Page 27 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

Hearing Bram call me Dory felt like a weight had been lifted off of my chest.

“Okay,” Alto snorted as if he couldn’t quite comprehend that a name could have any negative effects on a person.

But, oh, could it.

I would know.

“Detective,” Detective Green growled, “I think that we’ve established an alibi for both of them.”

“What’s going on?” Bram asked as if he didn’t already know the answer to the question.

Detective Alto started to say something, but Detective Green spoke over him.

“Amon, your brother, was found in the river this morning. He has a knife wound to the chest. We believe he was murdered,” Detective Green explained.

So did that mean that my knife wound won? That I killed him?

I’d seen Bram punch him in the throat, and likely that’d affected him greatly. But if they weren’t looking past the knife wound…

“That’s…” I hesitated, unsure what to say.

“I think the word you’re looking for is horrible,” Detective Alto snapped.

I looked at him for a few long seconds before saying, “Detective, Amon has—had—done nothing but torture me my entire life. He killed those two girls—girls that were my friends. He almost killed Bram. And I’m fairly sure he killed my parents and then my foster parents when I was younger. So, though you think it’s ‘horrible,’ I certainly do not. I feel like karma is abitch.”

I could see that Detective Green agreed with me. It was Detective Alto who didn’t.

But before he could say anything more, Bram put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his naked chest.

One that I’d been dreaming about since I’d seen it last.

Mimi’s chest. That chest belonged to Mimi. You can’t think about that chest.

It didn’t matter.

No matter how many times I told myself to control myself when it came to Bram, the more my body and my mind screamed that I was nuts.

“We’re sorry to bother you so late.” There was a long pause as Detective Green considered us for a moment. “Do you think that Mimi could’ve done that?”

My mouth fell open, and Bram’s body tensed.

“No!” I blurted. “Mimi is a kindhearted person. Plus, she’s all of a hundred and thirty pounds. Do you honestly think she could lift someone my brother’s size?”

Detective Green shrugged. “She could’ve had help.”

“Mimi didn’t do it,” Bram promised. “She’s been staying with her dad at the racetrack in town. Most likely, if she needs an alibi, she’ll have one. She’s been helping run that place.”

Racetrack in town? Mimi’s family owned that?

I shivered.

That racetrack was cool and all, but it was a dirt track. Dirt tracks unequivocally equaled dirt.

And I didn’t do dirt.

Not even after all these years could I stand to be dirty.

One of my teachers from when I took psych last year called the inability to deal with dirt a trauma response when I gave her a ‘hypothetical’ situation during class.

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