Gypsy King (Tin Gypsy, #1)(38)

“You’re leaving?”

He raised a hand, waving without a word as he walked out of the room.

What the hell? Should I leave too? I looked around, trying to find out if there was a reason for Dash’s sudden disappearance, but the library was still. Maybe he’d gone to the bathroom. Maybe he didn’t want to be sitting so close to me either.

I dismissed it all, focusing on what I’d come here to do. Besides, given his recent behavior, Dash would show up again soon.

I made it through the rest of Amina’s sophomore year and then scanned through her junior. I’d just opened the hardcover to start on her senior year, the book Dash had been looking at, when the screech of tires sent a chill up my spine.

Setting the yearbook aside, I stood, creeping around one of the bookshelves to look out the window. A police car was parked right out front.

In the distance, I spotted Dash on his Harley. Watching. Waiting.

Either he’d known that the cops were on their way and that was why he’d left. Or . . .

“He wouldn’t,” I told myself.

He wouldn’t have called the cops on me, would he?

As the cops rushed to the front doors, I answered my own question. Of course he would.

I gritted my teeth. “That son of a bitch.”





Chapter Eleven





Dash





I refolded the page I’d torn from the yearbook and stuffed it into my back pocket. There was no need to stare at it anymore—I’d memorized the picture.

As I’d been sitting next to Bryce and flipping through that yearbook, it hadn’t been Amina’s face that caught my attention.

It had been Mom’s.

Amina Daylee and Mom were smiling side by side. Mom’s arm was around Amina’s shoulders. Amina’s was around Mom’s waist. The caption below the photo read Inseparable.

They’d been friends. From the look of it, best friends. And yet I’d never heard the name Amina Daylee before. Dad knew, yet he hadn’t mentioned that Amina was once Mom’s friend. He’d chalked it all up to vague history. Why?

Why hadn’t he mentioned Amina had been Mom’s friend? I’d been twelve when Mom died. I didn’t remember her mentioning a friend named Amina either. Had there been a falling out? Or had they just drifted apart? Until I knew, I was keeping this photo to myself.

Dad had summed it up with a single word.

History.

Fucking history.

Our history was going to ruin us all.

If Bryce wasn’t the one asking questions, it would eventually be someone else. We’d been stupid to think we could walk away from the Gypsies without suspicion. We’d been stupid to think the crimes and bodies we’d buried would stay six feet under.

Maybe hiding our history had been a mistake. Maybe the right thing to do would be to tell the story—the legal parts, at least—and ride it out. Except, did I even know the right story to tell? The picture in my back pocket said otherwise. It said I didn’t know a goddamn thing about history.

“Dash?” Presley’s voice filled the garage. “I thought you’d left.”

“Came back.” I turned from the tool bench where I’d been lost in thought. “Didn’t feel like going home.”

“I was just locking up.” She walked deeper into the garage from the adjoining office door.

The guys had left about twenty minutes ago, their jobs done for the day. But Presley never left before five. Even when we told her to go home early, she always made sure the office was open according to the hours on the door.

“You okay?” she asked.

I sighed and leaned against the bench. “No.”

“Want to talk about it?” She took up the space next to me, bumping me with her shoulder. “I’m a good listener.”

“Hell, Pres.” I slung an arm around her, pulling her into my side.

She hugged me right back.

Mom had been a hugger. She’d always hugged Nick and me growing up. After she’d died, the hugs had stopped. But then Presley had started at the garage and she didn’t believe in handshakes.

She hugged everyone with those thin arms. Her head only came to the middle of my chest, but she could give a tight hug like no one’s business.

Presley was beautiful and her body was trim and lean, but the hug wasn’t sexual. None of us saw her like that, never had. From the day she’d started here, she’d fit right in as family. And these hugs were her way to give us comfort. Comfort from a close friend who had a heart of gold.

“I did something.” I blew out a deep breath. “Fuck, I’m a prick.”

“What did you do?”

“You know I’ve been following Bryce around, hoping I could get her to back off this story. I threatened her. That didn’t work. I offered to work with her. That didn’t work.”

I left out the part about my plan to seduce her because, from my standpoint, she’d been the one to seduce me by simply breathing. And I wasn’t going to talk about the sex, and not because I felt ashamed. It was the other way around. It felt special. For the moment, I wanted to keep it all to myself.

“Okay,” Presley said, urging me to continue. “So . . .”

“So I, uh . . .” I blew out a deep breath. “I got her arrested today. She broke into the high school to look at some old yearbooks. I followed her in, left her there and called the cops. They hauled her in for trespassing.”