“Let’s all just settle down for a minute,” Luke said. “Shay, if you can’t promise to stay calm, I’ll have to ask you to leave the room.”
She tried to jerk her arm from his grasp, but he held tight. “You’re not allowed to interview my brother without my permission!”
“Actually, I am, in this situation.”
She glared at him, her chest rising and falling with agitation. He stared back at her. Faced with no other choice, she gave her consent.
“Go on and sit over there by Dylan.”
When he released her, she walked slowly around the perimeter of the table, her eyes on Garrett. All but baring her teeth, she sat down next to Dylan.
Luke turned to Garrett. “I would recommend that you consider your words, and your actions, very carefully from now on.”
Garrett’s dark gaze moved from Luke to Shay, assessing their body language in his cold, calculating way. He knew what was going on between them. “Those FBI guys might want to sit in on this interview,” he said. It was a thinly veiled threat.
Luke made a show of considering the idea. “I think you’re right,” he said, nodding. “They’ll probably be interested in that conversation we had about Yesenia Montes the other day, too. Let’s call them in.”
Whatever dirt Luke had on Garrett, it must have been good, because the stocky deputy shut up and sat down.
Luke took the seat next to him. “Did you read him the Miranda?”
“Yes,” Garrett said. “Although I can’t be certain a kid with a mouth like that understands the right to remain silent.”
Luke kept his focus on Dylan, refusing to let Garrett’s sarcasm affect him. “Did you get a job on the construction site at Los Coyotes?”
Dylan frowned, as if he hadn’t anticipated that particular question. “Yeah. I started yesterday.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Did you see Bull Ryan?”
“Only for a second, when I first got there.”
“Not before you left?”
He hesitated. “No. I went to the office to say goodbye, but he was already talking to someone else.”
“Who?”
He glanced at Shay. “Jesse.”
“Did you listen in?”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “I might’ve heard some stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Money trouble. Woman trouble.” He gave an insouciant shrug. “Whatever.”
“Was the conversation friendly?”
“Not really. But it wasn’t, like, antagonistic. Just your typical Jesse Ryan bullshit.”
“What does that mean?”
“That he got what he wanted without much resistance.”
Luke’s eyes went to Shay’s, clearly reading Dylan’s implication that she was also something Jesse had had without much resistance. “A loan?”
“I guess,” he replied. “Why are we talking about him anyway?”
Instead of answering, Luke looked at Garrett, who slid a clear plastic bag across the surface of the table. Inside, there was a hunting knife with a blade that folded down, making it easy to carry or conceal in the palm of a hand.
When she saw it, Shay’s heart broke for her brother a little bit more.
Their dad hadn’t been big on macho gifts, being a consummate pacifist who disdained material things, but he’d given that knife to Dylan on his tenth birthday. He hadn’t been big on family vacations either, but damned if he hadn’t taken her and Dylan to the Kern River that year, just weeks before she left for college.
“Every man should know how to clean a fish,” he’d said, handing Dylan the shiny new knife. He’d been standing on the wet rocks along the riverbank, blond hair glinting in the late-day sun, holding a flopping trout on a short line.
Remembering the look of wonder in Dylan’s eyes as he turned the knife in his hands, she now felt tears burn in her own. At the time, she’d been jealous of their easy male camaraderie. What she wouldn’t give now for a dozen more moments like that.
“Any particular reason you were carrying this?” Luke asked.
Dylan rolled his shoulders and winced, straining against the uncomfortable position. “Let’s get real. You know what I did. I know what I did. You want me to sign something, fine. Take off these frigging cuffs and I’ll sign whatever you want me to.”
Luke’s brows rose. “You will?”
“No,” Shay said, fear twisting her insides. “He won’t sign anything. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Dylan-”
Her brother ignored her. “I’m guilty, okay? I used the knife to commit a crime and I’d do it again. I enjoyed it. And that stupid jock deserved it. I’d rather have blown up his engine, that would have been cool, or busted out the taillights-”
“Hang on,” Luke said, holding a hand up. “You would have busted out whose taillights?”
“Chad’s,” he said, looking at the faces around him in confusion. “That’s why you picked me up, right? Because I slashed his tires.”
Shay let out a slow, pent-up breath. She wanted to slide under the table and crumple into a little heap of relief.
“You slashed Chad Pinter’s tires,” Luke repeated, leaning back in his chair.
“Yeah. What’d you think? That I killed somebody?”
“This is crazy,” Garrett muttered, standing. “I can’t believe you’re buying this. The other day I caught him out on the rez with a backpack full of stuff to make pipe bombs. He’s a menace to society.”
Shay gasped. One glance at Dylan, whose face was pale with guilt, told her Garrett spoke the truth.
“Sit down, Garrett,” Luke returned, his tone mild but his eyes intense.
The CB radio at the deputy’s thick waist sounded, saving him from having to comply. It was the dispatch operator, phoning in a vandalism complaint from Chuck Pinter. After Garrett responded with a 10-4, the room fell into a charged silence.
“I’ll take care of it,” Luke said.
Garrett recognized the statement for what it was: a curt dismissal.
The deputy didn’t reply to the rebuke, but he was in many ways a devious man, a plotter rather than a protester. Shay knew Luke was going to have nothing but trouble from him for the rest of their working days.
With a stiff nod, Garrett tossed the keys to his handcuffs on the table and left.
Luke watched him go, contemplating Garrett’s perversity with narrowed eyes. Once the deputy was out of sight, Luke turned back to Dylan. “You saw him on Los Coyotes?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
Dylan gulped. “Sunday. And that pipe bomb stuff was just an experiment. Like a science project. I wouldn’t use it to hurt anyone.”
Shay knew her little brother had issues, but she’d never imagined he would put his life in danger by messing around with homemade explosives.
“Did he hit you?” Luke asked.
Dylan rubbed the side of his mouth against the fabric of his T-shirt. “No. He tackled me from behind and the ground said hello to my face.”
“Has he ever hit you?”
