Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Sutton
Ialmost felt bad making the call, but regardless of what I might be feeling personally toward the skittish redhead, in order to keep her safe I needed more than just snippets of information here and there. “Pace, I need all the background information you can get on Marti Wilkins.”
I was sitting in my car outside Rendi’s house. I didn’t want Marti to know I was checking into her. I hoped that eventually, she’d give me all the information willingly, but who knew when or even if that would actually happen.
“The cute little waitress at Livy’s Diner?”
Cute? She was a lot more than cute, but I wasn’t all that comfortable with the fact that was the first thing Pace mentioned about her.
“Yeah,” I responded shortly. “Check everything, including incident reports from her last town that might be related to her in any way.”
“Okay.”He paused. “Is everything okay?”
“She has booby traps set up on the doors and windows, so she knows if anyone comes in, and she added some heavy-duty locks to her bedroom door.”
“She’s running from something.”
“Yeah.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Just that she’s worried about her brother finding her here, and that he’s mad and violent. She didn’t elaborate on why he was mad, and I was more concerned with getting her away from that apartment than pushing for answers.”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know when I’m done.” There was another pause, and he chuckled.
“What?”
“You’ll see when you open the group chat. I guess that explains why you were so snippy when I called her cute.”
I groaned, knowing whatever it was, Wellston was behind it. “I wasn’t snippy.”
Pace laughed directly into my ear and hung up.
The curtain moved in the window next to the door of Rendi’s house, telling me they knew I was out there, so I climbed out of my car and headed for the door.
I wasn’t at all surprised when Rendi opened it as soon as I stepped on the porch, her lips in a straight line as she tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage.
“She’s sleeping. You want me to go wake her up?” Rendi’s voice was softer than usual, her wild tamed for the time being by the weight of her friend’s circumstances.
“That’s okay. I can talk to her in the morning.”
“She won’t tell you much unless you straight up ask her about it.
We knew things weren’t right there for a while after Emma died, but we didn’t know things were violent.
She never talks about anything unless forced, and if we pried back then, she wouldn’t come back for a while.
We thought it was better if she kept coming over rather than being at home all the time. ” She crossed her arms, frowning.
“When she graduated high school, she stayed in the dorms for a while, so things were better, but then something happened about six months ago, and she went back to the house. The closest we got to answers was her telling us her dad was in jail and she needed to get away from it all. She quit school and came here.”
“She didn’t say why her dad was in jail?”
“No, but we honestly didn’t ask. I was happy he was away, and happy that she was coming to us instead of hiding from us.
I didn’t want to push her away.” She shook her head, tightening her arms, almost wrapping them around herself.
“I think this might be my fault. I talked to a friend from our hometown the other day. I don’t remember mentioning Marti, but I talked to her about this place.
She’s thinking about moving away from there.
It never even crossed my mind that that might be a problem, but she’s a hairdresser.
The whole town goes to her salon. Even if she just mentioned that I offered her an apartment here, it wouldn’t take much for Jackson To realize Marti was with me. ”
“Don’t start blaming yourself. Jackson Wilkins is the problem.”
“Is she safe here?” Rendi whispered, looking around the yard. “I’m not worried about me. I’m mongoose mean, but Marti doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
I chuckled lightly. “I don’t know about that. She says some pretty mean things to you sometimes.”
“Pfft. That’s our love language.”
“I’m going to be right out here watching.” I pointed at my car and she shook her head.
“There is an extra room here. Why don’t you just use it?”
I nodded, giving her a small smile and ushering her inside. “If it’s not a problem, I’d rather take the couch. I’d feel better if I was between you guys and the doors.” And I could actually see both doors easily from the couch.
Rendi shrugged, already walking toward the hallway. “It’s your backache.”