Relatively Risky (9 page)

Alex watched Nell consider the question. She opened her mouth. Shut it. Finally shook her head. “I don't even know how to answer that question.”

Her blink was bit owlish. He noted the signs of tired in her face, too, signs she hurt from the body slams they'd shared. And not fun sharing either. It was a bad time to remember the kiss she'd asked for. Did she still want it?

“Surely you can't believe Nell had anything to do with this, other than as a witness?” Sarah's eyes narrowed.

“I have to consider all possibilities—”

“Really? They were total bad guys, so you have to consider the innocent bystander, instead of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of really bad people who had good—and bad—reasons to want both of dead?” Sarah demanded.

Ben swallowed.

“Not to mention, it's not your case anymore,” Alex pointed out. Hey, if the shoe were on the other foot, Ben would have taken the shot.

Ben's eyes narrowed a bit, then he shrugged and finally grinned. “I think I'll stop now.” He looked down, realized he hadn't taken more than a couple of bites and dug in again, quickly cleaning his plate.

Sarah waited until he was done before slanting a look at Nell. “I'm feeling a need to get a little crazy.”

Nell's eyes widened, she shook her head. “I'm too tired and too sore—”

Alex exchanged a puzzled look with Ben. Maybe one mixed with uneasy. He had that buzz in his ears that said he was between the second and third wind—and maybe the third wind wouldn't reach him. A bit like being drunk only without the painkilling effects. But not so buzzed he didn't sense danger incoming. Tired, drunk or sober, he knew women were always dangerous.

“One should never be too tired or too sore to get crazy.” Her smile was slow and evil.

Alex might not know Sarah, but he knew the body language of a woman on the mischief war path. Nell stared at her friend, her look one a guy with six sisters was all too familiar with, so he was not surprised when her mouth curved up into mischievous as well. He didn't expect the jolt to his gut from the smile. Cute. A cute woman could be the most dangerous kind of woman, except maybe one with a yen to get maternal. And cute often led to maternal—damn. He gave a mental shake. He should quit thinking now. It was starting to hurt.

Sarah considered them all, a finger tapping a pointed chin. “What do you think, Nell? Vocals or air instrument?”

Alex exchanged a glance with his brother. Way in the back, behind the buzz he heard:
Danger, Will Robinson
. But the sight of Nell's pursed lips as she gave amused consideration to the inexplicable question muted the warning.

“Vocals might hurt less, but,” she waved her fists like they held something, “drumming is both cathartic and crazy fun.”

Sarah grinned. “Excellent choice.” Her gaze shifted to them. “Air guitars or vocals—keeping in mind that singing along is required, while staying on key isn't. In fact, we adore dreadful. It's crazy making fun.”

Ben exchanged a puzzled look with Alex. “Um, air guitar?”

“Yeah, that for me, too.” Alex wasn't sure what he'd agreed to. His tired brain was slow to assemble the clues. Crazy. Vocals or air instrument. Drumming…surely they weren't planning—Sarah made her way to a drawer and pulled out a spoon.

“I'll do vocals then.” She struck a pose, the spoon angled like a…microphone. Then dropped it to tap the spoon against her grinning mouth.

“We don't usually have a four person band. Need to pick the right song…” She headed for a small speaker set up and inserted her smart phone. She appeared to consider and discard several choices. “D'oh!” She flashed Nell an impish look. “So obvious.”

His brain said no way in hell, but the words didn't make it out his mouth before the music started booming. He wasn't tired enough to not care, Alex noted, but he had been side-swiped by something worse. He wanted to kiss the girl and was willing to play air guitar to do it. It was crazy, but Nell's grin was an invitation to crazy he couldn't turn down.

Ben rose, giving himself a shake, as if it loosen up. Alex shot a warning look at his brother. “Cell stays in your pocket.” He wanted no YouTube videos or pictures on Facebook.

The look Nell exchanged with Sarah reminded him of his sisters. They'd made a sort of family, he realized. He knew Nell had no one, but if Sarah had family, she'd still made room for Nell. Family wasn't all bad. His would like this—he blinked. Yeah, tired was a lot like drunk. Only tired hurt more. He was a bit surprised to find himself standing, too, taking his place in the “band.” His thoughts started to spin off as the music for
Bad Moon Rising
began to thump out the speakers, loud enough to rattle the cups on the table.

It should have hurt. It didn't hurt enough. He could have left. He was a grownup. No one could make him do things—okay his sisters made him do things all the time. Was that why he started to “play” his guitar? Might be. And it might be a bad case of crazy. Or it might be Nell. He'd sort of figured a librarian would be shy, maybe a bit inhibited. Didn't look either as she kicked in with her air drums. Good sense of comic timing. Seemed like they all vied for truly awful. It was infectious as a cold. Something you caught whether you wanted to or not. Ben, who never minded what anyone thought of him, riffed like he was a member of CCR. And suddenly it didn't matter that they were awful or goofy or tired. It was fun. And it probably hurt less than if he'd tried to slide down that bannister….

He and Ben did rival air riffs, his eyes closed as he felt the music. And when he opened them there was his dad. And Curly Gastonieau.

The band froze, but the music kept going, a perfect compliment to the look on Bubba's face. Why did he look so grim? It's not as if air guitar was a crime. If anything Curly looked more shocked than Zach. Damn near white as ghost.

The music cut off, the silence both deep and weird.

Curly swallowed, tried twice before he managed a hoarse, “You look just like your mama.”

Nell shook her head, frowned. “What?”

“Is your mama,” he had to swallow to finish the question, “where is she?”

“My
parents
passed two years ago.”

He half flinched back. “I need—”

The look in her eyes should have dropped him where he stood. It did rock him back on heels, clearing the way so she could stalk out.

“That went well,” his dad said into the uncomfortable silence, giving Curly his destroying angel look that Alex had been on receiving end of a few thousand times. And a few seconds ago.

Alex felt a need to get away. To help Nell. He made a move to follow, but Sarah held up a hand.

“I'd better take this one.” Her gaze shifted toward his dad, studied him for several seconds, then came back Alex's direction, her brows lifting.

“My dad,” he muttered, not sure why he felt awkward or why that put a slight flush in her cheeks.

“Indeed.” She followed Nell out, leaving behind a deep, and uncomfortable silence.

N
ell stiffened
at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs toward where she sat, tracing the patterns in the spindles. She'd run out of steam just past the second landing. She relaxed when she saw Sarah, who sighed, then lowered herself onto the stair next to Nell.

“I told you not to choose the attic.”

Nell nodded sheepishly. She shifted her tush a bit. “Thinking of sleeping here tonight.” Her butt was already asleep. One of her legs, too.

Sarah angled, so that the wall supported her, her expression a bit complicated to parse. What was worse than tired? Cuz she was so there. Nell studied the spindle she fingered. Unlike the two men, it wasn't hard to parse. She wrapped her hand around cool wood and stroked up, then down. Saw cartoon eyes and a toothy scowl form in the spindle shape.

“You all right?”

All right was so subjective. She'd met people who thought it was a tragedy if they broke a nail. On the other hand, her mom always told her, “If you're not dead or hungry, then you're all right.” By that criteria she was freaking awesome.

So why had she felt so desperate to get away from that man? It wasn't what he said, at least not totally. She did look like her mom. The fact that they were in New Orleans and he knew that didn't mean anything. Lots of people passed through Waipiti on their way to, or from, Yellowstone Park. And a bunch of them had shopped at the Wal-Mart where her mom had worked. A little weird for one to notice her mom and then notice she looked like her…to remember…

No, the panic hadn't come from what he said, but from how he looked at her. As if the sight of her horrified him. Scared him in some way.

She half shrugged, half nodded. “I'm fine. Tired.”

Done getting knocked down. Done getting up. She might have to crawl to her room or maybe just to the next landing.

“Speaking of people looking like people, did you see their dad?”

Nell looked over at that. “Does he look…” …like the father of thirteen…

“You'd never know his still waters ran that deep.”

“Thirteen kids, his waters don't get to be that still,” Nell had to point out. “Did you blush?”

She nodded.

“Awkward.”

“Truly.” Sarah chuckled.

Nell giggled. It helped ease the knot in her tummy. “That might be our most embarrassing moment ever…”

Surely a record? They'd been a band a long time, so there were lots of contenders for most embarrassing. They'd started after surviving the worst run of finals ever. After days with no sleep, they were maybe a step from zombie-ness. They'd had to do something or burst. They did both. Half the dorm had pelted them with popcorn for being so bad, the other half had joined in. One thing she knew to her toes, you did bad karaoke in your underwear with someone, you were friends forever. Over the years, they'd worked the kinks in, milking it for maximum embarrassment factor. Tonight might have been the pinnacle.

Sarah laughed. “It was a score. The guys helped boost our suckage factor by a really big number.”

That made Nell laugh and then wince. It hurt, but not so much she stopped, at least not until Sarah sobered. “What?”

“Alex started to follow you, but I told him to let me.”

Good choice. “Not going back in there. I'm done. Three times is more than enough for one day.”

Sarah frowned. “Three…what?”

Oh yeah, she'd missed the
Cliff
notes on her three impacts, so Nell caught her up.

Sarah stared at her. “Someone shot at Alex?”

“He is a cop. People do shoot at them.”

“Indeed. In that case, I can see why Alex is worried, but why is the guy who isn't the dad so freaked out?”

Unease spiked again as Nell remembered the look in the guy's eyes as he asked about her mom. She shrugged.

“Did you ever wonder…”

Nell shifted so she could look the question she didn't have the energy to ask. The world had gotten fuzzy around the edges. Seriously fuzzy.

“…why you never managed to visit here until…”

Nell considered the question with as much energy as she could muster. Had she wondered? Yeah, but not nearly enough. She didn't remember thinking their opposition was about New Orleans. She had wondered if they had issues with Sarah. Or cities.

“They didn't like cities.” She frowned, traced some more patterns in the spindle. “You'd think they'd gone to Oz on a tornado as kids. No place like home was their mantra.” Weird that two home bodies had managed to have a daughter with a secret longing to fly to the moon—or at least the coop. A coop that turned out to be rented. Had they left her a house, it would have been harder to leave. The lack of money, well, that wasn't a surprise. There'd never been a lot of that. She shifted uneasily. Did it matter? The look in that man's eyes seemed to say that yes, it did.

“I thought it was me they didn't like,” Sarah admitted, her look a bit wry.

“There were times when it seemed like they didn't like much,” Nell admitted, “but they never minded when you came to visit me.” That she knew of anyway.

“Aren't you curious to know why he's here? Why—” Sarah stopped.

“I'm too tired to be curious.” Okay, not the whole truth. Sarah's gaze called her on it. “Okay, maybe a little,” she hesitated. “I guess I thought all the people who knew them were in Wyoming.” She made a frustrated sound, rubbing her face. “It has to be a mistake.” She looked at Sarah. “Did you see how…freaked he looked?”

“Yeah.” She tipped her head to the side. “I'll make him go away until morning. If that's what you need. If you'll get any sleep.”

Nell didn't have to say it. Sarah knew her capitulation look. She rose, held out her hand. “Come on. Let's shrink this problem down to a manageable size.”