“Stay,” he said again, then stalked back to my open door.
“Shit,” I whispered when he shoved it open. I lasted all of two seconds before following him inside.
The room had been unappealing, to say the least, when I’d checked in less than an hour ago.
The orange and brown wallpaper was peeling in long strips. The carpet was a dark green that felt like it was made out of the scrubby side of a dish sponge. The bathroom fixtures were Pepto Bismol pink, and the shower was missing several tiles.
But it was the only option within twenty miles, and I’d figured I could rough it for a night or two. Besides, I’d thought at the time, how bad could it be?
Apparently pretty freaking bad. Between the time I’d checked in, stowed my suitcase, plugged in my laptop, and left to meet Tina, someone had broken in and ransacked the room.
My suitcase was upended on the floor, some of its contents strewn all over the carpet.
The dresser drawers were pulled out, closet doors left open.
My laptop was missing. So was the zippered pouch of cash I’d hidden in my suitcase.
“Sucker” was scrawled across the bathroom vanity mirror in my favorite lipstick. Ironically, the thing I didn’t want my grumpy Viking to see, the thing that was worth more than whatever else had been stolen, was still there in a crumpled heap in the corner.
Worst of all, the perpetrator was sitting on the bed, dirty sneakers tangled in a clump of sheets. She was watching a natural disaster movie. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but I put her solidly in the Child/Pre-Teen category.
“Hey, Way,” Knox said grimly.
The girl’s blue eyes flitted away from the screen to land on him before returning to the TV. “Hey, Knox.”
It was a small town. Of course the town grump and the child felon knew each other.
“Okay, look,” I said, side-stepping Knox to stand in front of the thing in the corner that I really didn’t want to explain. “I don’t know if child labor laws are different in Virginia. But I asked for an extra pillow, not to be robbed by a pint-sized criminal.”
The girl spared me a glance.
“Where’s your mom?” Knox asked, ignoring me.
Another shrug. “Gone,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”
“That’d be your Aunt Naomi.”
She didn’t look impressed. I, on the other hand, probably looked like I’d just been sho
t out of a cannon toward a brick wall.
“Aunt?” I repeated, shaking my head in hopes that it would fix my hearing. Another wilted flower petal fell out of what was left of my updo and flitted to the floor.
“Thought you were dead,” the girl said, studying me with vague interest. “Nice hair.”
“Aunt?” I said again.
Knox turned to me. “Waylay is Tina’s kid,” Knox explained slowly.
“Tina?” I parroted on a croak.
“Looks like your sister helped herself to your stuff,” he observed.
“Said most of it was shit,” the girl said.
I blinked rapidly. Not only had my sister stolen my car, she’d also broken into my hotel room, ransacked it, and left behind the niece I didn’t know existed.
“She okay?” Waylay asked, not taking her eyes off the tornado that returned to the screen.