“Needs work. I don’t think it’s the one,” I joke, feigning sadness as I shake my head.
“I have something else in mind. You up for a little double-oh-seven work?” Blake asks me with a daring smile.
“You can be James Bond.” I point at him, and then myself. “I’m sticking with Velma. Jinkies!”
“Hmm, and there goes my idea of your being a ‘Bond girl’,” Blake teases, putting the car in reverse with a shake of his head like my weirdness amuses him. As we drive down the street, he tells me his grand plan. “I saw Yvette, the guy, and a red dog leave in his truck. But he was taking the trash out as we drove by.”
“Okaaaay,” I drawl out. “You’re not planning to break into the house while they’re gone, are you?”
Blake’s eyes shoot to me.
“Are you?” I whisper, horrified.
“No.” He shakes his head as if he’s not sure of that answer yet. “But I like that you’re thinking that way, my little daredevil.” I am so not a daredevil in any sense of the word, but it makes me wiggle in my seat that he called me that. “I’m thinking we grab their trash. Perfectly legal, and possibly informative.”
“Trash,” I repeat. My nose crinkles in disgust. “Ew.”
“Just hit the button to open the trunk. I’ll grab the trash,” he informs me dryly.
“Oh, okay then.” I nod agreeably.
“For someone who literally sticks their hands inside people’s bodies, you’re grossed out by trash?” Blake asks, disbelieving.
I shrug. “Everybody’s got their limits.”
He laughs but doesn’t say anything because he’s throwing the car in park and opening the door. I push the button he pointed out, and the trunk swings up behind me, scaring me even though I knew it was going to happen.
“Hurry,” I whisper-yell. Blake’s taking too long. How long is too long to steal trash? I don’t know, but this feels like it. People in the houses around us are probably looking out their windows, wondering what in the hell we’re doing and calling Jeff right now.
We’re going to get arrested. I know it.
But then Blake is running to the back of the car with two white bags and I hear a thud as the trunk closes. He hops in, and we take off like felons on the run from The Man. Well, no.
He puts it in drive and goes a respectable thirty miles an hour, easy as you please and acting like sugar wouldn’t melt on his tongue, he’s so sweet. But my heart is racing like we’re going one hundred and twenty around the track at Daytona with high octane in my blood.
“Oh, my God, we did it!” I shout, clapping my hands.
Blake chuckles. “Yeah, we did.” The air quotes are heavy on the ‘we’.
“Hey, I hit the button like you said. Fair warning, though, if we got caught, I was absolutely going to say it was all your idea.”
He nods like that’s to be expected. “Open the glovebox for me, would you?” I open it to find a perfectly organized set up with tissues, a tire gauge, the car’s owner manual, and antibacterial wipes. “Hand me a wipe, please?”
I pull out the plastic package, opening the flap on the top, and hand him a wipe, which he uses to clean his hands before putting it in the backseat behind me.
At my confused look, he explains. “Trash can in the back.”
I spin in my seat to see a tiny reusable plastic bag attached to the passenger seatback with a few tissues inside, and now a wet wipe on top. “Of course you have a trash bag in your car.”
“What do you put your trash in?” His eyebrows are curled in confusion as if I just told him people in my neighborhood cut up their trash and eat it for breakfast or something.
“The floorboard, like normal people,” I explain. “And then you clean it all out when you wash the car.”
“The floorboard? That’s animalistic,” he declares.
I fight my grin, knowing I’ve tossed a few tissues and fast food wrappers onto my floorboard in my time. “I don’t know if I can date someone who doesn’t use extra fast food napkins as tissues in the car. You might be too fancy for a girl like me.”
He’s too everything for a girl like me. Tissues versus napkins are the least of it.
“I’m totally telling my sister that you said I’m fancy. She thinks I’m still half-Neanderthal. Honestly, she’s not wrong,” he says, throwing a thankfully now-clean hand on my thigh. “But Neanderthals have to be prepared for messes too. Especially after that one episode where Miles got gelato on everything.” He shudders at the memory of the mess.
“Gelato?” I echo incredulously. “I’m twenty-eight years old and I’ve never even had gelato, much less made a mess of it. Ice cream, shakes, malts . . . those I can make a mess with. Which I clean up with a leftover, half-wrinkled napkin from the Dairy Palace like a normal human being. Five-year-olds with gelato . . . fancy.”
“Tissues aside, you just said we’re dating.” He’s grinning like I just gave him a free gelato with sprinkles and told him to have at it. “You having second thoughts about turning me down?”
“Second, and third, and bajillionth. Absolutely,” I confess, heavier than his teasing tone.
He cuts his eyes to me for a second, then back to the road, then repeats the move once more before boldly asking, “You’re not just using me for sex, are you?”
“Oh, my God, you can’t say stuff like that!” I squawk insecurely. “What the hell, Mr. Hale!”
“I want to make sure you’re not only after the goods and agreeing to a date because I said no sex until we go out officially.”
How does he say things like that with a straight face?
Because just listening to him say it has me grinning like I’m a middle-schooler, swooning like a love-struck romantic, and squirming like a woman who just swallowed a mouthful and really needs a little release of her own.
It’s harder than I’d like to admit, but I do it anyway. “It’s not just the sex.”
Tension I didn’t realize he was holding releases in his shoulders. “I like you too, Miss Walker. Ya weirdo.”
Somehow, when he says that word, it doesn’t hurt. It’s funny, like we’re being weird together, even though he’s amazingly not only un-weird but normal.
* * *
We go to my house to look through the trash. Not because it’s a trailer but because it’s closer and I have gloves. I insist on those, and Blake is thankful and agrees easily. “Trash bags are one thing. Actual trash is another.”
That decided, we get to work. I spread out wrapping paper on the kitchen floor because I don’t want to do this outside where there are prying eyes, plus, it’s all I have. Still, I promise myself that I’ll be mopping after this . . . and that I’m going out to buy one of those big blue tarps just in case something like this ever comes up again, as unlikely as that may be.
We open the first bag, and the smell is . . . not too bad. Blake and I look at each other in relief and then with a sigh of resolve, we dig in. We make piles of what we find—possibly useful and totally gross. Mostly, everything goes into the totally gross pile until we have to make a third pile of ‘what the fuck is that?’
There’s a lot of food trash, including some spoiled chicken lunch meat that makes us both retch. We end up needing to pause to re-bag that container and set it outside on the porch.
Which is when Jacob comes in, pinching his nose, and recoils in disgust. “What in Satan’s taint hole is that smell?”
“Trash,” I answer, looking at a receipt. I’m long used to the smell now. And it’s not remotely as bad as post-mortem body scents.
Jacob isn’t. “I can see that. I guess I meant . . . why?”
I look to Blake as I try to decide how much I want to tell Jacob. Is this some top-secret mission? But I don’t keep things from Jacob. It’s one of the deals we have.
So I tell him the truth. “I had a questionable death. Jeff called the case closed, but I have questions. So I’m getting answers.” I hold my gloved hands out, indicating all the trash in fron
t of me.
“How’d she talk you into this insanity?” Jacob asks Blake as though I can’t hear him.
“I’m sitting right here, you know.”
Jacob shoots me an empty-faced glance and then goes right back to Blake, giving him a chin lift of ‘whatcha got?’
Blake chuckles, probably used to this guy game shit. “This was actually my idea. We figured some stuff out—and when I say we, I mean her.” He tilts his head my way, and I’m reminded of the ‘we’ I used for the trash. We really have done this together . . . whatever this is. “We’re digging a little deeper, literally, to see what else turns up.”
Jacob stares at the trash for a second and then gives me a meaningful look. Throwing his bag to the couch, he sits down in the floor across from me. “All right, toss me some gloves and tell me what we’re looking for.”
And that’s how me, Jacob, and Blake spend the next hour going through Yvette Horne’s trash, piece by gross piece. Every ball of hair from a hairbrush, empty toothpaste tube, can of Slim Fast, and junk mailer.
“I found something!” Jacob and Blake say at the same time, though Jacob’s is followed with a groan of disgust.
“What?” I say, not sure which way to look and ending up trying to look both ways at once, which doesn’t work and just gives me a headache from my brain rattling back and forth.
“Smoothie mix,” Blake shouts, holding up a plastic container with every green vegetable in existence on the label. “We could have it tested?”
Jacob interrupts, “uhm . . . guys? Didn’t you say this chick’s husband has been dead for days? Weeks?”
“Yes, why?” I answer, turning my attention to him.
“Because I don’t think this is that old?” Jacob holds up a tied-off condom with liquid inside, turning away as he gags out loud. “Ew . . . ugh . . . cough-cough . . . sticky love juice load . . . ack . . .”
“Oh, my God . . . oh, my God . . . what do we do with that?” I’m scrambling, rambling, but I manage to get up from the floor, pull my gloves off, and grab a sandwich baggie. “Hang on, you can put it in here like evidence, but let me put on fresh gloves first.”
Instead, Blake takes the baggie from me with his gloved hands and holds it open for Jacob to drop the—blech—condom inside.
“Thanks, man. I don’t think I could’ve held that much longer.”
He does look a little pale. “Guess you won’t be going into the family business?” I tease.
Jacob shakes his head vehemently. “Definitely not. But pulling someone’s guts out for examination is way different from holding another man’s fresh spunk.”
Blake nods his head, agreeing sagely. “Rule. Own jizz is fine, other jizz is fucked up.”
“Whatever. Guys, do you know what this means?” I ask them both.
Jacob sits back on his ass, yanking his gloves off. “That I’m done with this?”
“No . . . that there is definitely something hinky going on with Yvette Horne.”
“Hinky?” Blake says around a smile. “Or kinky?”
“I’m embracing the Velma spirit. Stick with me, and no kinky. Poisoned smoothies—means. Another guy—motive. And they obviously lived together, so that’s opportunity.”
I’m excited. Okay, maybe a bit hysterical at having figured this out. I can see why Jeff likes his job. Well, except for the digging in trash part.
Jacob leans over and talks out of the side of his mouth to Blake. “No backsies. She’s yours now.”
I flinch, but Blake beams like he wouldn’t have it any other way. “Working on it,” he tells Jacob, but he’s staring at me like he’s never seen anything more beautiful. The best part is . . . I don’t mean my looks. I feel like Blake sees my insides—my brain and weirdness—and that’s what he thinks is stunning. After a long moment, he shows off his sexy brain power too. “The money’s another motive. A big one. But we have to prove it. And figure out who’s the guy.”
He throws a nose-wrinkling look at the baggie with the condom, on the same page as Jacob about it being the most disgusting thing we discovered in the trash.
My vote is for the spoiled chicken, and I touch the floor, even though it’s wood-printed vinyl, as I hope I can get the smell out.
Ever.
Chapter 16
Blake
“Road trip,” I call out as I knock low on Zoey’s door. I did at least call this time, but I didn’t tell her much. Just that I was coming over because I want the full impact of awe when I share what I’ve discovered.
Especially since it took me the better part of three days and I’m pretty proud of myself. If I could pat my own back, I would, but my deltoids are screaming after the workout Trey and I did this morning, and I can’t scratch my nose, much less my own shoulder.
Shit, now my nose itches. I try wiggling it like Sabrina the witch since my shoulder is unwilling to lift my arm. When wiggling doesn’t work, I’m forced to lift my arm incrementally through willpower alone because the muscles are jelly.
I have just enough time to scratch it and then the door opens.
“Come in, come in!” Zoey waves me in, her hand flapping rapidly.
“Excited to see me?”
She shoots me a wry look. “You’re the one hyping what you found and getting me all anxious. Is it good? Is it bad? I don’t know!”
She slicks her hands over her hair, which is in its usual bun, but there are loose strands that give her a haphazard look. It’s sexy as fuck, making me wish she’d take it down, shake her head, and let her black locks fan out over a pillow while I bury myself in her. My eyes slowly take her in, realizing that while she left the workday’s bun, she’s changed clothes for our not-date.
Dark jeans hug her thighs tight enough that I know her ass will be equally and sexily outlined, a V-neck T-shirt shows the smallest inch of cleavage, and booties with the smallest wedge make her lips that much closer to mine.
“You look beautiful.”
She blushes, ducking her chin and eyes from mine, and a tiny zing of anger shoots through me. I hate that she’s unaccustomed to hearing compliments, that no one has told her every morning and night that she’s gorgeous without it being tied up in barbs as a backhanded compliment.
I guess that means I have a lot of praise to catch up on. “Seven hundred and thirty,” I muse.
“Huh?”
Before I answer, I pull her to me for a sweet, small kiss. She might not realize it, but that was me sealing my promise. “The minimum number of times per year you should hear how beautiful you are. Twice a day—morning and night—times three hundred and sixty-five days. Seven hundred thirty-two in leap years.”
She lets out a tiny laugh as she shoots me a look of wry disbelief. “Okay, flatterer, quit stalling. What’s this big breakthrough?”
I let her change the subject to safer territory because we do have somewhere to be. “I’ll explain in the car. Come on, let’s go before it gets too dark.” I jerk my head toward my car and her brow crinkles.
“Where are we going?”
“Get in and you’ll see,” I tell her as I hold my hand wide in invitation.
She sighs around a smile she’s fighting and calls back into the house, “I’m going out for a while. Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t,” Jacob yells from what sounds to be a few feet away. “’Sup, Blake?”
Zoey opens the door a bit wider to show Jacob sitting on the couch, headphones on and video game controller in hand. I throw him a two-finger wave and he lifts his chin, eyes making a quick jump to me and then refocusing on the game again. Zoey closes the door and then gives me that full-wattage smile. “Okay, wow me with your genius, Mr. Hale. Whatcha got?”
“First, there’s someone who wants to say hello.” I open the back door to reveal Chunky sitting in the backseat with a specially-made dog seatbelt on.
“Chunky!” Zoey exclaims as her hands cover her mouth and then instantly reverse course to reach out to pet my dog, who’s wiggling excitedly. “W
hat’re you doing here, sweet boy? Oh, yes, it’s good to see you too!”
Her voice is high and giggly as she bends forward to scratch and pet Chunky. His tongue goes nuts, licking air and licking Zoey’s face. “No kisses, Chunkster. Those’re for me only,” I scold, though it’s with a smile because Zoey shoots me a dagger-filled look.
“I’ll have you know I can kiss anyone I want.” Sassiness looks good on her.
As if he agrees, Chunky’s excitement is too much for his little round body and he leaps toward Zoey. She tries to catch him, but the seatbelt doesn’t let him get far, yanking him back to his seat.
The back and forth movement throws Zoey off balance, her ass hitting the ground before I can catch her.
“Oh, shit, let me help.” I slip my hands under her arms to hike her up. “You okay?” Instead of Zoey, Chunky answers in a whine that draws my attention. “Chunks, you okay, too?”
Luckily, Zoey seems steady on her feet because Chunky has one foot held up to show me that he’s tangled in the seatbelt that is supposed to keep him safe. I get him situated and feel eyes on me. I turn to see Zoey pressing her lips together gleefully. “Good to see where I rate.”
Heat creeps up my neck. “You were standing, at least. This poor guy couldn’t even stand because his footsie was all twisted up. Isn’t that right, big guy?” I’ve gone into a baby voice of my own as I check over Chunky’s perfectly fine leg and foot.
“Pew, pew, pop, fizz . . .” Zoey mutters under her breath.
“What was that?” I press, faintly remembering the last time she said something like that and knowing it led to some good stuff.
“Oh, nothing . . . just my ovaries exploding again. Men and dogs are women’s kryptonite.”
“Well shit, you’re in trouble then because I’m taking you someplace with lots of dogs.”
Her back goes straight and her eyes widen. “You are? Is that a hint or are you trying to throw me off?”
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