“Why couldn’t you have just said that?” Wendy motioned with her hands. “Pretty simple.”
Hook blinked at her as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him until she pointed it out.
“I never meant to take him on alone,” she argued. “I was going to go to the naval police.”
An undignified snort left him. “They won’tdo anything.”
Wendy crossed her arms and slumped against the back of her seat. “Why not?”
“How did you get to Neverland?” Hook derailed her with a different question.
“I—” She frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“Nothing?” He leaned back on the couch again, his hand on the seatback while his hook lightly scratched Mirai’s head. The feline began purring.
Uncrossing her arms to rest her head in one hand, Wendy sighed. “I remember deciding that I couldn’t let George separate me from my brothers—”
“George?” Hook interrupted. His tone was casual, but something in the tilt of his head gave away how invested he was in the answer.
“My stepfather. He announced that John was old enough to be an apprentice and Micheal could be shipped to boarding school.” Her hands began moving to emphasize her words. “But John is a creative soul, accounting would crush him. And the bullies at boarding school would literally crush Micheal. He’s too gentle and trusting to navigate those social dynamics.”
Hook nodded thoughtfully. “Perfect for Pan. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your stepfather had plans for your brothers. What about you? Did you kidnap them with pure motives?”
Wendy slapped her hands down on the arms of her chair. “I didn’t kidnap them!”
He raised his eyebrows and held out his hand and hook in a “look where you are” gesture.
She left out a huff of air. “That was never the plan. The night George told us this, and mentioned he was marrying me off because I’m no longeruseful”—Wendy curled her upper lip—“the boys begged me to stay in the nursery with them.”
Hook said nothing.
She smoothed her dress over her lap and shook her head. “One of the shadows in the nursery looked like a boy, and John joked that we should follow Peter Pan’s shadow to Neverland. My next clear memory is being shown around the island.”
“That may very well be what happened,” Hook mused under his breath, then stroked his bearded chin.
“What?” Wendy asked, though she had heard him clearly.
Hook set his ankle on the opposite knee. “If you can’t even tell how you arrived on a semi-mythical island, how are the naval police going to believe you? Or find it if they did?”
Frustrated that he was cataloging her doubts from earlier, Wendy propped herself up with the arms of the chair, then dropped against the seatback with a thump. “I don’t know. But he’s a murderer; don’t they take murders seriously?”
“Do you have any proof?”
The mild tone he used rubbed her wrong. “My eyewitness account.”
He shook his head with something like regret. “The authorities tend to disregard stories without bodies or crime scenes to investigate.”
She tapped her bare foot on the time-burnished floor and opened her mouth to ask why Hook didn’t do something about Peter.
“This has been an enlightening discussion,” Hook said as he stood. “Time for you to take up space elsewhere.”
Wendy’s indignant gasp was lost in the shuffle as he scooped her out of her chair with one arm and strode for the door. He deposited her in the hall, then shut his door with a solid click, leaving her gaping in the dark hall.
“Well, I never!” She stomped her foot and immediately regretted it. “Oww!”
