“Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner sucks?”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re an asshole?” Needles retorted.
“What? Do you mean just today?”
Once Needles finished with my stitches, he gave me a shot of antibiotic, and I pushed out of my seat, shoving Rocky and Moses away from the laptop.
“Careful, Scooby,” Needles warned. “We gotta watch for signs of a concussion.”
I shook my head. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop staring at the beauty on the screen. “Why would someone put a contract out on a woman like that?”
“According to Stanley Morter, the guy who gave you the flash drive, she murdered his father after he signed over his fortune to her, cutting young Stanley out of his will,” Rocky provided.
“Bullshit,” I hissed.
“Looks like you got less than two days to find out whatever you can about Stan and his daddy, then you can figure out what to do about the pretty Rowan Samuels,” Moses murmured.
Rowan Samuels. Sexy.
“I know what I’d do about the pretty Rowan Samuels,” Rocky retorted, and I glared at him. “What? Like, you didn’t notice she was hot? Even shitfaced and with a head wound, you couldn’t miss that.”
“How ’bout you think with your brain instead of your dick for one second instead so we can figure out why someone wants to kill this nice lady,” I sneered.
“We don’t know she’s nice,” Moses countered.
“Yeah,” Rocky agreed. “For all we know, she drowns puppies in her spare time.”
I glared at him. “Were you born a psycho, or did your mother specifically raise you to be one?”
“Okay, gentlemen, let’s all take a beat and try to figure out why someone wants Ms. Samuels dead,” Moses said, the ever-present voice of reason.
“Can I borrow your laptop for a bit?” I asked.
“Sure, brother,” Rocky said, and I closed the laptop, carrying it up to my room.
* * *
Rowan
I slammed the oven door shut and gave it a kick for good measure, a sharp pain shooting through my foot as swift retribution from the appliance gods. “Mother Frigidaire!”
“What the dickens is goin’ on in here?” Dusty demanded, pushing through the swinging saloon doors, and freezing.
I was holding my shin, hopping around the diner kitchen as I tried to shake the pain out of my foot.
“You know, honey, that dance move went out long before your time.”
“I think I broke my toe,” I panted out, continuing to hop around the room.
“Oh, my lord, honey, well, then let’s get you off your feet.” She wrapped her arm around my waist, surprisingly strong considering she was well into her sixties and had been overworked and underpaid for most of her adult life. Leading me to the back office, she sat me into my desk chair and gently pulled off one my Keds. “Now, how did you break your toe?”
“Kicked the oven,” I grumbled.
“Again?” she admonished.
“Well, if it didn’t quit breakin’, I wouldn’t need to keep kickin’ it,” I pointed out.
I’d put my heart and soul, not to mention my meager savings, into the Starbright Diner and I had nothing left in the coffers to replace anything. I’d already spent way too much paying a general contractor who’d, in hindsight, used my naivety to practically rob me blind, using shoddy parts and overcharging me for them. And now everything was either breaking or already broken.