“Need a ride?” he asks outside the sheriff’s department.
“Please.”
As we get into his dark gray Honda, I ignore the dark, suspicious stares from the people on the other side of the street. It’s why I avoid coming into town unless I have to.
“What set him off this time?”
“I left town to look for someone,” I say, snapping on my seatbelt. “My uncle probably thought I was distracted, and it was a good time to pull me in.”
Otto starts the engine, and we leave the stares behind us to head to my house, where it’s easier to pretend the whole town doesn’t hate me. “You really could leave, you know? If your uncle started any trouble wherever you moved to, I could file a harassment charge, and he’d have to drop it.”
“I could, but this would only follow me wherever I went. If I sold the house, he would turn vindictive, and right now, he’s bad. That would set him off like nothing else.”
Otto and I went to college together. He wound up working as a BigLaw attorney in New York until stress and ninety-hour weeks left him so burned out that he was barely sleeping. He was living on cocaine and takeout when he started having heart palpitations and chest pains at twenty-three.
He decided small practice would mean he lived longer, and he’s happier with less money, fewer hours, and an actual work-life balance with a wife and toddler. I could afford a high-powered criminal defense attorney from New York, but I trust Otto, and he takes perverse pleasure in legally slapping my uncle down, which is something I always appreciate.
“Call if your uncle is a dick again,” he says, pulling up outside the mansion gates.
“Will do.”
He leans out of his window and yells. “And move. I recognize a toxic environment when I see it, and this place is nothing but toxic for you.”
He’s not wrong.
I wave but don’t respond.
Chapter 14
Byrdie
“What ’cha doin’?”
I jump five feet in the air as hot breath kisses the back of my neck.
Turning, with my heart still pounding against my chest, I come face to face with an amused Makhi standing literal inches behind me after nearly giving me a heart attack.
“Nothing. Why?” I ask, trying to slow down my racing pulse.
“You’ve been hovering in the doorway, staring at that piano for fifteen minutes.”
Embarrassed, I consider lying, but he sounds too confident. He’s right. Ihavebeen hungrily eyeing Nash’s grand piano, wanting to play it. “How do you know that?”
His amusement grows. “Because I watched you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “For fifteen minutes?”
He scratches the back of his neck, avoiding my gaze. “Yup.”
“Don’t you have something better to do with your time?” I demand.
It comes out defensive as hell because he probably thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I am. First, he finds me standing on the edge of a roof, staring down at the ground. Now this. It’s not like meto be so prickly, but ever since they brought me back from New Mexico, I have not been behaving normally.
He opens his mouth to respond, but I switch from defensive to offensive. “You could have asked me what I was doing before waiting for fifteen minutes.”
He steps around me and walks into the music room. “But that would have meant I wasn’t watching you anymore.”
It almost sounds like something he enjoyed doing.
