Page 11 of If All Else Sails
“What are you, an oracle?”
“He hasn’t stopped calling me for the last ten minutes. Except to call you. While you were...unconscious.”
“Which is because you called the cops on me and then let them leave me in a hot car.”
Wyatt has the decency to wince.
I lean forward and grab my phone off the coffee table, which has seen better days. Wyatt watches me as I answer, and I force myself to look away. The intensity of his expression is familiar, but there’s something new and different about how it’s hitting me today.
Maybe it’s just the heat.
“Give me a good reason not to write you out of my will,” I tell my brother in lieu of hello.
“For the last time, I don’t want your old collection of One Direction posters.” He pauses. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.”
“This isnothow I saw today going,” Jacob says, which I think counts as an apology in some other dimension. He and Wyatt have the same severe allergy to apologies.
“I sure hope not,” I say. “Because if this was your plan, Iwillseek revenge. Tenfold, brother. Upon your children’s children’s children’s pets.”
“Please—not my great-grandchildren’s puppies!”
“Fine. I’ll let the puppies live. But no promises with regards to your progeny.”
Wyatt makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a chuckle, but when I glance up, he’s coughing behind his hand.
I turn my full attention and anger on Jacob. “Now, do you mind telling me why you sent me this address when you arenothere, and Wyatt, whoishere, didn’t know I was coming?”
“Uh” is his not-so-promising start.
“Hang on. I’m putting you on speakerphone so you can share with the class.” I adjust the volume and set the phone back on the coffee table. “Okay,” I say loudly. “Go ahead and fill us in on your little plan.”
“Wyatt?” Jacob says.
“Present,” Wyatt says, like he’s answering a roll call.
I almost smile.
There’s a long pause. “So, here’s the situation,” my brother says. “Neither of you is going to like it.”
“I’m not sure I can like it any less than what’s happened so far,” I say. “Which has consisted of a drive to a mystery location for a surprise trip with my brother that’s clearly not happening, being arrested—”
“Detained,” Wyatt corrects.
“Semantics.” I glare but Wyatt glares right back. “Where was I? Oh, right—sitting handcuffed in the back of a hot cop car—to be clear, the car was hot, not the cops—while Mr. Big Deal over here signed autographs. Then I passed out from heat exhaustion, and now I’m inside Wyatt’s murder cottage, feeling like utter and total garbage.”
There is silence.
I would feel bad except...I don’t. Nothing I said was exaggerated, except maybe the murder cottage part. Jury’s still out on that one. Some of the stains on the hardwoods could conceivably be blood.
Finally, Jacob speaks, his voice guitar-string tight. “You let them leave my sister in the back of a cop car? In the heat?”
Wyatt looks away, his gaze dropping to a stained plank of wood near his boot. “I didn’t know the car wasn’t running,” he says quietly.
Pressing a hand to my throbbing skull, I hunch over the phone. “All of this is your fault, Jacob. So, tell me—why am I here?”
I’m glaring at the phone so hard that I don’t notice Wyatt trying to hand me a water bottle until he thrusts it in my face. He’s leaning on his crutches, cheeks flushed, mouth downturned.
