Page 31 of Again with Feeling

“Put that down,” Bobby ordered. “Keme, don’t you dare run after him.”

Even at the bottom of a hill, trapped in an overturned Jeep, I could hear Keme’s sullen silence.

“If Dash is dead,” Fox said, “do you think I can have those jeans he can’t fit into anymore?”

“I’m not dead,” I shouted. And somehow, I managed to climb up and poke my head out the window—the lodgepole had shifted just enough to give me clearance. They were all there, lined up on the side of the road. My family. And Bobby was practically running down the hill. “And what are you all doing here?”

Chapter 10

After Bobby and Keme hauled me out of the Jeep, I had to go through about eight performances of “Not that I’m not grateful.”

“You didn’t sound very grateful,” Fox said.

“But I am.”

“You sounded like that time Keme put a spider in your bath,” Millie said.

“I—”

“And we drove all the way out here,” Fox said.

“Yes, I know, but you were also kind of, um, vulturing my corpse, and I don’t even think my jeans would fit you—” I caught myself a moment too late.

Fox froze me with a glare. “Not to wear,” they said. “To burn. In your honor.”

“Uh, right.”

“After we drove all the way out here.”

“That’s enough,” Indira said quietly. She had discreetly returned her gun to her enormous purse, but it was hard to forget the enthusiasm in her earlier offer towing him.

“And again,” I said, “I’m super grateful. I’m just not clear on why youallhad to—ow!”

That was when Bobby apparently had reached his limit. He dragged me by the arm away from the rest of the group until we stood a good thirty yards farther up the shoulder. Then he released me so forcefully that it was almost a shove.

“Hey,” I said.

But Bobby didn’t say anything. The sun was setting, and it painted one side of him gold, highlighting the rich hue of his skin and the deep, earthy bronze of his eyes. The other side of him,though, it left in shadow. He had his hands on his hips, and it looked like that was more out of sheer force of will than anything—his fingertips were white from pressure, and he looked like a man holding himself together.

Somehow, though, he bit out two words: “What happened?”

I told him about my visit to Jane and Neil. I omitted—for the sake of expediency—my poking around Arlen’s garage and workshop, but I did mention that someone had been watching me from his front window.

“And I know what you’re going to ask,” I said, “but it could have been any of them. Whoever it was, they were definitely pushing themselves—physically, I mean. But we’re talking about a group of suspects who range from their sixties to their eighties. Neil is probably the fittest one, and even he would have been breathing hard by the time he got to the bottom of the hill.”

Bobby didn’t say anything for a moment. He looked like he was trying to take deep breaths, but instead, they were quick, and they sounded high in his chest. When he spoke, his words had a gasping quality that I’d never heard before. “I don’t even have words.” Breath. “For how stupid you are.”

Headlights flared in the distance. The hum of tires, a long way off, moved toward us.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You could have.” Breath. “Gotten yourself killed.”

I looked closer at him. Underneath the golden light of the sunset, he looked chalky, and his eyes were unusually wide. Beads of sweat glistened along his hairline and neck.

“Bobby—”

“You almost did.” Breath. “Get yourself killed.”

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