Obviously she hadn’t heard his comment.
“I’m not murdering you,” I snapped. Yet.
She was already buckled in, her long legs crossed. A flip-flop dangled from her toes as she jiggled her foot. Both her knees were bruised, and I noticed a raw scrape on her right forearm. I told myself I didn’t want to know and threw the truck into reverse. I’d dump her at the station—hopefully it was early enough to avoid who I wanted to avoid—and make sure she got her damn car. If I was lucky, I could still grab another hour of shut-eye before I had to officially start my day.
“You know,” she began, “if one of us should be mad at the other, it’s me. I don’t even know you, and here you are yelling in my face, getting between me and my coffee, and then practically abducting me. You have no reason to be upset.”
“You have no idea, sweetheart. I’ve got plenty of reasons to be pissed, and a lot of them involve your waste-of-space sister.”
“Tina may not be the nicest of people, but that doesn’t give you the right to be such an ass. She’s still family,” Naomi sniffed.
“I wouldn’t apply the label ‘people’ to your sister.” Tina was a monster of the first degree. She stole. She lied. She picked fights. Drank too much. Showered too little. And had no regard for anyone else. All because she thought the world owed her.
“Listen, whoever the hell you are. The only people who can talk about her like that are me, our parents, and the Andersontown High graduating class of 2003. And maybe also the Andersontown Fire Department. But that’s because they earned the right. You haven’t, and I don’t need you taking your problems with my sister out on me.”
“Whatever,” I said through gritted teeth.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. The Knockemout Police Department sat back a few blocks from Main Street and shared a new building with the town’s public library. Just seeing it made the muscle under my eye twitch.
In the parking lot was a pickup truck, a cruiser, and a Harley Fat Boy. There was no sign of the chief’s SUV. Thank Christ for small miracles.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“There’s no need for you to come in,” Naomi sniffed. She was eyeing her empty coffee with puppy dog eyes.
On a growl, I shoved my own mostly untouched coffee at her. “I’m getting you to the desk, making sure they’ve got your car, and then never seeing you again.”
“Fine. But I’m not saying thank you.”
I didn’t bother replying because I was too busy storming toward the front door and ignoring the big gold letters above it.
“The Knox Morgan Municipal Building.”
I pretended I didn’t hear her and let the glass door swing closed behind me.
“Is there more than one Knox in this town?” she asked, wrenching the door open and following me inside.
“No,” I said, hoping that would put an end to questions I didn’t want to fucking answer. The building was relatively new with a shit-ton of glass, wide hallways, and that fresh paint smell.
“So it’s your name on the building?” she pressed, jogging again to keep up with me.
“Guess so.” I yanked open another door on the right and gestured for her to go inside.
Knockemout’s cop shop looked more like one of those co-working hangouts that urban hipsters liked than an actual police station. It had annoyed the boys and girls in blue who had taken pride in their moldy, crumbling bunker with its flickering fluorescent lights and carpet stained from decades of criminals.
Their annoyance at the bright paint and slick new office furniture was the only thing I didn’t hate about it.
The Knockemout PD did their best to rediscover their roots, piling precious towers of case folders on top of adjustable-height bamboo desks and brewing too cheap, too strong coffee 24/7. There was a box of stale donuts open on the counter and powdered sugar fingerprints everywhere. But so far nothing had taken the shine off the newness of the fucking Knox Morgan Building.
Sergeant Grave Hopper was behind his desk stirring half a pound of sugar into his coffee. A reformed motorcycle club member, he now spent his weeknights coaching his daughter’s softball team and his weekends mowing lawns. His and his mother-in-law’s. But once a year, he’d pack up his wife on the back of his bike, and off they’d go to relive their glory days on the open road.
He spotted me and my guest and nearly upended the entire mug all over himself.
“What’s goin’ on, Knox?” Grave asked, now openly staring at Naomi.
It was no secret around town that I had as little to do with the PD as possible. It also wasn’t exactly news that Tina was the kind of trouble that I didn’t tolerate.
“This is Naomi. Tina’s twin,” I explained. “She just got into town and says her car was towed. You got it out back?”