all hang out and have some laughs.”
Daniel scratched the back of his head. “I suppose Gemma didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure that Harper is in my life anymore.” He twisted the bottle on the table, staring down at the condensation that dripped down the glass. “We might’ve broken up last night.”
“Really?” Alex sounded surprised. “Did she pull the same crap that Gemma did with me? Like how it’s for your own good?”
“No.” Daniel shook his head. “I did something bad, very, very bad, and she rightfully got pissed off. So…”
“Oh, man. That sucks.”
“It does,” he agreed. “So I got sick of sitting around the house, thinking about what a jackass I am, and I thought, what the hell? Why not see what Alex is up to?”
“Thanks.” Alex smiled.
“So you’re working down at the docks now?” Daniel asked when they lapsed into a silence.
“Yeah.” Alex nodded. “Just until I go to college. I’m trying to enroll for the spring semester. I’m going for astronomy or meteorology. Anything about what happens in the sky, and I’m into it.”
“Yeah? That’s pretty cool,” Daniel said, then he tried to remember if astronomy was studying the stars or horoscopes. If he figured knowing Alex, it probably had to be following stars and comets and not the zodiac.
“What about you?” Alex asked him. “Any college in your future?”
“Nah. I was never that into school. I did okay, but I’d always rather be working with my hands than reading books.” Daniel held his hands out, showing the rough calluses and faded scars from years of fixing anything he found broken. “And I like what I’m doing now.”
He’d worked on some pieces, like the chair he’d broken today and the coffee table in his living room. But he didn’t have as much time as he’d like. He’d been hoping that with the island, he’d be able to really get working on his carpentry projects, but it seemed like the sirens took up any free time he might have.
And then the silence fell over them, growing more awkward the longer they went without saying anything. There was no TV to distract them, and they couldn’t actually see the parade of girls entered in the Miss Capri Pageant.
“Look at you two,” Penn’s silky voice came from behind them. Daniel’s hand tightened on his beer bottle, and he groaned inwardly. “Boys just wanna have fun, huh?”
“We’re just two wild-and-crazy guys,” he said dryly.
He felt her hand on his shoulder, her skin hot through his T-shirt. He leaned away from it, and Penn dropped her hand but sat down next to him anyway.
“What is that?” Penn leaned over Daniel to get a better look at Alex’s glass, and she smirked. “Soda? Oh, Alex, I’ll never understand what Gemma sees in you.”
“And I’m more than okay with that,” Alex said.
Daniel wasn’t completely sure how the sirens’ charms affected Alex. He’d fallen under them before, and Daniel suspected that if Penn really tried, she could hold him captive to her song.
But she didn’t actually seem that interested in him, and Alex held his own pretty well. He wasn’t falling all over himself to please her, and there was a glint of disgust in his eyes whenever he looked at her.
“So what are you doing in here in the tent?” Daniel asked, doing his best not to look over at her. “There’s a Miss Capri Pageant going on out there. Don’t you wanna go trick the judges into giving you a crown?”
“Please.” She sneered. “Getting awarded the prettiest girl in this town is like winning cleanest hog in the pen. You have to hang out with a buncha dirty pigs to prove something that everybody already knows.”
“That’s quite the imagery there, Penn,” Alex said.
“Since we got interrupted last night,” Penn said, dropping her voice to sultry, soft words in his ear, “it seems like you’re free today—”
“Speaking of last night.” Daniel cut her off, clearing his throat. “Where is Liv?”
Penn groaned. She sat with her back against the table, so she was facing in the opposite direction from Daniel and Alex, and her black hair cascaded over the wood. It also made it easier for her to stick her chest out, but Daniel wasn’t about to look over and catch a glimpse.
“She’s on lockdown,” Penn said. “I’m not letting her out of the house until…”
“Until what?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Maybe never again. I’m getting so sick of her attitude.”
He smirked. “I told you.”
“Really, Daniel?” She cast him a look. “I’m already getting enough of that crap from Thea and Gemma. I don’t need it from you, too.”
“That’s him,” Mayor Adam Crawford said, his words booming through the tent. “You, you there.”
Daniel glanced back over his shoulder to see what the mayor was freaking out about. Since it was seventy degrees, he’d ditched the suit jacket, but he still wore the slacks and a dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was normally slicked back, but a strand had fallen forward, dipping down over his forehead.
With a severe glare, the mayor was pointing directly at Daniel, and his petite blond wife hid behind him, looking sad and shaken. Daniel glanced around to be sure, but it was obvious that Mayor Crawford’s accusation was directed at him.
He marched over to Daniel. An aide tried to stop him, but he just pushed him away. Then the aide gently guided the mayor’s wife out of the tent, apparently not wanting her to witness her husband’s outburst.
The mayor stood directly in front of Daniel, and he turned around on the bench, so he could face him fully.
“You.” Then his eyes bounced over to Alex. “Actually, both of you were there.”
“Where?” Alex asked, baffled about being brought into this. “What are we talking about?”
“During the cook-off on Monday, you had an altercation with my son,” the mayor explained, and Penn snickered from beside Daniel.
“What are you talking about?” Daniel asked. “I didn’t even say anything to Aiden. I was defending his date from Liv.”
The mayor shook his head with a comical ferocity. “No, you got in a fight with my son over his girlfriend.”
“What?” Daniel was entirely perplexed now. “No, I didn’t. I—”
Penn leaned over and spoke low in his ear, “Honey, they don’t remember any of it.”
“What?” He looked over at her, then it hit him. “The song.”
During the fight at the park, Liv had bared her teeth and almost transformed in front of everyone. To make the incident go away before the X-Files division of the FBI descended on Capri, Thea and Gemma had used the siren song to make everyone forget what they’d seen.
Apparently, it didn’t make them forget everything, though. It must’ve twisted things up somehow, so the mayor thought he’d seen Daniel assaulting Aiden though he’d done nothing of the sort.
Still, sitting in front of Aiden’s father brought up a surge of memories. Gruesome images of Aiden’s body, and the final moments when Daniel had dropped the dismembered remains into the ocean. In the back of his mind, he could still hear the splash of the body hitting the water. A wave of nausea rushed over him, and he quickly swallowed it down.
“I’m sorry you’re upset about your son,” Daniel said, his voice almost inaudible over the din of the beer tent. “If there was anything I could do to help, believe me, I would.”
Mayor Crawford didn’t seem to hear a word Daniel had said. He’d been staring down at him, his small eyes fixated on him, as perspiration slid down his forehead, and he began wagging his finger in Daniel’s face.
“I know you, don’t I? You’re John Morgan’s little brother.”
Daniel nodded slowly. “Yeah, I am.”
“He was always trouble.” The mayor glowered down at him. “I always told Aiden to stay away from him. Aiden didn’t need to get mixed up with trash like that.”
“
