Naomi leaned across my brother to peer at the photo. I wasn’t certain, but I thought Nash looked like he was sniffing her hair.
I dragged her into my side, away from my brother, and handed her the photo.
“What the fuck?” I mouthed at Nash.
He shrugged, then winced.
“Stubborn fucking idiot,” I muttered. I guided Naomi to a stool out of Nash’s reach, then stomped over to the sink. He still kept his over-the-counter shit and his excessive collection of supplements in the cabinet. I grabbed a bottle of Tylenol and poured a glass of tap water, then slid both across the counter to my dumbass brother.
I spotted a baking dish on the counter with some kind of dessert in it. Lifting the plastic wrap, I sniffed. Peach cobbler. Nice.
Since I was missing out on my own lunch and Nash was to blame, I grabbed a fork.
“That’s my dress,” Naomi said, handing the photo back to Nash. She’d gone pale. I snatched it out of his hand and stared at the image.
Fuck. It was her dress.
“Figured she was dressing like you in case she ran into anyone in town,” Nash explained. “She must have grabbed it when she broke into your motel room.”
Naomi was biting her lip again.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded.
She shook her head. “Nothing.
My bullshit detector was activated.
“Daisy.”
“It’s just Tina used to do that when we were kids. I was home sick once our sophomore year of high school. She went to school dressed like me and told my history teacher—who I had a crush on—to go fuck himself. I got detention. All because my parents gave me the car the weekend before because she was grounded.”
Christ.
“You better not have kept your mouth shut and sat through detention,” I snapped, throwing the fork in the baking dish in disgust.
“Did she get whatever it was she wanted?” Naomi asked Nash.
“We don’t know. I heard that Tina got herself hooked up with some new guy a few weeks back. Lucian did a little digging. Said the new guy was some badass out of D.C. and Tina bragged to a couple of friends that they had a big score coming up.”
“Is that my mom’s peach cobbler?” she asked, nodding at the dish I held.
“She stopped by this morning to drop it off. She also stole my laundry and watered my plants.”
Naomi gave him a wobbly smile. “Welcome to the family. Prepare to be smothered.”
Something was wrong, and she was trying to hide it. I put down the cobbler and picked up the picture again.
“Fuck.”
“What?” Nash asked.
“I saw you in this dress. Outside the shop,” I said, remembering her standing in the window of Whiskey Clipper with Liza and Waylay. She’d looked like a summer vision in the dress.
Her cheeks weren’t pale now. They were flushed.
“Which means Tina didn’t take this from the motel. She broke into the cottage.”
Naomi busied herself by organizing the first aid supplies.
Nash swore and rubbed his good hand over his face. “I need to call Grave.”
He got up and snatched his phone off the dining table. “Yeah, Grave,” he said. “We’ve got a new problem.”
I waited until he headed into his bedroom before turning my attention back to Naomi. “She broke into your place, and you weren’t gonna say a word.”
She looked up as I rounded the island. She held up her hands, but I kept coming until her palms were pressed against my chest. “You do not keep shit like that from me, Naomi. You owe her nothing. You can’t live your whole life protecting people who don’t fucking deserve it. Not when it puts your safety at risk.”
She winced, and I realized I was yelling.
“What are you thinking? You have Way. If Tina and some low-life criminal fuck buddy are breaking into your fucking house, you don’t cover that shit up. You don’t protect the bad guy—you protect the kid.”
She shoved me, but I didn’t budge.
“You saw my motel room. You heard what Nash said—the storage unit was trashed. That’s what my sister does. She destroys,” Naomi snapped. “If Tina broke into the cottage, she would have wrecked the place. She never could stand the idea of me having anything nicer than what she did. So yeah. Maybe I noticed a few things out of place once or twice, and I chalked it up to Waylay or you or Liza. But Tina didn’t break in.”
“What are you sayin’？”
She wet her lips. “What if someone let her in?”