Isabel sighs. “Did you have to tell them she was your sister, Casey? Wouldn’t great-great-aunt have sufficed? You realize the stream will be nonstop.”
“You can handle it,” I say as I turn to leave. “Drum up some business for the brothel.”
April blinks. “Did you say—?”
“Your sister has a very special sense of humor, April,” Isabel says. “Come along inside, and let’s discuss how we can get your breakfast without attracting a conga line.”
NINE
I spend the day running on a treadmill while madly juggling a half dozen grenades. It’s a solid day of absolutely zero progress, and the best I can say, at the end of it, is that nothing exploded.
Kenny runs into postsurgery complications. None of them are April’s fault, but my damn sister can’t just trust that I have the medical IQ to realize that. Nor can she seem to see those five other grenades I’m juggling. She has to summon me and make it very clear that she did not cause any of Kenny’s complications. We did, through our unacceptable presurgery treatment of the situation. The fact that the “unacceptable” part arose from the situation itself—Kenny being shot five miles into the forest, and us having to convey him to Rockton—doesn’t matter. It’s our fault. All ours. Specifically mine, because I knew better.
Phil is furious about April being here. More furious than he is about Garcia, which spikes my temper even higher. The April situation is a well-controlled bonfire; the Garcia one is a full-blown wildfire. We need the council’s help with the latter. We do not need their bullshit threats over the former.
Currently, the council’s stance on Garcia is “get him.” Find him, bring him in, and then they’ll decide what’s to be done. Which would be awesome if we could manage the “finding” part. He’s disappeared into the woods, and the council is baffled as to how that happens—how that keeps happening. People continue to escape, and we continue to have a helluva time finding them.
It’s like dealing with my sister harping at me over Kenny’s care. I want to grab the whole damn council and throw them into the wilderness for a few days. Give them a sense of the circumstances we are dealing with. People down south have died of exposure while lost in a few miles of forest. Imagine if that person is in a forest a thousand times that size … and doesn’t want to be found. Garcia can literally plunk his ass down in some bushes, and unless someone stumbles over him, he’ll be safe.
I haven’t seen Dalton since he left this morning, but I know he’s fine. Give him a waterskin and an energy bar, and he doesn’t need to come back before nightfall. Hell, in this weather, he’d be fine indefinitely, sourcing water, hunting and gathering. He also has a gun, and Garcia does not. This doesn’t, however, keep me from wishing our sheriff would swing by once or twice. He doesn’t.
I’m juggling as fast as I can, powered by caffeine and cookies. When I zip into the station to refuel on both, footsteps follow me.
“If you’re volunteering for patrol duty, go speak to…”
I turn to see Petra closing the door behind her, and there’s a moment where I think Thank God. In this town, I have more female relationships than I’ve ever had in my life, and I am grateful for that. They are complicated, at times fractious, but they are real, with none of that sugarcoated crap I grew up reading and seeing on television, girls linking arms and vowing to be BFFs forever, them against the world. Of all these relationships, there is only one that is truly steady. One friend who is always there for me and never complicates my life. Who never needs more than I can give, never demands anything.
That is Petra.
No, that was Petra.
Three days ago, Dalton and I were bringing Oliver Brady back to face whatever fate the council decided for him. He never made it. Someone in the forest shot him. Dalton and I both saw who did it: the woman standing before me, the woman I thoug
ht I knew, the woman I apparently did not know at all. Petra shot Brady, and when we called her on it, she told us we were mistaken.
Nope, sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. Wasn’t me. Uh-uh.
At the time, Kenny was the bigger concern, so I tabled this discussion. With Garcia on the run, I’d like to keep tabling it.
“Yes?” I say, my voice chilling.
“I saw you gave Storm to Brian and Devon.”
“Yes.” I take a couple of cookies from the box that Brian dropped off. “Someone needs to watch her.”
“That someone has always been me.”
“It isn’t now.”
“I’d like to talk about that.”
I spin on her. “Really? No, Petra, you will not be dog-sitting for us again, and that is the least of your worries. If it seems like we’ve dropped what happened with Brady, we have not. It’s on the back burner while we extinguish other fires.”
I take a step toward her. “I saw you. Eric saw you. There is absolutely no doubt in either of our minds who killed Oliver Brady, and I would strongly suggest that, instead of worrying about losing your dog-sitting gig, you take this time to worry about that. Because it has not been forgotten.”
“I know.”
“So you came here to admit to it?”