Page 343 of Property of Whiskey

“You don’t?”

“You’re smiling.”

“Got ideas.”

“That worries me.”

“Should.”

She points one finger at my face. “If you have a cut made without asking…” She shakes her head, but there’s a smile fighting its way onto her mouth.

Epilogue

Twila

Three weeks later, I wake up in Whiskey’s bed because apparently that is my life now.

Not every night. I still have a house, still pay the mortgage on it, and still own my furniture, driveway, front porch, and enough stubborn pride to correct anybody who suggests I’ve moved in here.

But my phone charger is plugged into Whiskey’s wall. My uniform hangs over his chair, two pairs of my boots sit beside his bedroom door, and my shampoo has somehow earned permanent real estate in his shower. Sometime last week, three pairs of jeans, five shirts, two bras, underwear, socks, and one very expensive black dress also migrated from my overnight bag into his closet.

I did not move them.

He claims he did not move them.

Apparently the clothes developed legs.

I’m considering opening an investigation.

Three weeks of searches, warrants, dead addresses, and bad leads still haven’t found Crowley or the girls Pearly Gates moved, but nobody has stopped looking. Daddy reopened the other disappearances and put me on the investigation instead of ordering me off it. I finally got the real case I’d been asking for. I just wish there weren’t still missing girls at the center of it.

The smell of pancakes eventually pulls me out of bed. I drag on Whiskey’s shirt, button it wrong on purpose because I’m not awake enough to care, and walk down the hall barefoot.

Morning light pours through the kitchen windows, bright enough to catch every crumb on the table and the syrup already shining on Wren’s chin. She’s sitting there in pajamas covered with little frogs, dark hair sticking straight up on one side while Whiskey stands at the stove flipping pancakes with the concentration of a man defusing explosives.

He glances over his shoulder.

His eyes immediately travel down my bare legs.

“Morning.”

“Eyes up.”

“Were.”

“Liar.”

“Morning,” Wren says around a mouthful of pancake.

“Morning.”

I cross to the coffeepot while she watches me pour a cup.

“Are you sleeping over again?”

I take a drink. “Apparently.”

Wren frowns like I’ve given her an incomplete answer. “You should keep clothes here.”