“I’m a grown woman!”
Neve’s shout carried, drawing attention toward her and William mentally shook his head. Making a spectacle of herself.
He could imagine what they were arguing about.
He hadn’t expected Brannon to show up, not like this, and he idly toyed with the lovely scenario of killing those two. Ian and Brannon. Not Neve. Never Neve. She’d come home. He’d remind her of her place. He had no doubt it would take time and he expected he’d have a hard time forgiving her latest lapse. He might not even be able to, but he had no plans of letting her get away from him.
“More coffee?”
He jerked his gaze up, caught off guard by the interruption. With a terse no, he sent the girl on her way.
He needed to get out of here.
So far, they’d been too busy arguing—or pawing each other in Neve and Ian’s case—to notice him, but he wasn’t about to take the chance that any of them would see him.
Not yet.
* * *
The hair on the back of Gideon’s neck stood on end.
He caught the seemingly casual glance from Ian and wondered if the other man felt it, too.
Neve and Brannon were too busy trying to go at each other’s throats and when Neve took one step toward her brother, her face flushed, Gideon thought maybe he should put an end to this before she decided to get in touch with her childhood nickname.
He could see her punching her brother and thought it might even do her some good to vent some of the emotion he could sense surging inside her.
But not here.
Not now.
“Enough,” he said. As he moved between them, he sent a casual look around. They did the same, although he wasn’t doing it to make them aware of just how much attention they were attracting. He was looking. He even had a feeling he knew just who he was looking for.
Somebody was watching them. Watching the whole thing and Gideon would bet his left nut that it was William Clyde.
“Are you trying to provide free entertainment for the whole town?” he asked when Brannon went to snarl at him.
The town can go get fucked, Brannon’s expression clearly said.
Slanting a look at Neve, Gideon waited.
“If you try to tell me that you honestly expect me to go into hiding—”
“I don’t,” he said, interrupting.
She blinked, caught off guard.
“You … what?”
That came from Brannon, and Gideon reached up, skimming the flat of his hand across his head before he looked back at the older McKay. “If she tries to hide, he’ll just come after her,” Gideon pointed out. “He’s already demonstrated that.”
Demonstrated a hell of a lot more, too. Keeping his frustration down, Gideon swept the surrounding area with another quick look but saw nothing out of place. People out for a late breakfast or early lunch cloistered around the small tables outside the diner. Several couples, a small family, a couple of lone diners, all of them focused on breakfast, coffee, paying their tabs.
The bookstore hadn’t opened yet, although he could see the manager Vera puttering around inside, getting ready for the day.
The hardware store was busy, although more than a few loitered on the huge porch. Their attention was none too subtly focused on the cop cars—and Neve.
A perfectly normal morning.
But it wasn’t.
“Look,” he said, attention split between the McKays and everybody moving around them. He was here. William Clyde. Gideon could all but feel him. He needed to get Neve off the street, back home. Not that he planned on telling her that. Neve needed more careful handling than that. “Neve is right—she’s a grown woman. She can’t live her life trapped up in Ferry and only leaving when she has you or Moira there to hold her hand.”
“Fine.” Brannon bit the word off. “Ian can hold her fucking hand.”
Gideon took a deep breath. “Brannon—”
“Chief.”
“What?” Aggravation underscoring the word, he spun to glare at his man. Griffin stood there, a battered green bag hanging from one gloved hand.
“My backpack!” Neve shoved past the three men and Hannah, advancing on the man in uniform.
“It was on the ground in the alley,” Griffin said. He glanced over at Gideon and the look was telling. And when Neve went to reach for it, he shifted out of her reach. “Chief.”
What now?
Gideon joined Neve as Griffin turned over the backpack to her. It looked like something from an army surplus store, old and worn, fading at the seams. Neve clutched it to her chest like it was made of gold. But that lasted all of two seconds before she lowered it, a frown appearing on her face.
She unzipped it.
Griffin glanced at him again.
Gideon steeled himself and crowded in until he could see inside the bag.
But that wasn’t really necessary.
It fell from Neve’s hands, spilling its contents out on the sidewalk.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It had been a long time since Neve had been in this position.
Numb and hollowed-out, she sat in a hard, ladder-backed chair while Brannon braced his hands on Gideon’s desk. “You’re not talking to her until she has a fucking lawyer.”
A lawyer.
Well, that was new.
All the times she’d been requested to come to the police department—a few items are missing … the shop owner said Neve was in the store—now, Ms. McKay, we’re not insinuating your sister stole anything, but some money is missing from the cash register—but she’d never heard that.
Odd, really. As often as she’d been brought in here, by a scowling Moira or a disappointed Ella Sue, she’d never once heard the word lawyer. She wondered just what Ella Sue and Moira had done all those times. Not that she’d actually been the one to steal anything, but she’d played the distraction or looked the other way more than a few times with her so-called friends.
The only real friend she’d had in high school had been Hannah and Hannah had always hurried home after school.
“If you’d just sit your ass down and take a few deep breaths, we’ll talk about that,” Gideon said.
“You.” Brannon jabbed a finger toward Gideon. “You can shove the idea of talking up your ass until—”
“Boys.”
Neve fought the urge to hunch her shoulders and cower into the chair at the sound of Moira’s cool voice.
Brannon tossed a furious look over his shoulder. “Moira, have you gotten ahold of Danvers?”
“Yes.” She sighed and glanced over at Neve, a tired smile on her lips. “But he’s on a fishing trip with his son. He can get here if it’s urgent, but it will take an hour at least.”
“It’s not urgent,” Gideon said.
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Marshall!”
“Enough!”
Neve didn’t know who was more surprised, her siblings or herself. Gideon, though, he looked like he was biting back a smile. As she stood, he sat down and damn if she wasn’t right. He had a smile in his eyes.
“I don’t see anything amusing about this.” She glared a hole through him—or tried to.
“Oh, I’m not amused.” Gideon raised his shoulders. “I’m just enjoying a nice, quick moment of I knew it.”
“Knew what?” She wanted to curl back into the chair and hide away.
“I knew you were still in there, Trouble.”
While she was processing that, he looked at Brannon. “I know it’s hard for you to cool off once you get worked up, Bran, but yank your head out of your ass and listen to me—for two minutes.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” Moira cut him off and grabbed his arm.
It was almost comical, watching her diminutive sister pull her much taller brother away from the desk. She shoved him toward a chair and it wasn’t a surprise to anybody that he actually sat down.
“I know it isn’t hers,” Gideon said into the silence.
Neve closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief, barely hearing Brannon’s confused question over the pounding in her ears.
Their voices blurred into nothing but white noise as she forced herself to take a breath.
Then she opened her eyes and stared at Gideon. Thank you.
She didn’t say it, but he seemed to hear the words nonetheless.
“If you know that, then why are we here?”
“Excuse me.” Moira was coolly polite, her best I’m in charge smile firmly in place. “But you are forgetting I missed the earlier parts of this story, so if somebody could please enlighten me…?”
Neve tried to find the words to explain. But while she was looking for them, Gideon was acting. He drew on a glove and then reached down next to the desk.
Neve stared at her familiar old bag, watching with a curious sense of detachment as Gideon dumped the contests out.
Moira sucked in a breath.
Neve braced herself.
“This is a bunch of bullshit.” Moira, hands planted on her hips, stared at the items on the desk with a look of disgust. “Gideon, you know this is a bunch of bullshit.”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded, picking up a pen to nudge the items around. He’d acted quickly out on the street, snatching gloves from his pockets and scooping everything back into the bag even as he told Neve she’d have to come to the station.
How many had seen, though?
How many had seen the hypodermic needle, the syringe? The unlabeled vials and the little white baggie.
She didn’t need anybody to tell her what it was.
A few of the women she’d known during her terribly brief modeling career had been coke users. The powdery white substance had all but mocked her.
Trouble. You’re nothing but trouble.
She’d come here expecting Gideon to question her, expecting Brannon and Moira’s disappointment.
Swallowing, she forced herself to speak. “How…” She had to clear her throat before she could manage another word. “How do you know it’s not mine?”
The three of them looked at her.
She met their gazes, Brannon’s, Gideon’s, finally Moira’s. “How do you know?” she asked again. “Y’all haven’t seen me in years. I could have picked up a lot of bad habits.”
Gideon snorted. “Neve, your worst habit is finding yourself in a mess.”
“Honey.” Moira reached down, going to pick up something from the desk, but Gideon stopped her.
“Evidence,” he said softly.
She rolled her eyes and then snatched a pencil from the cup on his desk, using it in much the same fashion Gideon had. “I’d believe you had sprouted horns and a tail before I’d believe you’d shoot up, Neve.” She nudged the hypodermic out of the mess and slid Neve a look. “You can’t even look at a needle without feeling like you’re going to pass out.”
“I can…” Her gaze dropped to the needle and blood started to roar in her ears. Black dots danced in front of her eyes and she turned away. “Well. Point made.”
Abruptly, she laughed. “Thanks for that.”
“For what?”
She looked back to watch as Moira settled her hips against Gideon’s desk, her back to him as she studied her younger sister. Moira couldn’t see the way Gideon’s gaze slid to her, then away, then back again as if he just couldn’t help a few lingering, longing glances.
He looked up then and saw Neve watching him. His lids drooped over his eyes and she averted her gaze, giving him the illusion of privacy, although both of them knew it was just that—an illusion. She understood how he felt, and she hurt for him.
Completely unaware, Moira lifted a perfectly plucked brow. “Thanks for remembering all the times we had to forcibly hold you down when you had to get shots? Remembering how you once gave me a bloody nose trying to get away from the needles?”
“I think I apologized for that,” Neve said, embarrassed. She looked back at the needle and felt that familiar churning in her gut. She hated needles. Hated them.
“So it looks like we’ve got another thing to thank your ex-boyfriend for,” Brannon said and the words were steely, cold. “Trying to set you up like this.”
Neve frowned.
Gideon caught sight of it and lifted a brow.
She gave him a vague smile, her mind already churning, pushing around the new pieces to this very odd puzzle. “I guess my letters are gone,” she said, a constriction settling deep inside her chest. “I … uh. Well. They’re gone.”
“What letters?” Moira asked.
Neve licked her lips and then glanced at Gideon. He rubbed his neck and gave her a short nod.
“I wrote you.” She moved to the window and stared outside. The awning over the pub beckoned her and she thought about going down there, sitting at the bar and just watching Ian. The very idea heated her skin in ways she couldn’t even begin to grasp. Just the thought of him settled her and that was unsettling. Instead of thinking about that, she pushed Ian out of her mind. “I wrote you both. Ella Sue, too … although I couldn’t remember her address, so I just sent them to her at Ferry.”
The strained silence behind her left her nerves humming and she felt like she could snap. As an ache settled behind her eyes, she turned to face her brother and sister.
“We…” Moira looked at Brannon and then back to her. “We never got any letters, Neve.”
“I know.” She shot Brannon a look, saw the dull red creeping up his cheeks. She was too tired to be irritated with him, though. “I also know you all wrote me … but I never got a single damn letter.”
While Moira sagged against the desk, dazed, Neve shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to the letters you sent me, although I imagine William had something to do with that. The ones I sent you? No idea. But once I got stateside, they started coming back to me. Return to sender was written across each one. They’d never even been opened.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Moira said, shaking her head. She shoved off the desk and started to pace.
Neve could see her reflection in the window, a blur of constant motion and dark red hair. “Tell me about it.”
But she might as well have not said anything.
“Gideon, why would somebody do that? Could it have been William?” She said his name like it tasted bad.
Gideon responded, but Neve didn’t even process his words, staring out the window as she tried to puzzle it out in her head.
She could think of any number of reasons why William would have—and had—interfered with her contacting her family. What she didn’t understand was how he’d managed to get in the way even after she left him, even after she left the country—and then Europe altogether.
While they talked behind her, she closed her eyes and fought the half-mad panic that kept trying to well up inside her.
He was close.
He’d been watching her.
Every other time this had happened, she’d taken off and disappeared. She knew it was still an option. She could run and she could, if she tried, find a way to really disappear. She had the money and she had the time.
But she was done running.
Fighting those urges wasn’t easy.
This was home.
Courage had nothing do with it, because if she’d been courageous, she would have left him the very first time he’d raised a hand to her. She would have left him once she saw through his machinations—and she had. Twisting everything up on her so that she once more doubted herself, that she continued to doubt her family.
“Neve?”
Tired, she turned back to the room. “What?”
Moira hesitated, whatever question she’d had in mind seeming to freeze in her throat as the two sisters stared at each other.
“Are you…” Moira stopped and huffed out a breath. “I want to ask if you’re okay, and that’s stupid. How can you be okay? I want to do something.”
“You already did.” Chilled despite the heat that warmed th
e window at her back, Neve rubbed her hands down her arms. “All of you did. You trusted me.”
Brannon made a disgusted noise under his breath. “It’s got nothing to do with trust.” He shook his head, his face dark with a scowl. “We know you.”
“Do you?” She angled her head to the side. “I’ve been gone a long time and I was just a kid when I left. A kid who got into a whole hell of a lot of trouble, who caused a whole hell of a lot of trouble.”
Brannon looked away.
“Neve.”
The guilt in Brannon’s eyes, echoes of regret and rage, tugged at her and added to the mess of emotions inside her. But they didn’t know her—
“Neve.” Gideon had crossed the room to stand in front of her and he reached out, caught her hand. “I know you.” A faint smile curled his lips and she saw the truth there, plainly written in his eyes. Gideon did know her. The handful of years that stretched between them made little difference to him. “I didn’t even have a second’s doubt when I saw the drug paraphernalia. Your brother and sister? They didn’t, either.”
He squeezed her hand and then let go. “Now … we need to start thinking. Those things don’t belong to you. We need to focus on other issues now.”
He didn’t elaborate, but she knew those things weren’t things at all. It was a person.
William.
* * *
A set of keys dangled in front of him.
Turning his head, Ian met Neve’s eyes.
Neve’s guarded eyes.
He’d seen what was in her bag well enough. He had eyes. But he also had a brain. He’d seen the stunned surprise on Neve’s face and more, he remembered.
She was terrified of needles.
Her bag had gone missing either the night she hit town or the next day. Plenty of time for somebody to plant things in there that weren’t hers. Plenty of time, although he couldn’t quite figure out the why.
Reaching up, he took the keys, pretending to study them with disappointment. “It’s not his Bugatti.”
“Please.” Some of the tension faded from her rigid form and she slid onto a stool in front of him. “As if he’d let me touch those keys—or that car.”
“I drove it once.” Ian braced his hands on the bar and leaned forward slightly, just enough that he could catch the scent of her over everything else. That scent had clung to his skin most of the night and he’d hated to wash it off.
Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) Page 27