By then, I’d recovered from my heart attack enough that I could get to my feet. (I could still feel where he’d touched my leg.) I found a blanket and unfolded it, and in the weak light from the television, Bobby helped me spread it over Keme, who was already asleep again. When we’d finished, Bobby was standing next to me, his shoulder brushing mine.

  “You don’t mind if he sleeps here?” Bobby whispered.

  I shook my head. Then, realizing he might not be able to make out the movement in the dark, I whispered back, “No.”

  It felt like a long time before Bobby said, “I guess we should call it a night.”

  We made our way out of the billiard room, and I closed the pocket doors gently. We fought our way through Millie’s spider webs (literally) and followed the stairs up to the second floor. We stopped. Bobby’s room was to the right. My room was to the left. Neither of us turned.

  “So,” Bobby said, and he wore a strange half-smile, “I saw Damian today.”

  “What? Oh. Okay. Wait, why?”

  But Bobby ignored the question. “He asked me for your number. I didn’t know if you wanted me to give it to him.”

  I made some sort of noise that might, somewhere, have meant something to someone.

  “I guess he’s going to stick around for a while,” Bobby said. “He likes cold-water surfing. He’s got a free place to stay until someone figures out the legal mess of the camp.” And then that half-smile was back again. “He’s definitely interested in you. He’s also the jealous type; he stared daggers at me until he decided I wasn’t a threat.”

  The best I could come up with was that noise again.

  “So, do you want me to give him your number?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” I managed to suppress a wince as I heard myself, but only barely. “The arrest record does worry me a little. Plus, I’m kind of in a weird place still. After Hugo, I mean. And…” I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “…stuff.” Seconds ticked past on the grandfather clock, and I managed to add, “Also, I have seriously bad judgment when it comes to men. Like, for a while, I even thought Damian might be the killer. He’s good with cars. He cares about the surf camp. He’s got some gray in his beard, but I think he wants to be a kid still, and he acted really strangely when he saw Gerry hitting on me.”

  “Because he’s into you.”

  “Maybe. He seems like he wants to mess around, though, not like he wants something serious.”

  “Messing around can be fun, though.” His face was like a mask. A mask of someone happy, someone trying to be happy. “I think you should go for it.”

  The hurt was so intense that all I could do was mumble, “Yeah, okay.” Somehow, I even added, “I guess I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay,” Bobby said, but his tone was off. “Oh, I wanted you to know I can figure something out. A place to live, I mean. I don’t want to overstay.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ll start looking tomorrow.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t look at him because my eyes stung, and I was sure if I looked at him, I’d burst into tears.

  “Okay,” Bobby said again. Tick-tick-tock. And then, in that stranger’s voice, “Goodnight.”

  His steps whispered away on the carpet.

  I wiped my eyes, and the words burst out of me: “Are you mad at me?”

  Over his shoulder, he asked, “What?”

  “Are you mad? Are you angry at me? Because I—like, do you hate me now, or something?”

  “What?” he asked again, but this time it was his real voice, Bobby’s voice. He turned and came back. His breathing changed, which meant he must have seen the tear tracks, and he said, “What are you talking about? God, no. Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Because—because it was none of my business, and I shouldn’t have said anything, and I ruined your life.”

  Silence swallowed us.

  And then Bobby laughed. It was an unsteady sound, unraveling at the edges, but it sounded genuine enough. “You didn’t ruin my life. And I’m not angry with you. I wasn’t thrilled with your grand plan to make yourself bait for a killer, but I’m not angry.” He waited. And then he asked, “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me. And I get it: I should have kept my mouth shut, and it wasn’t my place to say anything, and if I hadn’t said anything, you and West would have worked everything out. And then, that night with Jen, you were there, and I thought—” What I’d thought was too embarrassing to say out loud, so I said, “And I know you’re trying to be nice by not making a big deal out of it, but you quit your job, and you’re moving, and I feel like I ruined everything.”

  That laugh came again, and this time, even through my distress, I recognized the quality in it: strain, as though some other emotion were buckled under it. “I guess you figured it all out.”

  I tried not to, but I could feel him waiting, and after a few seconds I had to look at him. In the hall’s weak light, the burnished bronze of his eyes looked like candle flames.

  “You,” he said carefully, “have nothing to feel bad about. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “West and I.” He stopped, and in the darkness, I could hear him swallow. “I should have done that a long time ago; it wasn’t fair to anyone, letting it keep going like that. But I didn’t know how. Or I wasn’t brave enough. Or something. You helped me, Dash. I’ll always be grateful for that. I’ll always be grateful for you. You—” He stopped, and the moment hung for what felt like an eternity. Then a smile sliced across his face. “It feels like I don’t know how to do anything anymore. How to—” He seemed to be searching my face for something. “How to say anything. How to tell you what I want to tell you.”

  And then another of those eternal moments came. His breath had a tremulous quality. And I remembered what he’d said, how hard this was for him, to try to say the things that mattered most, and the spinning, slicing fear that came with it. He’d told me, not so long ago, that he didn’t feel that way with me. I wondered what had changed.

  He still hadn’t said anything, and I realized maybe he couldn’t. Maybe this was one of those times I could do something for him.

  So, I said, “Welcome to my life.”

  That jarred a laugh out of him, and I laughed too—weak laughs, meant more for each other, I thought, than anything else.

  But when the laughter had faded, a hint of that big, goofy grin lingered on Bobby’s face. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “We had a deal, right? You were going to send off that story. I was going to write down my feelings and talk to West.” He sounded like he was trying for lighthearted when he added, “I hope yours went better than mine did.”

  “Uh, yeah, actually. My dad emailed me back this morning. Honestly, I haven’t really had time to think about it.”

  “God, Dash, that’s great. I’m so proud of you.”

  Which shouldn’t have made me feel the way it did, but I couldn’t stop the idiot smile that spread across my face. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Don’t make me shake you.”

  A little laugh escaped me. “He said—well, he said it was great.”

  “Of course it was,” Bobby said. He hesitated. “I haven’t been avoiding you, by the way.”

  “Okay. That’s good.”

  “I was getting my stuff out of the apartment before the movers came.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help asking, “So, West is...”

  Bobby nodded.

  “He called Indira and told us not to come,” I said. “I thought maybe that meant he was staying.”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your stuff?”

  That made him laugh again. “In storage.”

  “Oh,” I said again. Because my brain works good sometimes.

  “And I didn’t quit my job. The sheriff and I had a long talk.”

  “Wait, really? Bobby, that’s amazing. God, that’s wonderful. You’re such a good deputy.”

  “I don’t know about that. But the sheriff made some convincing points.” His eyes crinkled. “Among other things, she suggested you might get yourself killed if I wasn’t around to help.”

  “Okay, first of all, how dare you?”

  That big, goofy grin bloomed in full, and for an instant, he was the old Bobby again. “So, that’s that. I’ve got my job back. I’m not going anywhere. Everything I own is at the Park & Store. I am officially homeless. And most important, we’re still friends.”

  “You’re not homeless,” I said. “You can stay here as long as you want.”

  His expression changed again, and once more I got the impression that he was searching my face for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard. Something grew in the silence—grew and grew until it was a weight on my chest and I couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath. That he might say something. Or that I might. Or that he might cross those last, final inches—

  And then the moment passed, and he said, “Thanks. Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

  He didn’t move. And neither did I. And that sense came again: of something building between us, something so big that there wasn’t any room left for air.

  The grandfather clock began to toll the hour, and whatever it had been, it was gone.

  Bobby’s crooked smile could have meant anything. “Goodnight, Dash.”

  “Goodnight, Bobby.”

  I didn’t think about it; if I’d thought about it, I would have honestly, literally, instantly died. I leaned in and kissed his cheek. Just a brush of my lips, really. When I stepped back, my face was hot.

  Bobby’s hand rose like he wanted to touch his cheek, but he stopped himself at the last moment. His eyes were wide. And then, slowly, he grinned.

  The clock was still tolling. Twelve chimes. Twelve hours. Midnight, I thought. And then, more clearly: It’s a new day.

  I caught Bobby’s gaze, held it for a moment, and let a smile of my own slip out. And then I said, “Welcome home.”

  Broken Bird

  Keep reading for a sneak preview of Broken Bird, the next book in The Last Picks.

  Chapter 1

  “Where’s Bobby?” I asked.

  No one bothered to answer me, but that might have been because the library was so noisy. For a library, I mean—a low-grade roar of voices just begging to be shushed. Indira, Fox, Keme, Millie, and I took up a full row of seats in the multipurpose room. It looked like the whole town had turned out for tonight’s event; we’d even had to surrender the seat we’d been saving for Bobby to JaDonna Powers—which was honestly probably a good thing, because if she’d sat in front of us, I wouldn’t have been able to see past the mountain of church hair. Say what you would about Hastings Rock (its shockingly high murder rate, for example), the people here loved books. Tonight, thriller-writer extraordinaire Marshall Crowe (author of the Chase Thunder series) was stopping in Hastings Rock to promote his latest book (Thunder Clap, book seventeen in the Chase Thunder series).

  The library’s multipurpose room was decked out for the occasion—well, for multiple occasions, which was probably the point of a multipurpose room. At the far end of the room was a temporary stage, complete with podium and chairs and an easel displaying a poster of Marshall Crowe’s handsomely grizzled face. (Chase Thunder, by no coincidence, was also handsomely grizzled, and in literally every book of the series, yet another tall, striking, dark-haired, Amazon-esque woman fell prey to his charms—only to be abandoned when Chase Thunder inevitably moved on.)

  But the library also had paper snowflakes hanging from the, admittedly, water-stained acoustic tiles, and it had glittery snowmen taped to the walls, and an enormous candy cane propped in the corner. (God only knew why they had it or what it could be used for—clubbing children over the head after they’d been lured inside a gingerbread house seemed like the only practical possibility.) Tinsel-strewn paper chains hung everywhere. With so many bodies crammed into such a small space, the smell of overheated synthetics mixed with the odors of aging bindings and carpet that needed to be torn up. One of the things that had struck me, when I’d first come to Hastings Rock, was that it was such a cute town, and everyone seemed to love books, but it had such a dingy little library—it just didn’t make sense.

  Regardless, everyone seemed to be having a great time. Mr. Ratcliff was nosing around the stage, clearly hoping he’d pick up some interesting tidbit he could share with the rest of the town. Princess McAdams (not a real princess) had come dressed from head to toe in camouflage, and it looked like she’d brought the stock of a shotgun, presumably for Marshall to sign. And Mrs. Shufflebottom—librarian, wearer of uncomfortably tight cardigans, and apparently, for reasons unbeknownst to me, my self-appointed nemesis—was currently trying to force a family of six (tourists who had apparently wandered in during the off season) into the already overfull space. It was enough to make me, with my charmingly mild case of social anxiety, want to bite someone.

  And still no Bobby. I checked my phone, but I didn’t have any missed messages from him.

  “Dash, aren’t you SO EXCITED?”

  Even over the hub of voices, Millie’s carried.

  “I’m excited to get out of here,” I said. “Does anybody know where Bobby is?”

  “You know who you should have invited?” Millie asked. (It wasn’t really a question.) “You should have invited DAMIAN!”

  I scowled, but it didn’t have any effect. Damian was a bum—and a surfer—I’d met a few months before. He’d been irritatingly persistent about asking me out, in spite of my rejections. He was also Trouble, with a capital T. “Damian went to Hawaii. Permanently, I hope. Seriously, nobody knows where Bobby is?”

  “He’s probably running late, dear,” Indira said.

  “I know he’s running late,” I said. “I mean, he’s not here yet, is he?”

  Indira looked at me. The thing about Indira is that she’s probably a good thirty years older than me, still strikingly handsome, utterly composed, and has a lock of white hair like a witch.

  All of which were good reasons for me to mumble, “Sorry. It’s all these people.”

  Keme snorted.

  “But aren’t you excited,” Millie asked again, “to see your FRIEND?”

  “He’s not my friend,” I said.

  “But you brought him a Christmas present,” Millie said, looking at the parcel wrapped in brown paper (and string—that was my mom for you) under my chair.

  “It’s from my parents; my parents are friends with him. They sent it to my house because they didn’t know which hotel he was going to be staying at.” My parents were both writers as well—my dad (Jonny Dane, the Talon Maverick series) leaned toward military thrillers, not too different from Marshall’s, and my mom (Patricia Lockley, The Echoes in the Cellar, We All Live in the Basement, The Matriarch’s Tooth) wrote psychological thrillers. In addition to the parcel for Marshall, I’d gotten a package of my own from my parents—handwritten edits on my latest short story (“And Then They Were Done,” and let me tell you, my parents did not like the title). “He probably doesn’t even remember me.”

  Although that, at least, definitely wasn’t true. Because when I’d turned twelve, Marshall had happened to be visiting my parents, and he’d been kind enough to give me a BB gun—and then been crushed to learn I didn’t want to go hunting with him and my dad. I hadn’t been all that surprised when, a couple of books later in the Chase Thunder series, Chase had been saddled with a pansy twelve-year-old who didn’t want to hunt, had zero self-confidence, oh, and ultimately got butchered in particularly disturbing detail. (To put your minds at rest, yes, Chase went on to exact about two hundred pages of bloody revenge.)

  In other words, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Marshall again. Which was part of why I looked around one more time. If nothing else, Bobby could shoot Marshall if he got particularly annoying. Not that Bobby would, because he was too kind. But maybe he’d let me borrow his gun.

  Unfortunately, though, as had become more and more often the case, there was no sign of Bobby. Things had certainly been different since he’d broken up with West and moved into Hemlock House. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected—okay, I had some very clear hopes and dreams, and yes, maybe one of them involved a bubble bath. But I also understood that Bobby was just a friend, and as far as I could tell, that’s all he wanted to be.

  In fact, considering how things had gone lately, he might not even want that. He was hardly ever home. He went to the gym. He went surfing (yes, God, in the winter). He worked as many shifts as he could get at the sheriff’s office. And when he was home, he was busy, or the rest of the Last Picks were there, or he headed to his room. Slowly, over the last couple of months, I’d realized that I saw less of Bobby now that we were roommates than I ever had when he’d been engaged and living with his fiancé.

  “I’m sure Marshall remembers you,” Fox said. Tonight, they’d gone with corpse bride meets James Fennimore Cooper as their fashion choice: a striped, ruffled dress over buckskin leggings and clonky boots. “Who wouldn’t remember you?”

  “Uh, thank you?”

  Keme and Fox both got a good laugh out of that.

  I would have responded to that (probably), except raised voices drew my gaze.

  At the back of the multipurpose room, my other self-appointed nemesis, Pippi Parker, was trying to clear people away from the coffee station. Pippi was yet another author—Hastings Rock was lousy with them, it turned out. She was a middle-aged white lady with platinum-colored hair in a pixie cut that looked like it had been blow-dried within an inch of catching fire. She wrote cozy mysteries. You know the type: everyone is friends, everyone gets along (well, except whoever got murdered, I suppose), calories don’t count, and nobody says bad words, not even when Keme was hiding in your bedroom and he jumped out and screamed, and then you screamed, and then you had a minor heart attack, and Keme and Fox laughed so hard that Fox fell over and you had to take them to the urgent care because, according to them, the fall had made their sciatica flare up (painful and believable) and they needed their laudanum refilled (less believable).