanks to her hardheaded brother. He had quietly used the investigators McKay Enterprises had access to, copying her and Neve on all reports.

  “Take William out of the picture,” she muttered, turning away from the window and pressing the tips of her fingers to her eyes.

  If they only pinned Neve’s attack, and the mess with Ian’s bike, on William … then everything else …

  Everything else.

  Don’t you get it, Mac?

  Somebody she knew, and knew well, just as Gideon had said. But he was wrong on one front. He—or she—hadn’t known her, or her siblings—their whole lives, or if he had, he hadn’t known them well. A distant connection. Somebody fairly local.

  “It could be anybody.”

  Swearing under her breath, she rubbed at the back of her neck and lifted her eyes to the ceiling as a headache pulsed behind her eyes. How many people did she know? How many people had a reason to hate the McKay family or McKay Enterprises and its various business arms?

  If she looked at it from a personal standpoint … well, they had a list of people who didn’t much care for them and a list of people who outright hated them—on a personal level. On a business level, those lists got even longer.

  “Kevin,” she whispered. “Kevin works—worked—for McKay.” Maybe that was where she needed to focus. If somebody had approached Kevin, it was more than likely it had happened through McKay Enterprises. Screw all this bullshit about familial connections—she’d heard Kevin talking about having no family. She knew what it was like to miss something. She had her brother and sister, yes, but she’d spent the past twenty years missing her parents, just wishing they were there to tell her which step to take, which decision was the right one. All somebody would have had to do, she suspected, was talk to the guy for twenty minutes and they’d know he was lonely, that he wanted to … belong. Maybe he’d just been an easy way in.

  But everything seemed so ugly. So personal.

  Don’t you get it, Mac?

  She closed her eyes and made herself think back—again—over everything that had happened. The bullshit report to the museum, the attacks on Hannah and Brannon, the drugs planted on Neve, the fires in the bookstore and the museum. All ugly, cruel things. Some small and petty, others big and dangerous. But all of them designed to strike at them, designed to hurt.

  “We know him,” she whispered.

  * * *

  “It’s somebody I know,” she whispered. “He knows us.”

  Just like Gideon had said. Right before she yelled at him and told him to do his job.

  A headache pounded behind her eyes and she rubbed at the back of her neck. Her thoughts just wouldn’t shut down and she couldn’t get away from any of them.

  It was why she hadn’t wanted to be here. If she’d gone home, she could have hidden from this reality, but here at Brannon’s she could still smell the stink of smoke and see the movement from the firefighters down at the blockade they’d erected at the end of Main. The one thing she couldn’t do was shut down her thoughts.

  A faint noise from behind her set her heart to racing, and she spun around, her hand pressed to her chest.

  When she saw Hannah standing in the door to the room she shared with Brannon, Moira practically collapsed against the wall in relief. “Damn it, it’s you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hannah gave her a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s okay.” Moira said. “Jumpy.”

  “At this point, if you weren’t jumpy, I’d been questioning your mental status.” Moving deeper into the room, Hannah rubbed at her swollen belly. “I’m getting the munchies all the time these days. Can’t wait for this baby to come.”

  Moira calculated the time and managed a smile—a real one. “It’s just a couple of months now.” She grimaced as she realized how close the holidays were—Hannah was due in late February and there was a wedding to squeeze in between Christmas and Hannah’s due date. Both the brides-to-be had agreed they didn’t want a Christmas wedding, and Branon was adamant that he marry Hannah before the baby came, while Neve demanded she have time to plan a real wedding. So … January.

  “Want to join me for a snack?” Hannah asked hopefully.

  Although she wasn’t hungry, Moira appreciated the distraction and went to join Hannah in the kitchen area. When Brannon had taken over this building, he’d all but demolished the top level and had the entire loft done to his specifications. The top floor was his “in town” home. Now, instead of small, dusty rooms, he had a wide, open area that served as both living room and kitchen and dining area, with several bedrooms as well as the master. Moira was using one of the guest bedrooms. In addition, there was a small gym, a laundry, and two bathrooms.

  Brannon didn’t do small scale.

  Hannah rubbed at her belly and groaned as she stared into the kitchen. “This baby wants to be a linebacker, I swear.”

  “Just a few more months,” Moira said again, distracted by the pieces of the puzzle still running through her mind.

  Instead of feeling reassured, Hannah snorted. “Don’t remind me. I’m going to be the size of a houseboat by the time she gets here. She’s already using my bladder as a trampoline.”

  Moira would’ve thought it would be impossible to laugh but Hannah startled one out of her. “What an image. So I guess she’s moving around a lot.”

  “Yeah.” A soft smile curled Hannah’s lips despite her wry tone. “It’s tickling Brannon to pieces, but he’s not the one who has a ping-pong game going on his belly.” Hannah opened the refrigerator and stared inside but then closed it, her face dark. “I want pizza. Why don’t we have an all-night pizza place here?”

  Moira pursed her lips. “The demographic in Treasure doesn’t really call for that. I think it’s just pregnant women.”

  “The way I’m going, I can keep an entire chain afloat for years.” Hannah rubbed a hand over her belly as she opened the freezer. She pulled out a box of individual frozen pizzas and gave them a look of distaste.

  “Grumble too much, you’re gonna wake Brannon up.” Moira glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see her brother there, pulling on his shirt and shoes to go on a pizza hunt. “He’ll go dig up some pizza from somewhere.”

  “Normally that idea would guilt me into stopping.” Hannah shrugged as she ripped the box open. “But he’s not going to go anywhere with you here, and I’m not leaving the house. He’ll actually just heat up the pizza here or just help me make some. I’ll head it off and eat this stuff.”

  Moira pursed her lips as she tried to picture Brannon dragging his lazy ass out of bed to make pizza in the middle of the night. Go buy it, sure—that required little brainpower. But making it?

  “You hungry?” Hannah asked, interrupting her mental reverie. As she tore open one of the pizzas, she gave Moira a hopeful look. “Please don’t make me eat this alone.”

  Moira wasn’t
really hungry, but she smiled at Hannah. She hadn’t had dinner and she suspected she wouldn’t want to eat much in the morning either. “I can eat.”

  “Good,” Hannah said, sighing happily. “I hate to be a glutton alone.”

  A few minutes later with microwave pizza, water for Hannah and wine that cost three hundred dollars a bottle for Moira, they sat down at the table. Hannah took one bite, chewed, and swallowed before looking over at Moira. “So how do you plan on making up with Gideon?”

  “You know, Hannah?” Moira had lifted her glass to her lips, but now she lowered it, focusing on the glossy wood surface of the table. The wine warmed her belly and she had a feeling it was going to go straight to her head. Save for those few fries she’d stolen—and then puked up—she hadn’t had anything since breakfast the day before. Although it hadn’t quite been twenty-four hours, it felt like an entire lifetime ago. “This is one of the things I love about you. Some people would hesitate to ask such a personal question, but you just jump in, feetfirst.”

  “Not enough time in life to beat around the bush.” Hannah took another bite of pizza. “And you didn’t answer.”

  “That is because I was trying to dodge it.” Moira grabbed a bit of uneaten crust and tossed it at Hannah. To her surprise, Hannah swayed to the side and caught the small piece in her mouth, right out of midair. Yet again, she startled a laugh out of Moira.

  “I know you are trying to dodge me.” Hannah shrugged. “But I’m not that easy to dodge. After all, I’m hooked up with Brannon, and he is master of the dodge.”

  “Point taken.” Brooding, she picked up her wine and took a healthy swallow. Before she answered, she forced herself to take a bite of the pizza, although it was bland and tasteless, the dough more like tomato smeared cardboard. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I messed up. And after how often I have messed up with him? I’m almost afraid to even look at him, Hannah.”

  The sensation in her belly got worse, and she pushed the pizza away. “I knew I was overreacting. I knew I was being stupid. But I couldn’t stop myself. Now…” She closed her eyes, dropping her face into her hands. Heels to the sockets of her eyes, she said, “Now I’ve got to talk to him and find a way to fix this.”