The name set my teeth on edge.
“Happy to,” Naomi said, sounding anything but.
“Uh. You got maybe a husband or boyfriend whose contact info you can add?”
I glared at him.
Naomi shook her head. “No.”
“Maybe a girlfriend or wife?” he tried again.
“I’m single,” she said, sounding just unsure enough that my curiosity piqued.
“Imagine that. So’s our chief,” Grave said, as innocent as a six-foot-tall biker with a rap sheet could sound.
“Can we get back to the part where you tell Naomi you’ll be in touch if you find her car, which we all know you won’t,” I snapped.
“Well, not with that attitude, we won’t,” she chided.
This was the last fucking time I was riding to the rescue of anyone. It wasn’t my job. Wasn’t my responsibility. And now it was costing me sleep.
“How long are you in town?” he asked as Naomi scrawled her information on the paper.
“Only as long as it takes to find and murder my sister,” she said, capping the pen and sliding the paper back. “Thank you so much for your help, Sergeant.”
“My pleasure.”
She turned to look up at me. Our gazes held for a beat. “Knox.”
“Naomi.”
With that, she swept right on out of the station.
“How can two sisters look that much alike and have nothing else in common?” Grave wondered.
“I don’t want to know,” I said honestly and headed outside after her.
I found her pacing and muttering to herself in front of the wheelchair ramp.
“What’s your plan?” I asked in resignation.
She looked at me and her lips puckered. “Plan?” she repeated, her voice cracking.
My fight or flight instincts kicked in. I fucking hated tears. Especially tears of the female persuasion. A crying woman made me feel like I was being ripped to shreds from the inside out, a weapon I’d never make public knowledge.
“Do not cry,” I ordered.
Her eyes were damp. “Cry? I’m not going to cry.”
She was a shit liar.
“Don’t fucking cry. It’s just a car, and she’s just a piece of shit. Neither’s worth crying over.”
She blinked rapidly, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or yell at me again. But she surprised me by doing neither. She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “You’re right. It’s just a car. I can get replacement credit cards, a new purse, and another stash of honey mustard dipping sauces.”
“Tell me where you need to go, and I’ll drop you. You can get a rental and be on your way.” I jerked my thumb toward my truck.
She looked up and down the street again, probably hoping for some suit-and-tie-wearing hero to appear. When none did, she sighed. “I got a room at the motel.”
There was only one motel in town. A single-story, one-star shithole that didn’t warrant an official name. I was impressed she’d actually checked in.
We walked back to my truck in silence. Her shoulder brushed my arm, making my skin feel like it was heating up. I opened her door again for her. Not because I was a gentleman but because some perverse part of me liked being close.
I waited until she’d belted in before shutting the door and rounding the truck. “Honey mustard dipping sauces?”
She glanced at me as I slid in behind the wheel. “You hear about that guy who drove through a guardrail in the winter a few years back?”
It sounded vaguely familiar.
“He ate nothing but ketchup packets for three days.”
“You plan on driving through a guardrail?”
“No. But I like to be prepared. And I don’t like ketchup.”
THREE
A PINT-SIZED CRIMINAL
Naomi
“What room are you in?” Knox asked. I realized we were already back at the motel.
“Why?” I asked with suspicion.
He exhaled slowly as if I were on his last nerve. “So I can drop you at your door.”
Oh. “Nine.”
“You leave your door open?” he asked a second later, his mouth tight.
“Yeah. That’s the way it’s done on Long Island,” I deadpanned. “It’s how we show our neighbors we trust them.”
He gave me another one of those long, frowny looks.
“No. Of course I didn’t leave it open. I closed and locked it.”
He pointed toward number nine.
My door was ajar.
“Oh.”
He put the truck in park where it sat in the middle of the lot with more force than necessary. “Stay here.”