“I live there.” She pointed at the house Annie Oakley had walked back to. Oh, shit. Was this her kid? She hadn’t looked old enough to have a kid in high school. But hey, what did he know?
“So we’re neighbors.” He held out his hand. “I’m Cooper.”
“I’m Geneva.” She frowned at his hand as she shook it. “You have a lot of tattoos. Can I look?”
He grinned. “Well, you can look at the ink you can see, how’s that?”
Her eyes came up to his. Big and blue, with a dissatisfied glint. Like her mother’s. “Do you have tattoos everywhere?”
“That’s a pretty personal question for somebody you just met.”
Still holding his right hand, she lifted it up to display the back. “This is the shield of the Knights Templar.”
Okay, so maybe she was pretty sharp. “Yeah, it is.”
“Why did you put it on your hand?”
“Again, pretty personal question for somebody you just met.”
“But the Knights Templar is a Catholic order. From the Crusades.”
What an annoying little shit. He stared and said nothing, but he pulled his hand from her grip.
With the hand he’d just freed, she pointed at his throat. “And it saysGod Ends Hereon your throat. Are you religious or not? I don’t get it.”
“Well, maybe someday when we know each other better, I’ll explain. For now, I got shit to do, so why don’t you run back home and play with Barbies or somethin’.”
“I’m fourteen. I don’t play with Barbies anymore.”
If she was fourteen, he would have expected more disaffected adolescent and less pestering interviewer. He’d gotten a crash course in disaffected adolescence when the club kids started that stage in Tulsa. This girl seemed a little odd, actually. Too young for her age.
“Then go do whatever it is you do.”
“I play Dungeons & Dragons. Do you know what that is?”
Nowthatwas a high school thing. And it might explain how she knew what the Knights Templar were. She was a fantasy geek. Fantasy geeks loved history like that. “Yeah, I know it. Never played it, not interested in it, but I know what it is. I’m busy, kid. This truck? Gotta empty it and get it back where it belongs. So ... where’s your mom, anyway?”
“In Desert Lawn Cemetery. She died when I was nine.”
“Oh. Sorry. But who’d I meet last night, then? From your house?”
A bright, warm smile lit up the girl’s face. She’d be pretty when she grew up. “Siena’s my sister. I’m her ward now. We’re like Batman and Robin.”
That was pretty cute. And Siena, right. Pretty name, bitchy chick. “Okay, Robin. I gotta get back to work. You better get back to your house before I put you to work, too.”
He’d meant it as a joke, of course, but she gave him a thoughtful look. “I could help. I like helping.”
“I was joking, kid. And Batman over there wouldn’t like you hanging out with me.” If the woman was ready to put a hole in him over making too much noise, he could imagine how she’d react if she thought he was up to no good with her kid sister.
“She’s still asleep. When she works late she sleeps in, and I have to be quiet until she wakes up. It’s easier to be quiet outside. Do you know how to fix a bike?”
He blinked, trying to keep up with the twists in her conversation. “You mean a bicycle? I don’t know. Probably. Why?”
“The chain keeps falling off mine, and I can’t figure out why. If you know how to fix it, we could trade—you fix my bike, and I help you move in.”
Maybe it was his very recent realization that he was spending too much time alone. That he was, to be painfully blunt and totally pathetic, lonely. Maybe it was this chicklet’s persistence. Or maybe he was caught in some kind of twenty-four-hour flu that had him feeling like a zombie and making similar poor life choices.
Ormaybe, if her bike was working, she’d want to ride it and leave him the fuck alone before somebody called him a pedophile.