Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) (34 page)

Neve felt frozen. When Hannah slid her back down the wall to sit on the sidewalk, Neve echoed her actions but while her friend crossed her legs, Neve drew hers to her chest, huddling away from the world. Or trying to.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yeah.”

Hannah looked down. “I … I had a bad feeling about him from the beginning. You made him sound so wonderful, but I kept seeing my stepdad in my head.” She gave Neve a wry smile. “I figured I was being stupid, but then you stopped calling. I hardly ever heard from you and it made me worry. I … shit. I should have tried harder.”

“It’s not your fault,” Neve said softly. Resting her chin on her knees, she closed her eyes. “And it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d pretty much cut me off from my family—they’d call and I’d never know. They’d write and the letters would end up who knows where? And my letters…”

She stopped.

“Your letters?”

Shoving upright, she wrapped her arms around her middle. “I wrote home. Not a lot, at first, but as time went by, I started writing. But I never heard anything from them and it turns out they never got any of the letters. How did he manage that, Hannah? It had to be him,
somehow
, but how was he doing it?”

“Crazy people tend to be very creative.” With a slight wince, Hannah stood up.

“Are you okay?”

“Ah…” A vivid blush stained her cheeks pink and Hannah looked away. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“You’re a lousy liar,” Neve said.

“I’m not…”

She went quiet, her gaze locked on a point past Neve’s shoulder. Neve looked behind her and saw Ian and Brannon moving toward them. “You still got a thing for my brother,” she said, shaking her head.

“No.” It came out cool and flat and when Neve looked at Hannah, the blush had faded. Hannah’s expression was remote and she glanced at Brannon with little more than a nod before she looked at Ian. “Heya, Campbell.”

“Heya back, Parker,” Ian said with a quick smile.

Neither Brannon nor Hannah said a single word to the other.

“Gideon needs to speak with you some more,” Brannon said quietly.

Neve nodded. “Yeah. I know. I…” She cleared her throat and glanced at Ian. “You need to get to work soon. I don’t want to hold you up.”

“You’re not.” Ian looked unaffected. “It shouldn’t be much longer, then I’ll run you home.”

“I’ll get her home.”

Ian scowled at her brother.

Brannon just lifted a brow. “Your bike is trashed. It needs a new paint job and tires. Unless you were planning on giving her a piggyback ride?”

“I can drive the soddin’ bike as soon as I get the tires dealt with.” Ian’s jaw was set.

Before Brannon could argue, Neve rested a hand on Ian’s arm. “It’s okay,” she said softly. Then she looked at Brannon and nodded. She was too tired to listen to their friendly arguments. “Can we lend Ian a car or something, though? I can drive it back out here later.”

She shifted her gaze back to Ian and cocked her head. “Maybe you can drive me home?”

“That means you going somewhere
alone
,” Brannon said.

She closed her eyes. “Stop, Brannon.”

“He’s
here,
” Brannon said. “He’ll be watching for a chance to put his hands on you and I’m not letting it happen.”

“And I’m not going back into a cage—I’ve
been
there. He put me in a cage.” Fury and fear trembled inside her, a nasty little storm. But she had to do this, get these words out. “I spent
years
trapped, all because I let him trap me and I’m not
doing
it again.”

“Use your brain, Neve!”

“Brannon, shut your mouth,” Ian said, cutting between them.

“Don’t tell me
you
are okay with the idea of her running around by herself!”

“I’m a grown woman!”

*   *   *

It was almost enough.

William smiled to himself. He held a book in front of him but it was just for show. Every few minutes, he’d turn the page, but his attention was on the tableau unfolding on the other side of the street.

“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?”