Page 19 of Stay in Your Lane!

He’d taught me to always assume people were smarter—and potentially more dangerous—than they let on. Four years of trusting carnivorous fish enough to stick my arm in their tank had driven that home. You don’t maintain an aquarium full of piranhas withoutalwaysassuming even the most placid creatures could bite without warning.

Not that Steve counted as“placid,”and not that I thought there was anything dangerous or even aggressive about Everett, but he was definitely smarter than he let on. Everett, not Steve.

“Okay, so…” Everett chewed his lip. “We can talk to the girl, right? But what if she tells us something useful, but then she won’t talk to the cops?”

It took me a second to follow him back onto the rails of our previous conversation, but I caught up. “Well, whatever she tells us, it’s your word, my word, and”—I held up my phone—“her own recorded words against hers.”

His eyes widened. “We can record the conversation? Like, without telling her? Or getting a warrant? How does all that work?”

“This isn’t a two-party consent state.” I shrugged again. “As long as we meet her in public somewhere, yeah—we can record.”

“Oh. We should probably meet her in public anyway. Even if she had nothing to do with Rick’s death, she might be spooked enough that she won’t want to meet with a couple of guys in private.”

It was my turn for a surprised, “Oh.” Yeah, he was smarter than I’d thought. And he also had a Golden Retriever vibe that put people at ease, from our done-with-humanity waitress to my prickly ass.

Which meant he was the perfect candidate to talk to Rosie.

Assuming we could get her to talk to us.

“Let’s reach out to her,” I said. “Because right now, she’s the only lead we’ve got.”

Apparently I was getting used to Waffles? after two visits, because walking in a third time didn’t even feel weird. I’d settled into it enough that the strangeness felt more like quirkiness, and I was almost at ease, especially since nothing appeared to be on fire and no one was animatedly angry. Yet.

Shit, was I gettingusedto this bizarre place? Was Waffles? becoming…normal?

Well, everything about this situation was weird, so why the hell not?

To add to the strangeness, we were here to meet one Rosie Daniels, who had been understandably uneasy about meeting with us.

“The cops figured Rick killed himself,”she’d said to Everett when we’d gone by her workplace earlier.“I thought they weren’t looking into it any further.”

“They’re not,”he’d told her with complete honesty.“But we both think something is weird about what happened to him, and maybe if you help us, we can get the cops interested.”

She’d balked, tensing like a startled deer who was ready to bolt.

“We want to find out the truth about what happened,”I’d jumped in, keeping my voice as gentle as I could.“The cops might’ve overlooked something, but maybe we can get their attention.”

Her eyes had flicked back and forth between us.“And what if you can’t get their attention? What if there’s something messed up about it, but the cops aren’t interested?”

The way she worded those questions had made me think she wasn’t behind his death, but she knewsomethingabout it. And like us, she didn’t think Rick had ended his own life.

Of course her boss had picked just that moment to snap at her to get back to work. With some careful coaxing, we’d persuaded her to meet us here after her shift.

Now we were seated at a booth, waiting for her to show up.

Sitting beside me, gaze fixed on the diner’s entrance, Everett whispered, “Do you think she’ll come?”

“I hope so.”

He turned to me, eyebrows up. “You don’t think she will?”

“I don’t know.” I thumbed the edges of the laminated menu I’d been ignoring. “She was tough to read.”

Everett nodded. “I can’t decide if she wants us to look into this, or if she’s afraid we will.”

Chewing my lip, I nodded too. “Same.” Agreeing to meet us could very well have been a way to get rid of us so she didn’t get fired. It was entirely possible she was going to?—

“Oh! There she is!” Everett gestured at the window. Outside, Rosie was on her way in, gaze down and a baby on her hip.

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