Across the Vanishing Sky (Starlight Grove, #1)(37)

“What are you doing here?” Travis asked, bringing my attention back to him. “Don’t tell me you already have parking tickets to pay off.”

My lips twitched. “That’s why it’s good to have friends in high places, right?”

Travis just shook his head. “If you parked in the diner’s five-minute spot too long, I can’t help you. You know Susie will lock that down with an iron fist.”

He wasn’t wrong. The owner of the diner wouldn’t take any flack. And she wasn’t afraid to shoot someone with a soda gun if they got out of line.

I gave an exaggerated shiver. “No way, man. She scares me.”

“As she should,” Trav said with a chuckle. “So what’s up?”

I tapped the papers against my free hand. “Got an open records request.”

His brows lifted, and I saw Gary or Gus stiffen behind the counter. Travis quickly pulled the surprise from his expression. “What’s the case?”

“Nova Monroe.”

A hint of wariness found Travis’s face, maybe even worry as he glanced at the man behind the counter. “Rog said he was giving your name to Brae. I just didn’t think there was a chance in hell you’d actually help.”

Didn’t that make me feel like the world’s biggest asshole? But wanting the world to think I’d never get involved with this sort of thing, letting them think all the Archer brothers would do anything to avoid being on someone’s radar, was by design.

And here I was, drawing a big red target around us again. Because we were all linked with the kind of brand that having a serial killer for a father gave you.

“Well, she pleaded her case,” I muttered.

A hint of amusement entered Travis’s expression. “Roger’s asked her out no fewer than twenty-one times. Brae’s shot him down for every single one. Might be fun to watch you shoot your shot.”

I glowered at him. “I’m not interested in her like that.”

But something stirred low in my gut at Travis’s words and the idea of Brae and Roger. Something unsettling.

Travis just grinned. “Oh, of course. Too close to home.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I clipped, annoyance digging in deeper.

“Come on, Dex. Your whole MO through high school was nothing within a ten-mile radius. Every homecoming date and field-party hookup was someone from another town. Every summer, you went for the tourists, never a local. Never someone close. It pissed every girl at Starlight Grove High way the hell off.”

My skin felt too tight for my body, like a million eyes were on me. Because Travis was right. Never letting anyone too close was my MO. I just hadn’t realized it was so damn obvious.

“I think a thing or two has changed since high school. At least, I hope to hell it has,” I grumbled.

The grin on Trav’s face only widened. “Unless you hit perfection the first time around.”

“Oh, fuck off,” I shot back. “I swore Cora would realize she could do so much better.”

“Thank God she hasn’t,” he said with a laugh. “Come on, let’s get that request filed for you. Grady can help.”

Grady. Apparently, Gus and Gary were both wrong.

The man scowled as we turned to him, but Travis wasn’t in any way affected. He just shook his head. “Stop looking like someone poured salt in your coffee. It’s just a records request.”

“You know,” I said, sliding the paperwork across the counter, “my legal right.”

“It your legal right to stick your nose where it don’t belong?” Grady shot back.

I didn’t miss that good ole Grady hadn’t progressed past deputy rank while Roger and Travis, who were both younger than him, had. I didn’t mention that fact. Instead, I pasted on a bland smile. “It’s my legal right to be a pain in the ass, and it’s one I take seriously.”

“That’s always been your way, hasn’t it?” a new voice asked.

Sheriff Miller sauntered out of a back hallway as if some Bat-Signal had gone out announcing my presence. I took a second to study the man I hadn’t seen in years. Lanky with a thick mustache—now pure white—and more lines in his face than the last time I’d seen him. But a kind of ugliness that had nothing to do with appearance shone through his eyes.

Miller had never liked my brothers and me. Hated that Uncle Waylon had taken us in and brought the media’s attention. Their fascination with us had waned, only popping back up on anniversaries now and then, but Miller took it as a personal attack on his town.

Or maybe he just thought we were all serial killers in the making. That we would turn into our father. That we would systematically stalk women. Abduct them. Torture them. Murder them. Keep souvenirs of our kills.

Even just thinking it had my gut roiling. But the fact that Sheriff Miller suspected us gnawed at me. Because a tiny part of me wondered what darkness lay dormant beneath my skin that my father had left behind.

But I didn’t let him know any of that. Instead, I just beamed at him, throwing the man off-kilter. “Sheriff Miller, it’s so good to see you.”

Travis snickered, trying to hide it with a cough.

Miller’s scowl deepened. “What are you doing in my house?”

The fact that he called the station his house told me everything I needed to know about him, but I just kept my smile pasted on. “Funny. I swore this was a place of county services. I guess I could go to the state level and—”