Once that was finally done, they took a seat at the little dining table that had come with the apartment or she wouldn’t have bothered with. She preferred to eat on the couch. Or in bed.
Now she sat across from Royal eating very basic spaghetti and canned green beans at her kitchen table.
“So, I’m on duty seven to seven here in Hope Town. Deputy Mayfield handles the night shift.” He covered his spaghetti in an alarming amount of the parmesan she’d put on the table. “Simmons has all the alarms connected into my phone, so anything that happens should wake me up even overnight. Plus, I’ve got my phone set so a call or text from you goes through no matter what.”
“What about days off?”
“Usually it’d be weekends, but Sheriff and I thought it’d be best to just work through this. Ideally, we get to the bottom ofthings before I work too many days in a row. What about your schedule?”
She was stuck for a moment, not sure if she was supposed to insist he take days off or if she should just accept that he and the sheriff were doing the right thing. It’s not like this wasforher exactly. It was to find Albennie.
“Well, I usually like to go down to the bakery for my afternoon coffee and baked good, but I certainly don’t have to anymore. At some point this week I probably need to go to the grocery store. But I can really just…hermit down with the best of them.”
His mouth curved into an almost…half smile. It was kind but not patronizing. Kind of like sheamusedhim, in a good way.
She didn’t know what the hell to do with that. So she ate her dinner and they worked out how they’d handle surveillance monitoring. When he’d be watching, when they should wear the earbuds.
It wasn’t that complicated, all in all.Weird?Yes. Complicated? No. But they were both still eating once they’d determined the logistics and an uncomfortable kind of lull fell over the table.
Franny didn’t know why it was uncomfortable, or why she couldn’t seem to think of anything to say except to interrogate him about his life because she was desperately curious.
Was he curious at all about her?No, because you are not that interesting. But she had invited him to dinner, and he wasprotecting her, so it was probably her job to keep conversation going.
Or you just want to know about him.“So you grew up in South Dakota. Your sister is a forensic anthropologist and you’re a cop. Law enforcement run in the family?”
He laughed, not an amused laugh but a full-on maybe even a little caustic laugh. “No. Not at all.”
She knew a red light when she saw one. Curiosity was a hard thing for her to tamp down, but she did when she knew the questions weren’t wanted, wouldn’t be welcomed. She was uncomfortable enough in her own skin half the time, she hated to make anyone else feel uncomfortable.
But just because she knew she couldn’t ask all the questions she wanted to didn’t mean she knew what to say. So another awkward silence descended.
“Why do you have so many questions about me, Franny?” Royal asked her.
For a moment she just met his gaze, her heart fluttering around in her chest. The truth was, she always had questions about people, but she didn’t alwaysvoicethose questions. Not everyone interested her.
He did. For a lot of reasons. But she wasn’t going to tell himthat.
“People are interesting,” she said, trying to sound casual. “People are kind of my job. Writing stories is just…discovering how people tick. I guess sometimes that just slips out into trying to be a normal human being making conversation. And if you haven’t gathered, normal isn’t one of my top qualities.”
His mouth curved, ever so slightly. But his blue eyes were very serious. “So, if Brooke and I were characters in your book, what would make us tick?”
She could play this a couple different ways. It was a challenge of sorts, she could recognize that, though she didn’t know what he was hoping to gain from the challenge. So she just told him the truth.
“Well, based on the way you laughed at me asking if your family was in law enforcement, and the fact that you were quite adamant you’d never want to go back to South Dakota, my fictionalized version of that childhood—which is usually what makes people tick—would be…raised by criminals, saw awfulthings, so grew up wanting to protect people. Because you weren’t protected when you were vulnerable.”
He studied her for a long time. Long enough she had to look away or she’d start blushing. Or start staringveryhard at the tattoo on his right bicep that peeked out under his T-shirt sleeve.
It looked like the bottom half of a heart, and she desperately wanted to know if it had something inside like:Momor a woman’s name.
What kind of woman would prompt Royal to get her name tattooed on his arm?
When he finally spoke, it was with a kind of gravity that had her looking back up.
“Maybe your fictions aren’t far off.” He downed a gulp of water like it was hard liquor that might take the sting away. He set the glass down, fixed her with that intense stare of his. “You ever heard of the Sons of the Badlands?”
She blinked once, swallowed, feeling unaccountably nervous and not really sure why. Except, she supposed, nothing about the Sons of the Badlands wasgoodconversation. “The biker gang cult group?”
“Yeah. What do you know about them?”
