Chapter 34
“Where the hell have you been?” Wade stormed into my apartment.
“Fuck off,” I snapped, stripping off my mud-caked jeans. “It’s been a shitty fucking twenty-four hours.” And all I wanted to do was see Phoebe, sleep, and eat. In that order.
Wade looked me over. “What the hell happened?”
“Besides my truck blowing a tire? A downpour hit, my phone died, and I couldn’t find my charger.
Luke and I had to rework our plans all night because the dumb fuckers have decided to change the scope of the project last minute.
Then we stopped to help a couple dig their car out of a ditch that was a mud lake.
I’m starving, exhausted, and dirty as fuck. ”
“Well, suck it up because it’s not about to get better.”
“Can I use your phone?” I asked. “I need to call Phoebe and let her know what happened.”
“You need to hold off for a minute. Some shit’s gone down.” Wade unclipped his phone, tossing it to me, anyway.
“What do you mean?” I stiffened.
The banging at my door had me biting off a curse.
Wade went to it, yanking it open.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Wade demanded furiously. “And why the hell is Delilah with you?”
“Nice way to say hello, dickhead.” Rowdy entered, Delilah tucked to his side.
“Delilah, why are you with Rowdy?” I focused on Rowdy’s arm that was wrapped protectively around my sister. My pale and shaking sister.
Rowdy rolled his eyes at me. “Simmer down. I’m not here to cause shit. If I let go of her, she’s probably going to fall down.”
Delilah’s head snapped up, a severe frown of rebuke on her face.
“It’s true,” he told her. “Actually”—he looked around my living room—“let’s sit you down.”
Rowdy pushed past me and Wade, depositing Delilah on the couch. She freaked, reaching for his arm, pulling him down with her.
I was going to kill him.
Rowdy appeared put out, but gave in, which had me taking a menacing step forward. Delilah was six-fucking-teen.
“Take your hands off of her,” I snarled.
Rowdy’s hand was only touching her arm, but that was enough.
“Calm your tits, Brockmann.” Rowdy gave me a patronizing look. “I am aware that she’s a kid.”
Wade rested his hand on his gun, his police uniform not enough of a deterrent to keep him from shooting Rowdy if he’d done something to Delilah. “Then you can move away.”
“No!” Delilah cried, gripping his hand harder. “No! He—you don’t understand. He didn’t do anything! I did!”
“What’s this now?” Delilah was a child, Rowdy an adult. Did he make her think that she was responsible for…
“This isn’t about me,” Rowdy interjected, seeing where my thoughts had gone. “This is about Phoebe. If life wasn’t about to kick your ass, Brockmann, I would for you even thinking what you are.”
“What does that mean? What does this have to do with Phoebe?”
“You know?” Wade scrutinized Rowdy, checking for any signs of deception.
“I know,” Rowdy agreed, sounding dejected.
“You know?” Delilah whispered fearfully, shrinking further into Rowdy’s side.
“What the hell do you all know!?” This was starting to piss me off.
Wade frowned at Delilah, clearly confused.
“It goes like this,” Rowdy said. “My charming psycho mother paid your girlfriend a visit yesterday. She decided if Phoebe wasn’t going to leave town willingly, she was going to blackmail her into it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I barked.
“How do you know this?” Wade was suddenly closer, his presence intimidating as he went full-on cop. “What did you do, Rowdy?”
“It wasn’t him!” Delilah yelled, pulling away from Rowdy’s side to glare at Wade, tears streaming down her face. “It was me! I did it! I didn’t know! I just wanted her gone! I just wanted my family back.”
Delilah was on the verge of a complete breakdown, her breath coming in short pants. I’d seen this with Phoebe enough to know the signs.
Grinding my teeth, I forced myself to sit down calmly on the coffee table in front of her, gesturing for Wade to do the same. Speaking as softly as I could, I asked, “What do you mean, sweetheart? You know you can tell me anything.”
Rowdy rubbed his hand up and down Delilah’s arm, and I tracked the movement. Proving something very serious was going on here, Rowdy ignored me and gently spoke to Delilah. “We’ve been over this.”
Wade and I both frowned at that.
“You need to tell them everything. None of this is your fault, okay?” Rowdy spoke firmly, daring her to argue. “Now, tell them everything from the beginning.”
I wanted to know about Phoebe and what Rowdy meant by Amber-Rae threatening her, but Delilah was…Threats. Amber-Rae had threatened Phoebe. I shot a look at Wade, who was focused on Rowdy and Delilah.
Delilah tried to explain. “When she came into the bookstore, I knew I should have ignored her.”
The thoughts swirling in my head, the need to get to Phoebe, stopped. “What?”
“I’ve-I’ve been skipping school.”
No kidding. We all knew that. Mom had put a tracker on her phone, so she’d know where she was. It was always the same place.
“I would go to the bookstore on Stein. I don’t know why. I just feel…comfortable there. When she started to talk to me, I ignored her at first. I mean, I’ve heard about her my whole life, so I knew Amber-Rae was just not nice.”
She shot Rowdy an apologetic look.
“It’s okay, Lilah. I like her even less than you.”
Lilah?
“Go on,” Wade encouraged, pulling his police notepad out of his pocket after Rowdy nodded to it.
“For a while, she just sat there with me. I mean, she wasn’t with with me.
We were just sitting at the couches by the fake fireplace, you know?
Then she kinda just started talking to me.
It wasn’t anything heavy at first. How was I doing?
Why wasn’t I in school? She talked about the bake-sale fundraiser and how she wanted to make something different this year and did I have a suggestion?
I don’t know why, but…I talked to her. It felt good to talk to her.
She wasn’t mean or weird or anything like that.
And then I had to go home and that was it. ”
“So then what’s all this about?” I had to ask. If there was nothing to that conversation, what the hell was going on here?
“That was the first time,” Delilah explained.
“It seemed every time I went to the bookstore, Amber-Rae was just…there. I didn’t even realize it, but over time I started to tell her things.
And then she started to say things too. She started with a rumor about you and Phoebe after you’d been shopping somewhere.
I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, rumors in this town are par for the course. ”
Which was bullshit.
“She’d made a joke about it. About how if you and Phoebe got together with her being from the city that maybe you’d both move there instead? You know, small-town life isn’t for city girls?”
I’ll just bet she did. I wanted to say something here, but I knew if I did, Delilah would clam up. Given she wasn’t shaking or crying right now, I kept my mouth shut.
“What she didn’t know—actually, she did, but I didn’t know she knew—was that Mom had been saying some things like that already.”
“Excuse me?” I burst out. Wade shot me a look of warning, and I took a deep breath.
Delilah looked down at her lap, picking at the material of her pants.
“I heard Mom talking to Grandma on the phone. She told her about Phoebe and that she thought she was trying to get her hooks into you for your money or something. She said she was from the city and probably living off her ex-husband and that she knew women like her. Like Mindy.” Delilah named the woman her father had run off with.
“She said if she didn’t find a way to stop her, that Phoebe was going to destroy your life and take you away. ”
“That’s ridiculous!” I was going to lose it on my mother later. What the hell kind of crap was this?
“Ty!” Rowdy and Wade both warned me in unison.
Delilah didn’t even bother looking up. “I didn’t want to think it was true.
When Mom told Aunt Louise and Aunt Helen the same thing, they both said she misjudged the situation.
Mom was sure. Phoebe was going to try and seduce you so she could live off you when her divorce was final and maybe get you to move back to the city because ‘city girls don’t stay in small towns. ’”
Fucking hell.
“So when Amber-Rae said it, I started to think maybe it was true? When she’d said it, I was upset. Amber-Rae hugged me, telling me it was all right. She knew what it was like to have her family ripped apart by someone in the city, and she could help me if I wanted.”
“That’s a lie,” Rowdy pointed out as if we didn’t know his family history going back three generations. But Delilah didn’t.
“How was she going to help you?” Wade remained focused, his pen scratching on the paper of his notepad.
“She said she knew a secret about Phoebe, and if Phoebe thought the secret would come out, she’d leave.”
A sense of foreboding cramped my gut. “What was the secret?”
“She didn’t tell me. She just said that if I wanted Phoebe to leave, I could deliver a couple of notes to her house that Amber-Rae wrote, and Phoebe would read them and leave.”
Ah, hell. I ran my hand through my hair. “Why didn’t you say something to me, D?” That fucking bitch had used my sister to torture Phoebe.
“I was—then I—”
“You what?” I prompted. Leaning forward, I covered her hand with mine. “I’m not going to be mad. Amber-Rae manipulated you. I would have understood. I do understand.”
“I was going to tell you. Especially after she made Jesse laugh at the church. I’d started to see that Phoebe was really…nice. I figured Mom had to be wrong and I felt bad. Until I heard you guys talking.” She pointed between Wade and me.
“Talking about what?” I racked my brain.
“You were in the hall of the church,” Wade recalled, and it hit me.
“You were listening outside of the church’s kitchen.” The conversation where Wade was telling me to make a move on Phoebe.