Page 7 of The Body in the Backyard

3

1:55 p.m. Thursday, October 31

“It could have been a small, bullet-size rock,” Nick suggested, eyeing the hole in Griffin’s windshield.

Of course the little prick had to drive an expensive little prick car. It stood out like a shiny luxury sore thumb in their driveway of weeds and overgrown shrubbery.

It served as an annoying reminder that he, Nick Santiago, had really slacked on his manly yard duties during the last case. Maybe he’d fire up the hedge trimmers in the garage. Shape some bushes. Cut off Griffin’s fenders.

“Nick, it’s clearly a bullet hole. Besides, I saw it happen in a vision,” Riley insisted. His girlfriend had her arms crossed over her chest. She looked adorably not thrilled with this turn of events.

He wrapped his arms around her and brushed his lips over her furrowed brow. “If someone really did take a shot at him, would the world actually be worse off with no Griffin Gentry in it?”

“Nick!”

He grinned at the good-girl indignation that had come just a beat too late. “What? I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have to protect and serve every single body in the county. I became a PI so I could tell assholes they were assholes.”

“That’s not why you started your own business,” she argued. “Besides, twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. The last few months have been pretty lean.”

Nick snorted. “We’re fine. The business is fine. We don’t need your ex’s money. Besides, it’s not like he’s actually going to write a check and hand it over. The guy thinks he deserves everything for free.”

The front door banged open, and Mrs. Penny limped out onto the porch, waving her cane in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. “Quit making out! We got work to do. I got a retainer!”

“Care to amend your statement, birthday boy?” Riley teased.

“What the hell is going on?” Josie asked from around the side of the porch, looking like a deadly bird of prey in head-to-toe black.

“Yeah, I can hear you through my noise-canceling headphones,” Brian complained, wheeling himself around the corner behind his wife.

“Just the woman I wanted to see,” Mrs. Penny said to Josie, stuffing the check into her bra.

“I’m definitely not depositing a cleavage check,” Nick grumbled under his breath.

“I need a bodyguard,” Mrs. Penny told Josie.

“Who’d you piss off this time?” Josie asked.

“Not for me. I can handle myself. Hi-yah!” Mrs. Penny kicked her orthopedic shoe three inches off the ground in a show of not-so-athletic prowess. “For our new client. His life is in danger.”

“Yeah, from me,” Nick said.

Riley gave him a squeeze. “Are you sure you’re up for a physically demanding job in your condition, Josie?”

Josie’s “condition” was pregnant.

“Yeah, aren’t you, like, tired and nauseous?” Nick asked from his extremely limited experience with pregnant women.

Josie narrowed her eyes in a deadly glare. “I am perfectly capable of doing everything I could do before I started growing a human in my abdominal cavity. And if any one of you needs to be reminded of that, I’ll be happy to rearrange your face.”

Nick would have taken the threat as legitimate if a tear hadn’t snaked its way down his cousin-in-law’s cheek.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded, pointing at the offending eye water. Normal humans cried. Hell, Nick himself had gotten choked up in the first five minutes of the movieUpwhen his niece had forced him to watch it. But Josie wasn’t normal or human.

“You okay, babe?” Brian asked, taking his wife’s hand.

“If one more person asks me that, I’m going to…” She trailed off midthreat.

“Back over us with heavy equipment?” Riley suggested.