“She could have been rabid. Could have clawed me.”
Cleo shrugs. “I’m all about gambles.”
“Then you are an optimist.”
She shrugs again. “You think the cat will be hard to catch?”
I shake my head. “She’s pretty friendly for a stray.”
She smiles. “Then it’s settled. She’ll be the third in our crime unit. I’m naming her Helen.”
I can’t help smiling at the thought of Cleo with a cat. For some reason, I have the feeling they’d get into some trouble. “Helen—of Troy?”
She shakes her head. “For Helen Keller.” After a minute, she says, “My sisters w—they’re deaf.”
“They can’t hear anything?” For reasons unexamined, this shocks me.
She nods, tightening her hands on the wheel as we lurch over the bumpy road. “My parents both had a gene for it, even though neither one of them are. Were,” she corrects. Her mouth tightens.
I think about how she reacted to my guessing that her father died and feel a tender wave of curiosity rise in me. I want to ask, but I don’t dare. Losing my Mom and Ly has taught me to tread lightly where loss is concerned. Shit, my own damn life has taught me that. I swallow a deep breath and let my eyes drift to her hands. “Does that mean you know sign language?”
“Yep.”
I turn that over in my head. Last time I tried to learn sign language... I swallow. “Show me something.” Anything, I want to plead.
“The sign for ‘fuck you’ is this,” she says, pushing her knees into the bottom of the wheel as she holds two fingers up, almost like a peace sign, touches the tip of one to her nose, and then moves her hand out and up, making a classic “okay” symbol.
I laugh.
She grins. “Want to see the sign for whore?” She folds her hand in a little and runs it along the side of her chin.
She follows the curve of the driveway to the right, and I watch her face as the house comes into view. It’s a whitewashed two-story with a wide brick porch and Manning’s Harley in the dirt out front.
“Welcome to nine-one-one Pecan.”
Her lips quirk at the corners. “A pecan emergency?”
I shake my head, fighting my own smile. “The address. It’s nine-one-one Pecan Way.”
“Oh. So who lives here?” She pushes her dark hair out of her face as she steers around the bike and pulls up right next to the porch.
“It’s a private residence, registered to a woman named Rose Cole.”
“Who is that?” Cleo asks, shifting the Escalade into park.
“She’s dead. It’s phony paperwork.”
She twists her lips. “Makes sense. I guess if you’re lying about s
omething of this caliber, you have to go big.”
I nod. A slow spinning sensation starts at the base of my throat and crawls up the back of my head, until I feel so dizzy, I’m forced to lean over my lap and touch my fingers to my forehead.
KELLAN LOWERS HIS HEAD INTO his hand and, with his long, strong fingers, rubs his brow. He inhales deeply, making his thick shoulders rise, and then he exhales, and his back seem to slacken.
“Is something wrong?” I look down on his neck and shoulders, admiring how tanned and thick he is; the way his hair is shorn to different lengths as it tapers to his nape.
I’m just starting to get nervous when he lifts his head. His eyes are clear and blue and void. “Everything’s fine.”