Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) (8 page)

He stood there and just waited.

She couldn’t outwait him—she’d never been able to. So now she either had to tell him she really didn’t
want
to go to his pub, or she could just go. If she told him she didn’t want to, she’d have to explain why, and she wasn’t doing that.

Tired already, she braced her elbows on the edge of the table and said, “I don’t suppose it’s going to make any difference to you if I tell you that I’m not really up for going into town, that I don’t really feel like hanging out until dinner and eating…” Then, she looked up. It took an effort to keep the relieved smile off her face, but she did it. “Ella Sue is making me supper here. She told me earlier. I can’t back out. Telling Ella Sue no…” She didn’t even have to feign the grimace.

Brannon even echoed her grimace. “That won’t go over well.”

Even as those words left his mouth, Ella Sue came bustling in. “I’ve already called your sister, sugar. She’s not working late tonight.” Her dark eyes met Brannon’s and she gave him a serene smile. “Brannon, be here by six thirty.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he just smiled. “Of course, Ella Sue.”

As she went about clearing up the table, she asked, “What are you going to do today, Neve?”

“I—”

Smoothly, Brannon cut her off. “She’s coming into town with me. I want to show her the pub, some of the other things that have changed. The bookstore.”

“In other words, you want to show off,” Ella Sue said, shaking her head. Then she patted Neve’s back, unaware of the daggers Neve was shooting over the table at her brother. “That sounds like a good idea, though. Neve, I already had Mason bring your bag in. You only have the one … was there anything being sent in?”

“Mason…?” she asked. She was losing ground here. It was like it was crumbling to nothing under her feet.

“Oh.” Ella Sue turned back to her, frowning. “He’s dating Aneila. He started working here about six months ago—helps with the maintenance around the house, the landscaping, a little bit of everything, really. He’s already off to deal with something in the back of the estate. You’ll meet him soon enough, though.”

“Lovely.” Neve dropped her head into her hands. “Just lovely.”

*   *   *

“Nice car.”

Neve looked up at Brannon as he stood there staring at the piece of shit Ford she’d picked up used when she’d hit the United States a few months earlier. “Thanks. It’s a classic.”

“What happened to the Koenigsegg?” he asked, his voice bland.

“The Egg?” She wondered what he’d say if she told him the truth, but decided not to bother. “I got bored with it. It’s in storage, but just haven’t gotten around to getting it out.” Shrugging like it was no big deal, she walked past the Contour with its mismatched passenger door and studied the rest of the cars parked in the massive garage. Part of her wanted to stroke a hand down the smooth, gleaming paint of the classic 1968 Mustang Shelby, then move on to the absolutely beautiful black sports car that had to belong to her brother. The rest of her stood there, half appalled. After the way she’d spent the past couple of years … she thought of the faces she’d spent the past months looking at. How many of those lives could be changed—
forever
—with all the money put into these cars?

“Want to drive it?” Brannon dangled a set of keys in front of her face as she stared at the black car in front of her. She was close enough to see what it was.

A fucking Bugatti.

Trust Brannon to own one of those pieces of art.

“No,” she said softly. “You can drive.”

She went to open the door. His hand caught her arm and she looked up at him.

“Okay,” he said, his voice slow and controlled. “I was going to be nice and give it some time, but fuck that.”

She stiffened her spine.

“Maybe Moira and Ella Sue are too nice to call you on it.” He paused. “I’m not. So here’s the deal. You’re either going to get into the car and take a drive with me while we talk—and you tell me what in the hell is going on—or I’ll just take myself back on up to the house and spend the rest of the day digging it up on my own.”

She closed her eyes.

She felt a tug on her hair.

The familiar gesture sent a rush of tears to her eyes, and she opened them to find him studying her with his blue-green gaze—so very like Dad’s. Then, to her surprise, he hooked an arm around her neck and tugged her up against him.

“What’s it going to be, Nevie?”

If he hadn’t said that, she would have slugged him in the stomach. Curling her hands into fists, she twisted away from him and walked away a few steps. Surrounding by the brilliant lights of the expansive garage, by what added up to millions of dollars’ worth of cars, and under the weight of her brother’s stare, she stood there.

“You’re such an asshole,” she said softly.

“Yeah, well … maybe it runs in the family. We don’t hear from you for years and then you show up looking like you’ve been living out of a box…”

She tensed.

We don’t hear from you in years.
She turned and looked at him. “What do you mean, you haven’t heard from me in years?”

“Pretty much exactly what you think I mean.” Brannon looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “You all but fell off the face of the earth once you left, Neve. I get that you were upset and hurt—fuck, we all acted like assholes that last day and maybe…” He stopped and stared up at the ceiling. “Look, you had it rough and I don’t know … I don’t know, maybe Moira and I should have done more to make sure you were okay after the accident but—”

“Brannon!” Her shout echoed around the garage.

He stopped, glaring at her.

“I wrote you,” she whispered.

He slashed a hand through the hair. “Get off it, Neve. We messed up those last few years and I don’t even want to talk about it. I want to start things over, but first you need to tell me what’s wrong.”

“
I wrote you
!” she said it again, her voice rising. “You
and
Moira. Once or twice a fucking
month
. I
called
.”

She thought of the days she’d spent in the hospital, the calls the nurses had made the first few days. Then, when she’d told them to stop bothering. Even when she’d stopped trying to call regularly, she’d still written. It had taken forever to actually work up the nerve to write down what had happened, but after a while it had become cathartic and she’d poured her heart and soul out in those letters.

But not a one of them had …

But they were
marked
.

Spinning on her heel, she stormed over to the car. It was probably locked, but—

She frowned when it opened up on its own, then she popped the trunk. The backpack wasn’t in the trunk. Fine. She’d just go get it from her room.

Brannon caught her arm before she hit the door and she jerked away. “Let me go.”

She had to get her backpack. Had to get the letters and ask why.

But the backpack wasn’t in her room.

“Neve, damn it, we’re going to talk,” Brannon said, although
he
was practically running to keep up with her.

“I need Ella Sue,” she said.

*   *   *

Her backpack was missing.

A bewildered Mason had come back to the house when Ella Sue called him on her cell phone and asked him about the backpack.

Neve wanted to think he was lying.

The long, gangly kid had stood there in front of Ella Sue with what amounted to terror in his eyes as the diminutive black woman stared up at him, and finally, she nodded at him and he left, dashing out of the back door like his ass was on fire.

Ella Sue came to sit on the island in front of her. “Is there any place else you could have left it?”

Brannon was still standing in the entryway to the kitchen, watching her. Neve kept her back to him. She didn’t want to look at him, hear his accusing voice, or see the doubt in his eyes.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I put it in there when I left Gideon’s place this morning. It never left the trunk.”

“You spent the night with Gideon.”

She glanced over at Brannon now. His voice, so carefully blank, jabbed a hot needle into her side. “He let me crash in his guest room. It was late and I needed some rest.”

Brannon opened his mouth, but Ella Sue hushed him. “Maybe you left it at his place by mistake,” Ella Sue said. “Whatever is inside it, if he has it, you know it’s in good hands.”

“That’s the problem,” she muttered. Gideon
didn’t
have it. She knew it. But she pulled out the cheap throwaway phone and the card he’d given her, punched in his number.

He answered after three rings, his voice brusque and distracted.

“Hey, Gideon. It’s Neve.” After a moment, she added, “McKay.”

There was a pause and then he chuckled. “As if I know any other. How did the reunion go?”

Her laugh sounded strained even to her own ears. “About as well as we can hope, I guess. Hey, listen … did you see my backpack this morning?”

“Yeah. You put it in the trunk with your suitcase, crammed it in on the side.”

She closed her eyes. “You’re positive.”

“Yeah. I saw you do it with my own two eyes, Nevie.”

Bracing her elbow on the table, she dropped her forehead into her hand.
Shit
. Out loud, she just said, “Thanks.”

“What’s wrong?” Gideon’s voice was matter of fact and blunt. Not consoling like Ella Sue’s and not pushy like Brannon’s. Something about it just soothed her.

For some reason, she found herself saying what she hadn’t been able to say. “Somebody stole it out of my trunk this morning. I think it probably happened when I went to the museum.”

Ella Sue’s soft gasp made her squirm with embarrassment.

Brannon’s muttered curse had her ducking her head even lower.

“It’s missing?”

“Yes.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened—leaving out just why she had to get the backpack, what was inside it—just explaining that it was missing.

“Is there anything of value in it?” Gideon asked after she’d finished.

She stuck a finger in the hole of her jeans, worrying the hole there. “Some things that were important to me, yeah—that can’t be replaced, but you can’t put a price tag on them. Personal stuff. But I had my passport in there. Some emergency cash. Two different prescription meds. That’s it.”

“How much cash?”

“Only about two hundred dollars. I kept most of my money on me.”

“Well…” Over the line, she heard Gideon blow out a harsh breath. “It’s unlikely we’d get the money back. The passport and the medications are a problem—I assume they were your prescriptions?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t bite back the snap in her voice any more than she could keep from flinching at the accusation she only imagined she heard.

“It’s okay, Neve. We need to file a report—those are the kind of things that can bite you and you’ll need the report when you take care of the passport. You have to report that it was stolen right away. I can come over there or send an officer, or you can come to town—”

She slid off the stool. “I’ll come to town.”

She had to get away from here now anyway.

Had to breathe.

She wasn’t going to do this—not again.

*   *   *

There were fights you could win, fights you might lose but they were worth fighting anyway, and then there were the ones that just weren’t worth it.

Neve had pegged the fight with her brother as not worth it.

She had to get to town.

When Brannon told her he’d drive her, her instinct was to tell him to kiss her ass and then find the keys to the POS—
piece of shit
. She’d dubbed it that from day one, but she now used it with some affection. The POS had gotten her from Point A in New York City all the way down here without much trouble at all. It didn’t guzzle gas and, even though it was uglier than sin, considering the neighborhoods she’d stuck to, it had blended in rather well.

But she wasn’t going to argue with her brother over riding the twenty-five minutes into town just so she could avoid being with him in the close confines of his Bugatti.

Now, arms crossed, legs crossed, and her entire body angled toward the door, she gnawed nervously on her thumbnail and tried not to think about the backpack.

Nobody in town would know the significance of the backpack. Chances were that some kid had grabbed it, figured it had money or something easy to sell, and when he—or she—saw he was wrong, it would get dumped. Maybe she’d get it back, but it was unlikely.

Still, the thought of all those letters …

“So what’s the deal with this backpack?”

It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d climbed into the car. Shooting him a look, Neve shrugged. “You heard me talking to Gideon. I had some medicine in it, my passport, money. Somebody stole it. I’d like it back.”

The soft sound of his sigh drifted around the car. She squirmed and tried not to think about how well the leather seat cupped her or how rich the leather smelled or how the car purred like a rich, throaty beast on the prowl.

“You’ve always been able to make people believe just about anything you want, Neve. But it’s not as easy with me or Moira. Let’s try that again … with the truth,” Brannon said.

“That was the truth.” She gave him a cool look. “I had my passport in it. Money. My medication. There were also personal things in it that I don’t really feel like discussing with you.”

Because you’re not going to believe me
. Despair swamped her at the thought. He wouldn’t—maybe he shouldn’t. He wasn’t wrong. She’d always been so good at manipulating people as a kid. That had changed, years ago, but she couldn’t expect them to believe that, not without explaining everything to them. And the thought of doing that left her feeling exposed and bare, like she was parading naked in front of a classroom.

A few more miles passed in silence. She caught sight of the familiar sign, W
ELCOME TO
M
C
K
AY’S
T
REASURE …
A
T THE
H
EART OF
I
T
A
LL
.
Neve had to fight to keep the sigh of relief trapped inside.