Page 18 of Hell of a Mess
Locke frowned. “Who the hell is Mr. Rogers?”
Luther looked at me, then over at Jayda before responding, “Please tell me one of you knows who Mr. Rogers is.”
“I’ve heard the name before,” Jayda said, looking as if she was trying to figure out where that might have been.
“Jesus Christ,” Luther said, standing up. “I’m not that damn old.”
“Yeah, you are,” Locke quipped, causing Luther to glare at him before heading toward the door.
I watched him go, and the sadness that came with his distance was truly concerning. I shouldn’t be attached to a man I didn’t know. But I was.
“Isn’t there a song that mentions him?” Jayda asked just as Luther was about to step inside the house.
He didn’t pause or look back to acknowledge her question.
Seven
Luther
Linc scowled at me as if he already knew why I had met him in the garage before he could go inside the house. I stayed where I was leaning against the wall with a cigarette in my mouth. Technically, this wasn’t inside the house, but I could already tell he was about to bitch about me smoking out here. Gathe had driven Branwen and Stevie today, and he’d let them out at the front of the house. Neither of them would be coming in the fucking garage. Didn’t matter though; he was going to be pissy about it.
“Put out the goddamn cigarette,” he snarled.
I took another long pull from it and ignored that command. He could suck one.
“She’s staying upstairs. I’ll give her one of my guest rooms,” I said as the smoke drifted from my mouth. Might as well get to the point.
Linc’s eyes narrowed. “No, she’s not.”
Chuckling, although I wasn’t finding any humor in this, I shook my head. “Don’t answer to you. I own that half of the house, and if I say she’s sleeping in one of my rooms, then she is. Keeping her in the damn basement is inhumane.”
Linc’s teeth were clenched tightly as he glared at me. “My wife and child are in that house. We don’t know who the hell she is. All we know is a name, and since you left before we had Wilder run it, there isn’t one goddamn Lace listed under missing persons. There also isn’t one who meets her description in Mississippi or the surrounding states. Yet you want to let her in our home, around my family. When we know nothing!”
“Did you check Texas?” I asked.
“Why? Did she remember something else?”
I shook my head. “Not really. She remembered a white horse named Griffin. But there is a Texas drawl under all that refined speech of hers. It’s faint, but it is there.”
He jerked his phone out of his pocket and pressed the screen aggressively, and then it began to ring. It was on speaker.
“Hello?” Wilder Jones’s voice came over the line.
“Run a list of horses by the name of Griffin. It’s white,” Linc barked. “And along with the horse, check for missing women in Texas.”
“She remember something else?” Wilder asked.
“Yeah, the horse. Luther detects a Texas accent in her voice.”
“All right, I’ll run it. Give me ten minutes, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks,” Linc replied, then ended the call and started toward the door leading into the house. “She is fine in the basement. It’s secure, and she can’t get upstairs and murder us all in our sleep.”
“No, she isn’t. And she’s not going to murder anyone. She’s fucking harmless, scared, and alone. Maui loves her. Dogs know shit.”
Luther stopped at the door, gripping the knob tightly. He hated it when I went against his orders. Everyone else here obeyed him, but when I moved here to help him, I’d warned him that Garrett was my boss. Not him. Of course, that had changed now that his oldest son, Blaise, was the boss. I obeyed a kid I’d fucking helped raise. We all had. It was weird, but the little bastard had turned out to be more powerful than his father had. Mostly out of fear. He was ruthless.
“She stays on your side,” he said tightly.
