Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(63)

The answer comes out of him before he can stop it. “I can try. If you let me.”

“So you’re saying I should milk this apology thing for all it’s worth.”

“Something like that, yeah,” he answers.

“OK. Fine. No Marty.”

With that, she turns and heads for the door. When she realizes he hasn’t followed, she looks back, sees him in the kitchen strapping on the holster for his gun. The expression she gives the weapon in his hand is almost wistful, like she thinks he’s cute for bringing it along.



“A date?” Marty asks. “Really? Right now?”

“It’s not a date,” Charlotte hisses. “And if you say that one more time, I will reach through this—”

“You’re going off alone with him. You won’t say where. What the hell else could it be except for a date?”

She grips the edge of the truck’s open window, glances back to where Luke is sliding behind the wheel of his black Jeep Wrangler. Avoiding, on purpose, she assumes, her pointed glares. How could he put her in this position?

Simple, she thinks. Because it’s his brother; that’s how.

“If I follow, what’s he gonna do?” Marty asks. “Have me arrested?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I’m following.”

“He’ll probably take me in for questioning.”

“For what? How much did you tell him?”

“Marty, just . . . please. I need you to trust me on this one.”

He lets out a long hissing breath between clenched teeth, shakes his head.

“When we get back, maybe we can all sit down and have a meal together, and you two can bury the hatchet or something. Or, you know, do what men do when they’ve been bumping chests so much their backs are starting to get sore. Like yoga.”

“My back’s fine,” Marty says, voice low and growl adjacent, “and this isn’t about me.”

“It is, though. Whatever words you guys had the other day, they’ve got you confused.”

Got you confusing your ego with your brains, she wants to say.

“So you trust him? You don’t think he’s part of this?”

I think he’s about to become part of this if his brother turns out to be helpful. But you can’t know that. Yet. Instead she says, “Maybe. We’ll see. I’m still figuring it out.”

Marty shakes his head and stares out the windshield.

“Besides,” Charlotte says, “it’s not like I won’t be able to protect myself if I’m wrong.”

“Pill’s been sitting in your system for how long now? For all we know it might wear off if you don’t, you know, activate it in time. There’s too damn much we don’t know about this stuff.”

“I agree,” she says.

“Yeah, sure you do.”

“Marty.”

He checks the dashboard clock. It’s almost 1:00 p.m. She feels an ultimatum coming.

“If you all aren’t back by six this evening, I’m gonna consider you a missing person and make sure Mona believes it, too. And I’ll be damn sure to let her know you were last seen with her shiny new deputy.”

“Fine.”

“And I’m gonna take that video we made last night to the FBI and tell them everything you told me.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not because you can’t. I’ve got the thumb drive we put it on this morning.”

“You didn’t . . . but the . . . Crap, you deleted the original off my phone when I wasn’t looking. Slick, girlie. Real slick.”

“Girlie? Really?”

He glares straight ahead, hands tensing and untensing at ten and two on the steering wheel.

“I’m starting to feel unappreciated,” he says quietly.

“Feel something else.”

“What?”

“Spared.”

He looks her in the eye, expression doleful. “Maybe I don’t want to be spared all this.”

She leans in, kisses him on the cheek. He’s clearing his throat, preparing to say something else maudlin but kind, she’s sure. But just then she reaches across him and pulls Jason Briffel’s disposable cell from the armrest. His eyes widen and his jaw gapes when he realizes she’s just swiped his last possible bargaining chip.

“Six o’clock,” he calls after her. “First part of what I said still stands. If you’re not back by six, I—”

“Six o’clock,” she calls back.



When Luke starts the Jeep’s engine, Marty fires up his truck a second later. For a minute or two, it seems as if the men’s vehicles are conducting a little battle of the bands over her; then Marty peels off down the street, making the biggest show of not following her that he can.

“How’d it go?” Luke asks when she climbs inside his Jeep.

“Not well,” she answers.

He nods and backs out of the driveway.

“Well, I appreciate it,” he says a few minutes later as if no time has passed between her comment and his response, a sure sign he’s measuring his words carefully. Would he be measuring them this carefully if his brother hadn’t decided to make a surprise appearance during their reunion?