Her cheeks pinked slightly before she grabbed a brush and pointed it at me.“Don’t start being smooth now.We just got dressed.”
I chuckled and pulled my cut on.“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
We headed down the hallway together, and the second we stepped into the common room, Piney looked up from the table and grinned.“Well look who survived the morning workout.”
McKayla flipped him off while walking toward the table.
Anchor sat at the head of it, drinking coffee, while Prime leaned back in his chair.Pearl sat curled sideways in her chair eating toast and Shay was in the kitchen starting another pot of coffee.
McKayla settled easily into my lap like she belonged there.
Piney pointed at her with a strip of bacon.“So what does the PI have for us today?Any big breakthroughs?”
McKayla laughed, but I felt the slight tension that went through her body.
Tennessee.
It was still bothering her.
Hell, it was bothering me too.
I wrapped an arm around her waist tighter while Anchor looked between us.“What?”
McKayla immediately glanced at me.I made the decision before she could stop me.“Ron told her Erin mentioned Tennessee before she quit, but McKayla knows that Erin would never go to Tennessee.”
McKayla stiffened hard in my lap.“Push.”
I held onto her anyway.“They need to know.”
Her jaw clenched, and I could feel she was pissed, but she didn’t pull away from me.
Anchor set his coffee mug down slowly.“You sure?”
McKayla sighed heavily and rubbed at her forehead.“Yes.I’m sure.”She looked down at the table a second before glancing back up.“When Erin and I were kids, we got placed in a foster home in Tennessee for two months.It was…” She exhaled sharply.“Bad.Really bad.”
Nobody interrupted her.
“We both swore we’d never go back there again,” she finished quietly.“Ever.”
Prime leaned forward immediately.“Then why would Ron say that?”
“That’s what I don’t know,” McKayla muttered.
Lost spoke up from behind the bar where he was wiping down counters.“Maybe Ron just threw out a random state trying to make her feel better.”
“But why say anything at all?”Post asked from the couch.“If he didn’t know where she went, he could’ve just said that.”
Prime tapped his fingers against the tabletop slowly.“I don’t like this.”
“Yeah,” Anchor agreed grimly.“Me either.”
Piney tossed popcorn into his mouth from God knows where he’d gotten it this early.“Maybe we should have another chat with Ron.”
McKayla looked up.“You think he lied?”
Anchor rubbed a hand over his beard.“Maybe he remembered wrong.”
