Page 6 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

Getting Keme home turned out to be the easy part. Getting him into his room, as a matter of fact, wasn’t even all that hard.

Getting out, on the other hand, was another matter.

“You have to help her,” Keme said as he paced. His long, dark hair hung in tangles in front of his face, and he was still in his wet clothes, dripping on one of Hemlock House’s expensive (and irreplaceable) rugs. He didn’t seem to notice any of it. “You have to prove she didn’t do it.”

Millie hugged herself and watched, misery and helplessness competing in her expression.

“We’re going to do everything we can,” I said.

“You have to help her,” he said again as he ran his hands through his hair. He reached the end of the room and spun back toward me. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know—”

“You have to tell the sheriff she didn’t do it.”

“Keme—”

“You can make them see she didn’t.”

“I’m going to try. I promise I’m going to try.”

He nodded, but it was like he hadn’t heard me. “She wouldn’t ever do something like that.”

I nodded.

“She wouldn’t,” he said more sharply, as though I’d argued.

“I know, Keme. I know. I’m on your side. I’m on Indira’s side. We’re going to figure this out.”

He mumbled something. Then he veered toward the door. This was his third attempt to leave, so I was now blocking his exit. When I didn’t get out of his way, he growled and said, “Move.”

“We talked about this. You can’t go down to the station because—”

“I’m not going to the station!”

“—because you attacked Salk. The sheriff could have arrested you, you know that? And you owe Salk an apology.”

“I’m not going to the station!” He delivered the words the second time with the insultingly slow delivery that only a teenager can truly master.

“You’re not going anywhere,” I said. And then genius struck. “You’re grounded.”

Keme gaped at me.

Millie’s jaw dropped .

“That’s right,” I said, warming up to the idea. “You’re grounded, buster. You’re not going anywhere.”

For several seconds, the only sound was water dripping off three very wet people.

“You can’t ground me!”

“You’d better believe I can,” I said. “I’m your—whatever I am. Brother-dad, I guess? And kind of a foster parent. Wait, is den mother still a thing?” I was losing ground, so I rallied with “And Indira’s not around right now. So, it’s my call. And I say you’re grounded, so no leaving the house.”

I waited for the shouting. I waited for the argument. I braced myself against the all-too-real possibility of Keme simply tackling me and then escaping.

But one second passed. And then another. And then tears welled in his eyes.

“Keme,” I said. “Come here.”

He dashed at the tears and tried to glare at me.

“It’s going to be okay—”

He gave a furious shake of his head.

“Yes,” I said. “It is. Come here.”

It took several more seconds before he slunk over to me: eyes downcast, shoulders stiff, hands balled into fists at his side.

I hugged him. “We’re all going to be okay.”

He shivered and shook his head again.

I rubbed his back.

It felt like a long time before, his voice cracking, he said, “She’s gone.”

Then he started to cry. Keme wasn’t really a crier, although the last few months had certainly put that hypothesis to the test. Even now, it wasn’t outright sobs—more like these violent, intermittent shakes as he fought desperately to hold himself together and occasionally lost. I rubbed his back some more until the worst of it was over.

“Shower,” I told him. “Dry clothes. Get some rest.”

He sniffled. He glared. He dragged himself around the room with long, sulking, melodramatic pauses as he gathered what he needed. Then he touched Millie’s hand, looked at her silently until she rubbed his arm, and gave me one final, murderous stare before retreating into the bathroom.

Honestly, it was adorable. He was like a little wolf cub after a mama wolf licked his fur into a mohawk. (Or something like that.)

After the door closed behind him, I said, “Are you staying over tonight?”

It wasn’t something we talked about; they were both adults. Millie blushed but only slightly. “He’s pretty upset.”

“I know he’s upset. That’s why I want you to make sure he doesn’t leave tonight.”

Millie nodded.

“I’m serious.”

“I won’t let him leave.”

“Good. Do you need anything?”

She shook her head. But as I reached for the door, she said, “Dash, we couldn’t find her.”

“Who?”

“Nalini.”

The doorknob was cool under my touch. “It was a crazy night.”

Millie nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.

When I got to our bedroom—it was now all but officially our bedroom, since Bobby only ever slept in “his” bed when he worked an overnight—Bobby was naked.

This wasn’t uncommon. Somehow (I suspected because Bobby was incredibly attractive and had all those muscles) he’d grown up without the slightest compunctions about casual nudity.

(I also suspected that Bobby had never had a minor panic attack upon entering the boys’ locker room.) He stood near the bed, a towel hanging from his hand as he looked at his phone.

He had broad shoulders that ran down to the tight vee of his waist, and as Fox was fond of pointing out, he had a majestic, er, derriere.

Strong thighs. Strong calves. And he did this thing, when he wasn’t thinking about it, where he curled his toes into the rug. He was doing it now.

With a glance over his shoulder, Bobby asked, “Did you get him settled?”

I nodded.

Bobby tossed the towel in the hamper and set down his phone. He came over to me. His arm settled on my hips, and he pulled me to him.

“He’ll be okay. He’s frightened.”

“ I’m frightened.”

That made him laugh quietly for some reason, but when he spoke, his voice was serious. “Indira will be okay too.”

I made some sort of sound, but even I wasn’t totally sure what it meant. I nuzzled into Bobby’s neck. “You’re naked.”

He laughed again, squeezing me more tightly against him. His hand slid up my shirt to caress my back, the warmth of skin against skin, but that was all. The night had been so bleak, and my whole body felt heavy.

He didn’t even have to say anything.

“Maybe not tonight,” I said.

“I know.”

“It’s not that I’m not interested.”

“Hmm.”

“Because I am interested.”

“Dash.”

“ Very interested.”

His laugh vibrated through me. Then he turned me toward the bathroom, patted my, uh, rump, and gave me a push.

I rinsed off quickly; the rain had left me clammy, and the hot water and soap felt wonderful. I toweled off as Bobby brushed his teeth.

“Indira didn’t kill Mal,” I said.

Bobby stopped mid-brush and fixed me with a look in the mirror.

“She didn’t,” I said with a defensive chuckle. “And I’m not snooping or sleuthing or anything.”

“Yet,” he bubbled around the toothbrush.

“Rude!” But I couldn’t stop there. “It doesn’t make any sense.

Why would she shoot him? He’s her ex-husband, okay.

But she hasn’t seen him in years. And then out of the blue, they stumble into each other, and she decides she can’t wait another minute, she has to blow him away right now? That’s crazy.”

Bobby made one of those tooth-brushy sounds that could have meant anything.

“And I know the sheriff has a legitimate reason to consider Indira a suspect,” I said. “I mean, she was standing there with a gun. I get it. But there’s an explanation for that.”

Bobby spat. He swished water in his mouth, and he rapped the toothbrush on the edge of the sink to get the last drops of water off (that’s our Deputy Bobby), and he spat again. Wiping his mouth, he said, “Dash.”

“Don’t say it,” I groaned.

But he did say it—because, again, he was Deputy Bobby. “I love Indira. She’s a great person. But you know as well as I do—maybe better—that anyone, under the right circumstances, can do things they never would have done otherwise.”

“What circumstances?” I asked. “What made Indira snap? You saw her at the restaurant. She saw Mal. She was…upset, I guess. But for heaven’s sake, she straightened the silverware. It’s not like she started blasting away right in the middle of the restaurant.”

Bobby, as usual, ignored all of that. “Let’s wait—”

“If you say, ‘Let’s wait and let the sheriff figure it out,’ I’m going to scream.”

About five seconds passed.

Five seconds can feel super long when Bobby Mai is looking straight at you.

“Let’s wait,” Bobby said gently, “and see what happens tomorrow. Then we can decide what we’re going to do.”

Listen: I’m all about crusades. I’m all about fighting the good fight to the bitter end.

I’m all about being completely, totally unreasonable in the name of doing what you think is right.

But the way he said we —knowing that Bobby would help me, that we’d figure this out together—took a lot of the wind out of my sails.

I tried to put this into words, but what came out was “I want to yell at you some more about why I’m right.”

That big, goofy grin shone out at me. “Okay, babe.”

And then he got out his floss.

I left Bobby to his dental care, pulled on a pair of trunks—these were black, and they had a neon green design that looked like the Xbox power button right on the, uh, front—and grabbed a sleep shirt.

Then I hopped into bed. A quick check of Crime Cats caught me up on the news (there was this tuxedo cat who refused to let her hooman work and kept putting her paw on his hand; really solid stuff).

Bobby finished getting ready for bed and padded around the room for a while, doing some end-of-the-day straightening up (yes, still naked).

I was so caught up in reading that I only noticed in the background when Bobby answered the phone.

It's not like I wanted to eavesdrop, but it also wasn’t like Bobby was aiming for privacy. He stood a few feet away, phone pressed to his ear, his back to me. There wasn’t much to the conversation—“Hi,” and then a long silence, and then, in a flat, hard tone, “What do you mean?”

“Indira?” I asked.

But he didn’t seem to hear me.

Bobby’s shoulders were tense, and combined with that terse little question, it was enough to make me sit up in bed.

What had happened? Had someone else gotten hurt?

Had the sheriff found additional evidence?

But why would the sheriff call Bobby? Why would the sheriff say anything to him, knowing that it would put Bobby in a tough spot, since I wasn’t part of the official investigation?

“Okay,” Bobby said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

My phone buzzed, and I glanced down at it. Some part of me expected disaster—it had been the right day for it. A text from Millie that Keme had flown the coop. A message from Fox about Indira. What could be worse?

But it was an email.

From an agent.

The month before, I’d started querying my novel.

Yes, it was finished. (I mean, technically it was finished.

I still wanted to give the ending one last pass.) And I wasn’t thrilled about the title.

( A Work in Progress sounded very clever, and no, it wasn’t because I couldn’t come up with anything better.) But it was done, and I’d been sending it out to agents—querying was a fancy word for shooting off emails blindly in the hope of finding someone who would represent my work, more or less by sheer chance.

One decision Bobby and I hadn’t agreed on—if you could call Bobby’s constant encouragement anything approaching disagreement—was my decision to use a penname.

I wanted to use one. Bobby said I should do whatever made me happy, but I could fill in the blanks.

So, I’d gone with Danny Lock. It was kind of an homage to my parents (Jonny Dane, of the Talon Maverick series, and Patricia Lockley—her latest hit was The Mistress in the Manor ).

The bottom line was that I didn’t want to capitalize on my parents’ reputations.

I didn’t want agents to pluck me out of the slush pile because of my mom and dad.

I wanted to succeed—or not—on my own merits.

Maybe it was stupid. Maybe I was making my life unnecessarily difficult. Maybe I was self-sabotaging because I was afraid of success. (Bobby didn’t say any of those things; I’ve just seen a lot of therapists.)

And so far, I’d gotten a lot of nos.

All nos, in fact. Each and every agent responding with a polite negative, my little tracking sheet slowly turning red as I highlighted the rejections.

This had been the last one.

I didn’t even have to open the email. The preview said, Thank you, but—

I tapped the email anyway, but I couldn’t read it; my thoughts were too loud. Well, that wasn’t a surprise, was it? After all the other rejections, it only made sense. By this point, I’d been expecting it.

My face felt hot. I put my phone down.

Bobby turned around. He was hugging himself.

I was already saying something about the email—something casual, something about how that was the end of that—and then I stopped. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

He cocked his head like he was surprised. “My mom died.”