“Aw, man, you had to fix a toilet bear? That’s—what?”
“Garsea.” She flipped her phone around to show him. “Is in my house. Which is conveniently empty. Because someone has contrived to keep me fifteen miles away. While his sister breaks into my house. Because he is a sneaky son of a bitch.”
His mouth hung open. She took another bite, and she could actually see him working things out: oh shit she’s onto us she’ll call the cops why is she just sitting there she knows I can’t make a fuss in the restaurant should I talk her out of calling 911 or extract Garsea or go straight to begging forgiveness and offering her $$$$ not to sue my deceitful ass shit shit shit.
He was halfway to the door when he realized she wasn’t behind him. He stopped, turned, saw her calmly plowing through her fingerling potatoes, turned back to the door, stopped again, trotted back.
“Uh. Aren’t you going to—shouldn’t we be yelling at each other while you call the cops and then I beg you to hear me out and maybe try to bribe you?”
“Our food just got here.”
“You’re worried about your lunch?”
“Typical suit,” she sniffed. “‘Hang the cost, I’ll expense it!’ Not okay, pal. Plus you’ve got somewhere to be.”
“I do?”
“The hospital, prob’ly.”
Oz frowned, but his phone buzzed before he could reply. He pulled it out, not unlike a man handling an incendiary device, and checked the screen. “Jesus.”
“Toldja.”
“What did you do?”
“I’ll have the waitress put yours in a doggie bag.”
“What did you do?”
“Goodbye. Waitress?” Lila waved her over. “Could I get a refill on my rickey?”
Chapter 13
“This is fucking embarrassing,” Annette snarled, leaving a trail of blood like an angry snail, which was horrifying because the woman almost never dropped f-bombs. The blood was freaking him out a little, too. When Annette got bloody, corpses tended to pile up in the morgue.
“I’m glad you texted me, Annette, but…jeez, are you okay?”
“What were you thinking?” her fiancé, David Auberon, just about shouted.
“I was thinking ‘ow, ow, my hands, who lines their bedroom drawer with blades?’”
“My, my, my.” Mama Mac had hustled Annette over to the sink, snapped on the overhead light, squinted at the slashes, started gently rinsing them. David loomed over Mama’s shoulder, glaring down at the narrow, actively bleeding slashes across Annette’s index, middle, and ring fingers. “Such a mess.”
“The blades were in one drawer? Singular?” Oz asked.
Annette hissed as the water ran. “After the first one, I didn’t open any more drawers.”
“Why were you in her house to even open one? Jesus, Annette, we talked about this!”
Annette had the grace to look abashed. “Not this…precise situation, David. Exactly.”
“You said it yourself: Oz has to sink or swim on his own! No matter how he screws up, we’ve gotta let him make his own mistakes!”
Oz coughed. “Thanks for that, I think.”
Then David swung around and locked on (ulp) Oz. “This is exactly why you should have stayed in Accounting!”
“Really?” he replied. “This exact reason?”
Caught off guard, David snorted and dropped his gaze, to Oz’s relief and disappointment. He’d often wondered which of them would still be standing after a fight. David was stronger, but Oz figured he had the bear beat for speed. You’d have to go in tight, right under the chin, and hopefully get a chunk of him before he could get a grip and crush…but it’d have to be quick…like, the fastest-you’ve-ever-moved-in-your-life quick, or he’d claw your eyeballs out of your head and then really go to work.
Worse, David’s ire and Annette’s blood swirling down the drain weren’t his only problems. He had fucked up with Lila, who had every right to assume his only interest in taking her to lunch was to give Annette time to prowl around the Curs(ed) House. There was no coming back from this. There was no nice way to say, Yeah, I needed you distracted while Annette tossed your place, but I also wanted to be with you because I’m obsessed with your scent and mouth and proficiency with firearms, and I think we should get married and make enough cubs to form our own bowling league.
Nope. No matter how he explained it, it was gonna sound unhinged.
He couldn’t stay away from Lila Kai.
He had to stay away from Lila Kai.
The sound of the screen door being wrenched open punctured his train of thought, which was just as well. “Holy shit, we could smell the blood from the driveway!”
“Out!” Annette and David roared in unison.
“Damn,” Oz commented, watching the cubs scramble out of sight. “I didn’t think either of them could move that fast.”
“So the two of you…what? Decided to spy on Stables and be some kind of…I dunno…” David was pacing, and not for the first time, Oz was glad Mama Mac had a big kitchen. “Shifter Neighborhood Watch?”
“Stable,” Annette corrected. “Singular.”
“I’ve only seen her porch and her kitchen and the living room—” Oz admitted.
“And the basement,” Annette added, smirking.
“Kindly go right to hell, Annette. What was the rest of the place like? I wanted to see more of it late last night, but she wouldn’t let me in.”
“You went back again?” Mama asked. “Again?”
“No, not really, but, well, yeah,” he admitted. “Just tying up loose ends. Stuff like that. IPA stuff like that. Y’know, for the job. Nothing weird about it.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, boy,” Mama replied, “but I mean to—”
“Can we focus on how I’m bleeding all over the sink and the floor a bit, too?” Annette asked.
Oz exhaled in no small relief. He’d never wish actual harm on Annette, but at least she was distracting Mama from his runaway mouth.
“You were telling us what the rest of Lila’s house was like,” he prompted, because he was either clinically nuts or had latent stalker tendencies he’d never dreamed existed before this week.
“It was like Home Alone if Macauley Culkin had been raised in a militia. It wasn’t just the spring-loaded blades
