Page 108 of Property of Chaos

Whatever makes her happy.

I’ve barely got her off the back of the bike at the school before two blips of a siren draw unnecessary attention to where Marty pulls his cruiser in behind me.

I kill the engine and remove my helmet, hanging it on the bars as he exits his vehicle. Selena holds up her fist, eyeballing the cop, and knocks knuckles with me before darting across the laneway.

Necks break at lightning speeds, the locals doing their best to absorb as much of the drama as possible to repeat later to their narrow-minded little friends.

“Morning.” Tall and built like a linebacker, Marty’s been Temperance’s favorite cop for years. Ever since he graduated and followed in his daddy’s shoes.

In another life, we would have been friends.

“What did I do now?” I lean back in the saddle and fold my arms.

Yeah, I don’t miss the thirsty housewives checking out my biceps. They can look all they like. They’re not the attention I want to have this early in the morning.

My phone burns in my pocket, and the urge to check the feeds twitch in my fingers.

“I heard you’re moving out to the boondocks.” Fucker hooks his thumbs over the top edge of his utility belt.

It pisses me off that he refuses to remove his sunglasses. “Wasn’t a secret.” It wasn’t something I felt inclined to announce to every fucker in this town, personally, either.

“Never said it was.” He does that lean back from the waist thing cops are notorious for and checks out the bike. “Had your tread depth checked lately?”

“How about you put your tiny dick in it and see if it touches the bottom of the groove?”

His jaw hardens, nostrils flaring. “A school drop-off ain’t the place to fuck around and find out, Chaos.”

“Speaking of…” I nod to the traffic doing automotive ballet, trying to get around us. “You’re holding up the queue.”

“The investigators are going over the site again today,” he cedes. “You should get your yard back in a few days.”

“Keep it.” I shrug. “Haven’t missed it while it’s been gone.”

He wets his lips, slow and predatory.

“Anything else urgent you need to talk to me about?” I lift an eyebrow.

Goading the local law enforcement isn’t the smartest thing to do, sure, but I’m fucking over the pointless harassment. I’ve got shit to do, places to be. If he wants to accuse me of something, the arrogant fuck can just up and out with it—no matter where we are.

“Getting your yard back doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.”

“Never thought that was the case.” I reach for the helmet, indicating I’d like this shit over with. “But as far as I’m aware, you’ve got no idea how long those bodies have been there. You’ve got no reason to rule out the possibility they were there before we took ownership.” He also has no idea that I’ve got the goddamn evidence locked in a safe that’ll prove the deaths weren’t ours.

Marty opens his mouth to answer, yet a roar from across the road steals our attention.

A group of students bustle in a circle, two bodies moving in the middle.

I hitch the helmet on the bars again, swinging my leg over the bike to get off as Marty turns heel and raises his hand to halt traffic so he can cross the road.

The mob pushes and shoves, the students fighting in the middle, snapping left and right with each hit and thrust. The kids part as Marty crosses the curb, briefly but long enough for me to recognize the girl flicking her hair out of her face with one arm.

The fuck?

I narrowly avoid the fender of a car into my hip as I dash across to the carnage, hell-bent on removing that fucking asshole’s hands off my sister’s neck.

“Nope,” Marty hollers, shoving a hand to the center of my chest. “Let me sort this.”

“Like you sort everything else for us?” I shove him aside and shoulder my way through the kids, grabbing the boy by the back of his shirt and jerking him clean off Selena. “Get the fuck out of my sight before you lose yours.”

---