Chapter 3
What’s the key to happiness? Unfollowing people in real life.
—Quaid to Ellodie
QUAID
“You’re fuckin’ joking.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my recliner, very much aware that we were going to watch this stupid fucking TikTok at least ten more times.
“Watch him slide across the hood like BoDuke.” Dad chuckled.
I did, impressed with how well I’d executed the maneuver.
“And all that in front of a girl.” My triplet brother, Quincy, laughed.
“I’m more than impressed,” Hollis, Quincy’s girl, said as she ate some popcorn. “Truthfully, that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. And that girl agrees with me. You’re hot as hell in those tactical pants. That t-shirt pulls on your biceps nicely, and those mirrored sunglasses stay so securely on your face it’s as if they were glued there. And that look you gave her when she started talking.”
“Whose girl are you again?” Quincy growled, pulling her close.
Hollis giggled. “You know that girl, too.”
“I do?” Quincy asked.
“You do,” Hollis confirmed. “Those blue scrubs should give it away.”
Quincy’s head tilted slightly, then he snapped his fingers. “That’s the girl who works in the ER. Your friend?”
“Friend? I mean, I guess. I know of her. She’s always really nice. ButI wouldn’t exactly say we’re friends,” Hollis explained.
My head twisted toward her, wondering if she’d give up any more information, but she just snuggled into Quincy’s chest.
“Is she the one we saw at the grocery store that one time?” he asked.
“That’s her,” she confirmed. “Auden, she’s the girl I saw you talking to last week in the ER.”
“She was cute.” He paused. “Even though I’m fairly sure she stole that drug dealer’s money.”
“What?” I asked, unsure if I’d heard him right.
“So, there’s this really weird RobinHood thing going on in the ER right now,” Auden said. “Things are going missing. It’s gotten to the point where the director of the ER called us and asked for some help.”
“What’s happening?” I wondered.
“Well, let’s just start from the beginning.” Hollis twisted on the couch to face me better. “Remember last month, when all of those gang members came into the ER, throwing fits and stuff about how they weren’t being treated like human beings?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well, some of the nurses and doctors took offense. But not because they were mad. It was because they were being accused of not taking care of the gang bangers. They were mad because not one, not two, but over fourteen incidents had occurred in the ER over the last year, and the director wasn’t going to bat for them and their protection,” she reported. “And they try to force the ER director to require multiple security guards to be on rotation in the ER to help protect the staff when these gang members come in needing help. TheER director throws a fit, and then says pretty much that it’s part of the ER staff’s job to take care of patients, no matter what the conditions. He assures them that they don’t have the funds to deal with it. Which pissed off the ER staff. And then the director’s really expensive watch went missing.”
The watch was the least of my concerns at this point.
It was downright terrifying that anyone would have to deal with that kind of worry. The sad fact was, unless you were trained to deal with it, nobody could really protect themselves.
If the public only knew how bad it was…
“Two weeks after the watch went missing—it was a RolexSubmariner, by the way—some gang member’s wad of cash was misplaced. But so were his drugs. Which he got pissed about and started accusing the staff of stealing.”
“A few days after that, some hoity-toity society princess had her thousand-dollar bangle set stolen,” Hollis added in.
“Actually, I have a theory about that,” Auden insisted. “I don’t think that was this RobinHood at all. I think that was just the princess being a bitch. They had to cut that bracelet off to get to her hand because she broke her arm in several places. They gave it back to her in pieces, I think. She threw a fit and threw it away. I think someone from that person’s family came in later and tried to fish it out of the trash, but it was gone.”
“Interesting, but what makes you think all of this going down is on Ellodie?” I wondered.
But almost as I was speaking, Quincy asked the same thing.
“So, you think someone, more accurately that woman, is responsible for all of those incidents?” he asked curiously.
“Maybe not all of the instances were her,” Auden answered. “But it’s suspicious because she was the only one in the room when that money went missing. And the drugs.”
I’d met Ellodie only twice, and both of those times were very brief.
ButI didn’t get a bad vibe off of her.
If she was behind this, there had to be a very good reason.
And, because I always liked a good mystery, I started to grin.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?” Hollis asked from her perch on the edge of Quincy’s seat.
“He’s getting that look,” Quincy murmured, his eyes gleaming. “You’re about to never let that girl rest, are you?”
“Not for a second,” I said.
I was like a dog with a scent, now.
I wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave it alone.
“What does that mean?” Hollis asked, sounding intrigued. “Y’all are acting like this is something funny.”
“It is funny.” Auden chuckled. “And it just made my job easier.”
“Why is it funny?” Hollis pushed.
“BecauseQuaid is fucking annoying,” Auden said. “Once he gets it in his head that something has to be done, or taken care of, or fixed, he doesn’t rest until it’s to his satisfaction. And he just set his sights on EllodieSolaire.”
Damn right, I did.
Plus, I’d already been halfway there when she wrapped those perfect lips around my fork.
“What are y’all out here talking so seriously about?” Dad asked as he came out to the porch with meat, while Mom followed with the potato salad.
My sister, Ande, was right behind them with a kid in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Her husband, Keene, was close at her heels with another child in his arms.
“Go play, Tex,” Keene said as he set the boy free.
“You, too,” Ande said as she dropped down to her haunches and let Addison go. They had named her after my baby sister who’d taken her own life.
Addison also happened to be Ande’s twin sister.
Sometimes, when I looked at baby Addison and Ande, my heart felt like it was ripped in half all over again.
It was hard to breathe when I thought about how much I missed her.
“Quaid has a new obsession.”
The rest of my brothers, who exited the back door upon that announcement, groaned.
“JesusChrist.” Quinn let his head fall back on his shoulders. “Why?”
“Do you remember that one time he became obsessed with the Marines, and forced you two to join with him?” Mom asked. “Those were the best few days ever, realizing that y’all had just signed your lives away.”
“Mother,” Quincy groaned. “You told us we didn’t have any money to pay for college. Also, don’t remind me. I couldn’t believe we let him talk us into that.”
“But it started a chain reaction with the kids, which I think in the end was a good thing. There’s only one loser in this family who didn’t go into the military.” Dad laughed.
Everyone turned to Ande at once.
She was the only one of us not to have been in the military.
Quincy, Quinn, and I had gone Marines. Auden and Atlas, the first set of twins Mom had after us, had gone AirForce. Gable and Garrett had gone Navy. AndAddison had gone to the AirForce.
Mom and Dad had fallen in love while both of them were in the AirForce. Though, it’d been somewhat forbidden because Dad was Mom’s superior officer.
“Or when Tobin moved to town and wanted nothing to do with the asshole next door.” Ande snickered.
I looked over at her with a droll look. “You know you’re not allowed to speak his name.”
All of us had a good laugh at that.
TobinMcGraw was my best friend.
He’d moved to Dallas, in the house next door, about fifteen years ago.
Truthfully, he was a pretty big homebody. He didn’t like going out and doing things that normal kids liked to do. WhenI first met him, it was because I’d climbed the trellis outside of his room and asked him to come out and play with me.
He’d given me a resounding ‘no’ and closed the curtains on me.
It was in that moment I decided Tobin would be my friend, whether he wanted to be or not.
And, like the extrovert that I was, and the introvert he was, I eventually wore him down and forced him to be my friend.
I’d also introduced him to Crissa, his wife, after Ande broke his young teenage heart.
Truthfully, had I known Crissa well when I’d done the introducing, I’d never have let her anywhere near Tobin.
Tobin and Crissa’s relationship, to me, seemed a bit toxic.
She was a jealous, petty bitch who stole Tobin away from me because of who he had once dated—Ande.
And though they both knew that they no longer had feelings for each other, and Crissa was made very much aware that nothing would ever be there again, she still went out of her way to make Tobin’s life a living hell if he so much as called me. Let alone mentioned Ande.
But with Tobin, once you were in, you were in. And he didn’t let his wife’s feelings play into his relationship with me.
We were still just as good of friends now as we were when we’d first became best friends.
Only, we never, ever mentioned his wife.
“Are we going to ever discuss this?” Hollis asked. “Every time I hear about this mysterious Tobin, or his batshit wife, y’all always have this inside joke laugh that’s kind of annoying.”
I grinned.
“Tobin married Crissa after Ande broke his heart,” Quincy explained. “Crissa hates anything that even remotely resembles Ande or her family. Crissa has declared that we’re persona non grata with Tobin, and sweet little introverted Tobin tells her to fuck off when it comes to his family.”
“Crissa sounds toxic.”
“Crissa is toxic.”
We all turned as one toward the door of the house and there, standing as if he hadn’t just walked into a bashing of his wife, was my best friend.
I got up and walked his way.
“Tobin!” I crowed, throwing my arms around him in a manly best friend hug.
Tobin chuckled, returning the hug.
Seconds later he stepped back and narrowed his eyes at my foot. “You look like you can walk again.”
I winced. “I can walk again.”
“It was touch or go there for a minute,” Mom said as she walked up to Tobin and gave him a hug. “When he tore his Achilles tendon during that foot chase, and I watched him go down on live TV, I thought he’d been shot. It broke my mother heart, and it still hasn’t recovered.”
I winced.
Six months ago, I’d been in a foot chase from hell. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
It’d started out with the man I’d pulled over taking off, simultaneously running over my foot in the process. It’d ended with me and him in a foot chase across a pasture that was so goddamn bumpy I’d mis-stepped and twisted wrong, causing my Achilles tendon to snap like a matchstick.
Luckily, Garrett and his canine officer, Boss, had just arrived on scene.
Boss took the perp down within seconds, and I lay in the middle of a muddy field and cried like a damn baby.
“What are you doing here?” Dad asked as he got a hug of his own.
The smile slid off of Tobin’s face.
“I’m here because we have reason to believe that a serial killer has set up shop here, targeting women with brown hair and blue eyes.”
The immediate mental image of Ellodie popped up in my head.
“And funny enough, the woman you were all over the news with yesterday is one of my targets.”
God. Dammit.