12
QUINN JOGGED TOWARD KYLIE, WHO STOOD ON the
sidewalk facing her SUV, arms wrapped around her middle as though
chilled. An official-looking black woman with glossy, close-cropped
hair and gold hoop earrings snapped pictures of Kylie’s Liberty
from all angles. Chase Manning, down on one knee at the head of the
truck, scribbled on what looked like a sandwich-size Ziploc bag.
Several other small Ziplocs littered the asphalt around him.
Quinn’s stomach seized at the sight of the truck’s
windshield. Sam had told him what had happened, but knowing didn’t
blunt the shock of seeing.
“Hey,” he called to Kylie when he was still several
feet away. She could be so jumpy, and he didn’t want to startle
her.
She turned to greet him with a smile he recognized
as plastered on only because he’d seen her give that same smile to
the well-wishers at their father’s funeral. Not too big as to look
fake, not too small as to look forced. Christ, she was so good at
it that it scared him sometimes.
When he spotted the aluminum bat on the ground, his
gut flipped. He hadn’t quite believed Sam, but there it was, the
sun shooting blinding blue sparks off it.
Kylie’s voice broke through his shock. “They’re
gathering evidence.” She indicated the woman with the camera.
“That’s Sylvia Jensen, a forensics expert.”
He glanced sharply at his sister. She sounded as
though they were at a party, for Christ’s sake—hey, that’s my buddy
Sylvia over there; you’d like her—when a normal person would have
been huddled on the curb shaking her ass off. Hell, he was
shaking, and he hadn’t been attacked.
Guilt added to the queasiness in his stomach. He
should have gotten his butt out here as soon as Sam told him, but
the detective had had a bunch of questions about the video
surveillance, and then Quinn had had to set him up with the
equipment so Sam could find what he was looking for. Meanwhile, his
sister had stood in the hot sun with who knows what kind of crap
circling in her head.
He gently grasped her elbow, felt tension instantly
infuse her already rigid muscles. She didn’t pull away, though, and
he didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. “Why don’t
you come in while they finish up?” he said. “It’s too hot out
here.”
She relented without a word, and he led her inside
and down the cool hallway to his office without speaking. While she
sat in the lone, metal-framed visitor’s chair, he popped open the
mini fridge in the corner and retrieved a bottle of water. After
twisting off the cap, he handed her the bottle, glad when she drank
without being prodded.
He hated that he had no idea what to say. He hadn’t
known what to say for years and berated himself for not dogging her
more. But she’d been so far away, physically and emotionally, that
he hadn’t known where to start. Letting her work it out on her own
had been easier. He’d had his own issues to focus on, after
all.
“You might want to think about replacing this
chair,” she said. “It feels rickety.”
His throat closed. Leave it to Kylie to focus on
something that had nothing to do with the blue aluminum symbol for
her shattered sense of identity.
“Funny word,” she murmured. “Rickety.”
“Kylie—”
“Unless that’s the idea. Most of the people who use
this chair are probably employees in trouble. You wouldn’t want
them to be too comfortable while you rip into them.”
“Kylie, come on. Don’t you want—”
“Can we just sit here and not say anything? Just
for a few minutes?”
Quinn sighed. Agreeing to be quiet, for her sake,
was easy. It always had been.