by Tara Sivec
“I wasn’t sure what to expect. Figured you would have gotten pissed by now, and tossed everything out onto the curb, just to be difficult.” She shrugs, making Dax chuckle. “Oh my, is that plant on the windowsill in your kitchen actually alive?”
Dax crooks his elbow, and my mom slides her hand through his arm.
“Come on, Barb, let me introduce you to Marilyn Mongrow, and I can show you how I make my red wine reduction gravy.”
I watch the two of them walk over to the kitchen. They talk and laugh like they’ve known each other for years and aren’t just now meeting for the first time, aside from the times they’ve spoken when I’ve had her on speakerphone the last few weeks. The knife in my chest pushes in a little deeper, and I know I have to come clean with Dax as soon as possible.
Once the two of them are preoccupied in the kitchen and Casey goes back outside to put the lawn chairs in their trunk, my dad glares at me.
“I ought to punch you right in the throat for leaving me hanging like that! Learn to tell a story faster!” he whispers angrily. “What did the email say, and who was it from?”
“It was from Nanci the first week Ryan started, asking him to draft up the map and start keeping an otter schedule. He made a couple versions to make sure he got everything right, which is why Davidson found the copies he did in Ryan’s room. He was told it was for the employee handbook,” I quickly whisper, glancing over to my front door when it opens again to see Casey walk back in with the woman I’m currently talking about.
My palms start sweating, and my heart feels like it’s breaking in half when Dax walks over to Nanci and gives her a big hug.
“Okay, so what’s the problem, and why are you lying to Dax?” my dad asks.
“Because I nonchalantly asked Dax about their employee handbook when I called him on my way home from Ryan’s house. They don’t have one, they’ve never had one, and they have no plans to create one. I quickly switched around the story to something as believable as possible, so Dax will leave it alone and I can do a little more research before I accuse the woman he thinks of as a stand-in mother of stealing his otters.”
My eyes start stinging again, and I glance over at my TV that honestly now gives me a cramp in my neck since I have to look up at it.
Oh for fuck’s sake, the lies just won’t stop now.
The one good thing about this dinner party from hell is I’ll be sitting at the same table with my new prime suspect. A woman Dax trusts more than anyone else in this world. If she really is behind this, it could break him worse than the Phina situation from five years ago and worse than the army situation.
Yep, this is gonna be fun for me.
After a few beats, my dad looks at me blankly. “Well, you should have seen that one coming.” He laughs when I look at him like I want to punch him in the face. “Did you forget how to think like a cop already? You’ve been spending all this time looking into people who have it out for Dax or people who are just bad, with bad intentions. But who’s the first suspect in any kidnapping?” my dad asks, making me want to punch myself in the face when what he’s saying penetrates my brain.
“Someone the victim loves, someone they trust,” I mutter, shaking my head in annoyance at myself.
“Dax doesn’t love or trust many people that I know of,” he reminds me.
Except me. I’m not positive on the love thing, but I know he trusts me. And I’m lying to him.
“But why would Nanci do this? She of all people knows how hard something like this would be on Dax. It just doesn’t make sense that she would do something so cruel.”
“Maybe she didn’t do it to be cruel. Who knows? We need to figure out motive. This is going to be fun. I’m like a double agent now.” My dad suddenly smiles, taking another sip of his drink. “Last week, I was helping Dax lie to you. Now this week, I’m helping you lie to Dax.”
“I’m trying to spare his feelings until I can find out for sure what the hell is going on and why Nanci would have any kind of involvement in this. There’s no point upsetting him or having him get mad at Nanci if this turns out to be nothing.”
See? I’m doing good things here!
“I think I’ve still got some walkie-talkies in a box somewhere in the basement we can use. From now on, we refer to this as Operation Trash Panda, so no one knows what we’re discussing, and in honor of poor Bandit, who thought he would get to play a little poker tonight.
There’s another knock at my door, and I set my empty wineglass down on the bar cart when I see my brother walk in.
“Yo, Dax! I need you to set another place!” Davidson shouts from the door, holding up a shoebox. “I didn’t want to leave Leonardo Da Pinchi home alone, and he’s starving. You better not be serving seafood. That is highly offensive to Leo.”
“If he gets to have Leo at the table, I get to have Bandit!” my dad shouts with a stomp of his foot.
Deciding to grab the entire bottle of wine instead, I take it with me to join everyone in the living room and drink away my anxiety. I make a silent promise that I will tell Dax the truth as soon as I know for sure what is going on.
Maybe I’m making this into something it’s not. Nanci could be completely innocent.
CHAPTER 20
Bring It, Bitch
Harley
“You mean to tell me that you don’t normally stay with them at night?”
Dax laughs and shakes his head. He leans forward and rests his elbows on the table to continue his conversation, while I pour myself another glass of wine from the bottle he just uncorked. “Oh hell no. They have a tendency to be nocturnal. I’d never get any sleep.”
“Well, this is brand new information!” Martin Trevino laughs a little too loudly, grabbing his glass of gin from the table and throwing back the entire thing.
“Trash panda!”
All conversation at the table stops when my dad shouts, and then everyone holds up their glass and does a cheers toward the dead raccoon holding a hand of playing cards in the middle of the table before resuming their discussions. My dad has taken his double agent status to heart, helpfully shouting the words “trash panda” every time someone at the table says anything that could be a clue about the otters. Everyone just assumes he’s proud of Bandit the dead raccoon, and not idiotically trying to clue me in.
At least thanks to him I’ve now been thinking like a cop, since he went out to the car and brought back his stupid, horrifying taxidermy to stick in the middle of the table. Sadly, Dax has spent the entire evening thinking like a son. He’s been so busy talking to his dad like a real human being instead of an angry son of a bitch holding a grudge that he hasn’t paid attention to any of the little things I have throughout dinner.
Like when my mom was telling Nanci that she and Casey were thinking about taking a trip to Myrtle Beach. I made it look like I was very intently listening to something my brother was saying, while Nanci quietly told my mom to go to Virginia Beach instead, because she has an ex-husband who lives there and it’s so much nicer.
Like how I excused myself to go to the bathroom and hid around the corner in the hallway long enough to hear Nanci tell my stepfather she has an ex in Texas who butchers his own cows, when Casey was complaining about no one having any good steaks around here. Sending a quick text to my private investigator before I went back out to the table, I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before I find out Nanci also has an ex in Minnesota, the third and final state we received a postcard from about Chris and Lincoln.
I had prepared myself for Nanci. I was resigned to the fact that I might have to tell Dax the important mother-figure in his life could have been lying to him for weeks, maybe even months. What I wasn’t prepared for was for Dax’s father to be in on this as well. That is a kick to the gut I wasn’t expecting—and something Dax has been oblivious to since his father walked in the door.
He hasn’t noticed that his dad only wants to talk about otters. What they eat, where they sleep, how often they need t
o be fed, how much they sleep… the questions just keep on coming, one right after another. Even when Dax tries to talk about something else, Martin just steers the conversation right back to the otters.
Regardless of all his protests, the only thing Dax has ever wanted is a normal, healthy relationship with his father. One where his dad supports his dreams and is actually interested in them. One where his father is proud of him and isn’t condescending or calling him names. And the sweet, amazing guy I’m dating is finally getting the things he’s always wanted, and it’s all a bunch of bullshit. He’s eating up every damn word out of his father’s mouth, and I keep stress-drinking wine to stop myself from screaming at the man and calling him a fraud.
Dax is so happily oblivious he hasn’t noticed that his previously well-dressed and well-groomed father looks like he’s been wearing the same clothes for a week and hasn’t slept since the last time we saw him, when he was sneaking around Dax’s office.
I want to pistol whip these two people that are playing with him like this, but I can’t. First, because Dax would probably frown on that, and second, because I don’t think I could pistol whip the side of an entire building and manage to hit it. I’ve had a lot of wine.
Oh… and I still don’t know why in the hell they’ve done this to him, or when they plan on giving him back his damn otters!
“Trash panda!” I shout.
My dad looks at me funny from the other end of the table when everyone holds their glasses up to the dead raccoon, and I just shrug, taking another healthy swallow of wine that I probably shouldn’t. Dax leans back in his chair next to me and casually rests his arm across the back of mine. His fingertips start tracing small circles against my one bare shoulder from the oversized sweater I threw on with my jeans, and for a second, I forget why I’m on edge.
I don’t really have to tell him, right? I could just wrangle up two new otters and play them off as Chris and Lincoln. He’ll never know. People do that shit all time with their kids and goldfish.
“Hey, Dax!” I say brightly, keeping my eyes on his father who looks down at his phone when it buzzes. “Everyone thinks otters are so cute and cuddly, but they aren’t always, are they? Why don’t you tell us about that?”
I take another drink of my wine and wait.
“For the most part, they are,” Dax continues talking to his father while the rest of our guests are still deep in their own conversations around us, dinner and dessert finished long ago. “But they also have teeth like knives and jaws that can crush bone. They’ve been known to rape seals to death, so that’s fun. And if they feel threatened at all, they can and will brutally attack you without any warning. That’s why only a highly trained professional should take care of them. Harley, can you pass me the wine, please?”
Without taking my eyes off of Dax’s father, I reach over and blindly grab the bottle and hand it to Dax. I watched Martin’s complexion get paler and paler with each new horrifying fact Dax listed about otters, and I want this man to look at me, so he knows that I know.
I think Martin Trevino has had Dax’s otters this entire time. I think that’s why Dax caught him snooping in his office that day. He probably needed food or supplies. And by the looks of him, he clearly can’t handle taking care of them. But why? And why is Nanci helping him?
Dax’s dad grabs his phone from the table again and sends off a quick text while Dax leans over and kisses my cheek.
“This is going great, isn’t it?” he whispers in my ear blissfully. “I should take his phone away from him.”
I glance over to see Dax chuckle softly and shake his head at his father, and it takes everything in me not to grab the bottle of wine off the table and bash it over Martin’s head. Dax joked with him earlier that he knew his dad could never really retire and assumed his incessant phone checking was about work. But I knew that jerk was probably checking with whoever he left in charge of the otters to come here.
I have to tell him.
“I really, really like you, Harley Blake,” Dax whispers in my ear, leaning closer and nuzzling his nose against my cheek.
I close my eyes and swallow past the lump in my throat when he places a soft kiss right next to my ear.
Shit… he’s so happy. But I have to tell him. Keeping this from him for the last day and a half is bad enough.
Dax moves away from me to go back to talking to his father, and I take another big gulp of wine when Phina leans closer from the other side of me.
“You look like you can’t decide between hurting someone or vomiting all over this table,” she whispers. “You okay?”
“Great, super, never been better.”
Phina studies me for a few minutes, knows I’m lying, but doesn’t call me out on it. When I met her five years ago, I don’t know what it was, but there was something about her I immediately liked, even though we were only in the same room together for about thirty seconds before I dumped coffee in Dax’s lap and stormed out of the room. After chatting with her off and on throughout dinner, while I kept my ear on Dax and his dad and whatever Nanci was saying at the other end of the table, I was glad to see she was just as likable, if not a little quieter and more serious than I’m used to. And I am completely envious of her long, luxurious red hair and how every so often, DJ will silently mouth the words I love you to her from across the table then go back to what he was saying to my brother on the other side of him. Like he just wants to make sure she hasn’t forgotten between the appetizer and the main course. It’s so sweet I want to puke.
That in itself should be enough to have me switching from wine to hard liquor immediately, on top of the Martin and Nanci situation. Since when am I envious of couples?
“I’m not really big on girlfriends,” Phina admits, removing her napkin from her lap and placing it on the table. “Too much drama. I have one really good girlfriend named Finnley, and she’s my only female friend, because she’s not annoying. You’re not annoying either. I like you, and I have really liked you for Dax since the day I met you. So, if you ever need someone to talk to, especially about the guy on the other side of you, who can be very intolerable at times, have him give you my number.”
“I heard that,” Dax chimes in from the other side of me, leaning forward to look around me at Phina.
“You were supposed to.” Phina smiles and gives him the finger. Dax laughs then goes back to answering another stupid otter question from his father.
Before I can immediately take her up on her offer, drag her somewhere private, spill my guts about Dax’s dad and Nanci, and how I’m feeling all these feelings for him and am scared as hell about it, DJ tells Phina they need to get home and relieve the babysitter.
Once they get up, everyone gets up. I don’t know Dax’s dad well enough yet to corner him somewhere away from Dax and grill him before he goes, even though I want to. I want to wring that man’s neck and then kick him in the balls. And of course the guy doesn’t even look over at me when he says a distracted goodbye and a thank you for having him in my home, so I can give him a really, really angry glare to make myself feel better.
I watch Dax throw his arm around his dad’s shoulders as he walks him to the door, smiling and laughing as he goes. I take a couple deep, calming breaths, focusing on Nanci instead as I get up from the table.
She barely knew me, and that woman was asking me about my sexual preferences a month ago. I have no problem cornering her and screaming in her face.
You know, quietly, so Dax doesn’t hear me.
While everyone is saying their goodbyes and walking out the door, and my dad is trying to get my mom to give Bandit the trash panda a hug as they walk through the living room, Nanci’s eyes meet mine across the room.
I finally get to give her the death glare I’d been saving for Martin, and much to my delight, she quickly turns away from me, practically pushing my stepfather out of the way to try to get out the door faster.
Dax has already disappeared outside with Martin to walk him to his
car, and by the time I make it across my living room, Nanci is the last one in the line to get out my door. I make it to her right when she starts to step out onto my front porch. Reaching out and wrapping my hand around her arm, I stop her in the doorway.
“We need to talk,” I mutter angrily when she looks back over her shoulder at me.
“Sorry! I can’t hear you!” Nanci shouts, shrugging out of my hold to bring her hand up to her ear. “I took my hearing aids out!”
I don’t know whether or not she actually wears hearing aids, and since there are still people in my front yard filing to their cars, I probably shouldn’t shout at this older woman that she’s a fucking liar and she can hear just fine.
“Dax! Yoohoo! Come walk me to my car!” Nanci yells, waving to Dax, quickly turning away from me, and walking out onto the porch.
Of course Dax immediately comes running, because he’s sweet, and amazing, and wonderful, and I’m now even more pissed off, because if shouting about her being able to hear me was wrong, giving her a swift kick in the ass so she goes flying off my porch would be even more frowned upon.
When Dax is a few feet away from the steps, walking toward Nanci the liar with a huge grin on his face, I walk up behind her and whisper in her ear.
“You can run, but you can’t hide. I’m onto you, and I know damn well you can hear me.”
Nanci steps down onto the first step to meet Dax, looking back over her shoulder at me.
“Bring it, bitch,” she whispers.
I’m too busy being shocked this formerly sweet, older woman just cursed at me to be annoyed by the cheeky wink she gives me before practically flouncing down the stairs to grab onto Dax’s arm and let him walk her to her car.
“Forgot my phone,” my mom says, coming back up the porch steps and stopping right in front of me. “You look like you want to kill someone. It was a nice dinner party. Aside from your brother spoon-feeding a crab and your father making everyone toast that ridiculous raccoon all night. What’s wrong?”