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I groaned, though my laugh broke through at the sight of Tucker grimacing as goat spit dripped from his hand. Well, at least it was worse for him than for me.
“Shecan’t help,” Tucker muttered, shaking off the goat slobber with a disgusted look.
“Try and stop her,” I shot back with a grin.
11?/?
tucker
“What do you think it opens?” Colt asked, turning the key over in his hand as he sat across from me. He studied it with the kind of intensity he usually reserved for puzzles, which made sense. This whole case was turning out to be a puzzle, and we still had no idea what the missing piece was.
“Nothing in that basement, as far as I could tell,” I replied, my voice gruffer than usual. My mind was still on the fact that Dakota had almost broken her ankle, and I had... reacted.
“As far aswecould tell,” Dakota corrected, her voice cutting through the moment with that persistent, unshakable cheerfulness.
Colt grinned, first at her, then even wider when he looked at me. Whatever he saw on my face apparently amused him, and I fought the urge to kick him under the table. He was good at picking up on things I wasn’t ready to admit, especially when it came to women. And Dakota? She was a whole lot of something I wasn’t sure I was prepared for.
“Why is she here?” Austin asked, his brow furrowing as he glanced between us. “You never let civilians get involved in your cases.”
“Same reason you are,” I replied, keeping my tone even but knowing it wasn’t the whole truth. Dakota’s involvement was becoming harder and harder to shake off. She had a way of worming into things, and apparently, I was no exception.
Austin tilted his head, clearly not satisfied with my vague answer.
“I think he means because neither one of us knows how to take no for an answer,” Dakota jumped in, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she leaned back in her seat.
“Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I’ve never been good at that,” Austin said with a smirk. He shared a look with Dakota, and it hit me just how easily she fit in with us.
The thought made my chest tighten.
“Me neither,” Dakota added, tossing me a pointed look. “How’d you get here anyway? Please don’t tell me you hitchhiked all the way from Colorado.”
Austin grinned, but before he could answer, I cut in. “How’d you know we were from Colorado?”
She brushed imaginary dirt off her shoulder with a smug look that made me want to roll my eyes—and smile at the same time. “You don’t have to be a private eye to get the scoop in this town.”
“And you boys would do well to remember that,” a terse voice said from beside us. The unmistakable sound of the coffee carafe being set down made me glance up, only to find Norma, our server, standing there with a knowing look in her eyes.
Norma was the kind of woman who could run a diner single-handedly and still have time to meddle in everyone’s business. She had a no-nonsense air about her, but her eyes had the softness of someone who’d seen a lot and cared even more. She’d been eyeing us from the moment we’d set foot in her diner, and while she was polite, there was no mistaking her wariness of the newcomers—namely, me, Colt, and Austin.
“Hi, Norma,” Dakota greeted the older woman with a blinding smile.
Norma’s gaze softened slightly as she nodded at Dakota. “Does the family know you’re with these three?” she asked, her brows lifting in a way that told me she already knew the answer—or at least had a good idea.
“I’m sure they’ll find out soon enough if they haven’t already,” Dakota replied with a slight shrug, but I could tell by the way she shifted in her seat that the idea made her uneasy.
Norma hummed, her eyes flicking over to me, and I couldn’t tell if she was sizing me up or trying to figure out what Dakota saw in me. She set the carafe down and rested her hand on her hip. “Can I get y’all anything while you wait?”
“Wait for what?” Austin asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
Norma shot him a look that could only be described as amused, like he was missing something obvious. “For Riley Conrad or one of the Wilson boys to show up and warn you away from this one here,” she explained, gesturing to Dakota. The way she said it made it sound like this wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to meddling men protecting their womenfolk.
I tensed, not liking the idea of Dakota’s “family”—whoever they were—getting involved. And yet, the part that bothered me most was the idea of them warning me away from her, as if I was some kind of threat.
Norma’s gaze swung to me. “Ya know, sugar, we all heard about how you thought you heard gunshots down in the square and then threw Dakota over your shoulder like a caveman and ran her to safety.”
I cleared my throat. “That’s not exactly what happened.”
“It’d be pretty dumb for him to throw her over his shoulder to protect her from bullets that are coming from behind him,” Austin observed.
