Shee nodded and the woman turned her gaze back to Mick.
“So you really are a bounty hunter?”
Mick’s eyebrows arched. “Yes. You thought I was lying?”
The woman shrugged. “You have to admit. Bounty hunter makes for a sexy pickup line.”
She reached into her purse and withdrew a man’s black leather wallet. Shee recognized it.
It was Mick’s.
Mick risked taking one hand off Scotty to snatch it from her hand.
“That’s mine,” he said, slipping it back into his back pocket. “You lifted it?”
She smiled, all teeth and ruby lips. “That’s what liars get.”
“But I wasn’t lying.”
She pointed a finger at him and clucked her tongue, as if her hand was a tiny gun. “That’s why you get it back.”
Mick grinned, noticed Shee watching, and cleared his throat, wiping away any lingering trace of amusement.
Already in rapture from her victory, Shee found herself in love with the woman playing her father like a fiddle.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The woman held out a hand to shake. “Angelina. Nice to meet you.”
“Shee.” Shee shook her hand before sensing the weight of her father’s stare.
“Can you go make the phone call please?” he asked, pressing a writhing Scotty to the wall as Angelina skittered out of the way.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
Shee bounced toward the bar, unable to control her giddiness.
&&&
Chapter Fifteen
Present Day
Bracco dragged Captain Rupert’s rug-wrapped body from the Cadillac’s trunk and hefted it over his shoulder before walking it to the edge of the grave. The body bent neatly, the rigor mortis having worn off.
As Bracco lowered him to the grass, the rug slipped from his tired fingers. The weight of the body spilled over the edge of the freshly dug grave unfurling the carpet like a flag. The old soldier’s body dropped on top of his wife’s exposed coffin with a hollow thud and a collective gasp from the crowd.
Angelina and Croix rose from the bench and scurried over. The four of them peered down at the dead man lying akimbo on his wife’s coffin, jaws slack.
Captain Rupert had landed face down, his skinny butt arched toward the moon as if he’d died in the act of making love to his wife’s corpse.
“We can’t leave him like that,” said Angelina.
“It’s a far cry from a twenty-one-gun salute,” agreed Shee.
Bracco grunted and lowered himself into the hole. With some difficulty and a collection of tools shepherded from the Cadillac by Croix, he opened the coffin and slipped Captain Rupert in with his wife’s bones, face up, like a gentleman.
The lid refused to reseal on the double-stuffed casket. Bracco pushed and groaned for over ten minutes until it snapped into place. Finished, he looked up, triumphant, only to realize he couldn’t climb back out of the grave.
“Pole isn’t sky,” he said in his gibberish, sounding defeated.
Croix picked up Bracco’s shovel and handed it to Shee.
“We’ll have to fill it in so he can climb out.”
Shee glowered at Angelina, who smiled before settling back on the bench.
“Isn’t it nice to be back?”
Croix started tossing dirt into the hole. Shee matched her shovel by shovel. Some primal part of her wanted to prove to the snot-nosed brat she wasn’t old.
Croix picked up speed.
Shee paralleled her effort.
The girl’s a machine.
By the time she’d finished, muscles screaming and soaked in sweat, Shee knew her pride had been a grave mistake.
Ha.
Not even her silent pun offered any joy.
They gathered to say a prayer and then shuffled back to the car. Lifting her shovel into the trunk, Shee groaned, and then tried to cover it by coughing.
She stared at the passenger-side back door as Croix and Angelina entered on the opposite side, unsure she could lift her arm to open the door.
Bracco opened it for her.
“Thank you,” she said, unsure of the last time she’d felt that grateful.
“Noodles,” he said.
Sliding into the car, Shee closed her eyes and fell back on the one thing that could distract her from her pain.
Obsessing about her father’s condition.
She’d left for years in order to protect him. In the end, it hadn’t mattered.
She couldn’t help feeling she was the reason he’d been shot.
An endless loop of regret and worry filled her stomach with sour acid until she could taste it rising toward her tongue. A clammy, prickly sensation broadcast across her cheeks and forehead. It took her a moment to recognize the sensation.
Oh no.
“Pull over.”
“What?” asked Angelina.
“Pull over.”
Angelina took one look at her before leaning forward to tap Bracco’s shoulder and echo her order.
“Pull over.”
Bracco guided his tank toward the shoulder of the road and Shee opened the door, spilling out before the car stopped.
She dropped to her hands and knees.
Back arching, she threw up.
Her gagging sounded like a jet engine in the silence of the night. Mortified, she fought a second wave.
Don’t do it. Don’t you do it—
Footsteps on the gravel approached.
Heels.
“Are you okay?” asked Angelina.
She nodded and spat. “I’m sorry.”
“You should have let Croix finish the grave.”
“Yup.”
“I saw you trying to beat her. You’re not twenty.”
“Nope.”
Shee wiped her mouth and stood, waving away Angelina’s offer to help her to her feet. She closed her eyes.
Think about the work, not the worry. Think about what you can change. What you can do. Think about—shit, my arms hurt.
Her eyes opened again.
“Are you okay?” asked Angelina.
Shee nodded and clambered back into the car. Angelina rounded the vehicle and reentered on her side.
Bracco pulled back onto the road. They rode in silence for another twenty minutes until they pulled into the Inn’s parking lot.
Angelina put a hand on Shee’s leg.
“Come with me.”
