When she didn’t get in by herself, I reached past her and put her coffee into the cup holder.
“I am really not happy with you right now,” she said.
The space between our bodies was charged with the kind of energy I usually felt just before a good bar fight. Dangerous, adrenalizing. I didn’t much care for it.
“Get in the damn truck.”
Considering it a small miracle when she actually obeyed, I slammed the door on her scowl.
“Everything all right there, Knox?” Bud Nickelbee called from the doorway of his hardware store. He was dressed in his usual uniform of bib overalls and a Led Zepplin t-shirt. The ponytail he’d had for thirty years hung down his back, thin and gray, making him look like a heavier, less funny George Carlin.
“All good,” I assured him.
His gaze skated toward Naomi through the windshield. “Call me if you need help with the body.”
I climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine.
“A witness saw me get in this truck, so I’d think long and hard about murdering me at this point,” she said, pointing to Bud, who was still watching us.
Obviously she hadn’t heard his comment.
“I’m not murdering you,” I snapped. Yet.
She was already buckled in, her long legs crossed. A flip-flop dangled from her toes as she jiggled her foot. Both her knees were bruised, and I noticed a raw scrape on her right forearm. I told myself I didn’t want to know and threw the truck into reverse. I’d dump her at the station—hopefully it was early enough to avoid who I wanted to avoid—and make sure she got her damn car. If I was lucky, I could still grab another hour of shut-eye before I had to officially start my day.
“You know,” she began, “if one of us should be mad at the other, it’s me. I don’t even know you, and here you are yelling in my face, getting between me and my coffee, and then practically abducting me. You have no reason to be upset.”
“You have no idea, sweetheart. I’ve got plenty of reasons to be pissed, and a lot of them involve your waste-of-space sister.”
“Tina may not be the nicest of people, but that doesn’t give you the right to be such an ass. She’s still family,” Naomi sniffed.
“I wouldn’t apply the label ‘people’ to your sister.” Tina was a monster of the first degree. She stole. She lied. She picked fights. Drank too much. Showered too little. And had no regard for anyone else. All because she thought the world owed her.
“Listen, whoever the hell you are. The only people who can talk about her like that are me, our parents, and the Andersontown High graduating class of 2003. And maybe also the Andersontown Fire Department. But that’s because they earned the right. You haven’t, and I don’t need you taking your problems with my sister out on me.”
“Whatever,” I said through gritted teeth.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. The Knockemout Police Department sat back a few blocks from Main Street and shared a new building with the town’s public library. Just seeing it made the muscle under my eye twitch.
In the parking lot was a pickup truck, a cruiser, and a Harley Fat Boy. There was no sign of the chief’s SUV. Thank Christ for small miracles.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“There’s no need for you to come in,” Naomi sniffed. She was eyeing her empty coffee with puppy dog eyes.
On a growl, I shoved my own mostly untouched coffee at her. “I’m getting you to the desk, making sure they’ve got your car, and then never seeing you again.”
“Fine. But I’m not saying thank you.”
I didn’t bother replying because I was too busy storming toward the front door and ignoring the big gold letters above it.
“The Knox Morgan Municipal Building.”
I pretended I didn’t hear her and let the glass door swing closed behind me.
“Is there more than one Knox in this town?” she asked, wrenching the door open and following me inside.
“No,” I said, hoping that would put an end to questions I didn’t want to fucking answer. The building was relatively new with a shit-ton of glass, wide hallways, and that fresh paint smell.
“So it’s your name on the building?” she pressed, jogging again to keep up with me.
“Guess so.” I yanked open another door on the right and gestured for her to go inside.
Knockemout’s cop shop looked more like one of those co-working hangouts that urban hipsters liked than an actual police station. It had annoyed the boys and girls in blue who had taken pride in their moldy, crumbling bunker with its flickering fluorescent lights and carpet stained from decades of criminals.