“I bet it was Christine.”
Jake and Eliot, who had been eyeing each other distrustfully just seconds before, both turned to me and fixed me with twin piteous looks.
“What are you babbling about?” Derrick asked.
“I bet it was Christine that put the memo on his desk,” I said hurriedly.
“Why?” Jake didn’t look convinced.
“Because she’s out to get me.”
Derrick rolled his eyes. “She’s out to get you so she puts a memo on Jake’s desk to help me? That makes perfect sense.”
“No need to be sarcastic.”
“Yeah, that’s your weapon of choice,” Derrick shot back.
“She might not be wrong about Christine,” Eliot said carefully. “There’s definitely something up with that chick.”
I shot him a grateful look for the backup.
“Just because she doesn’t like Avery that naturally means she’s up to something?” Derrick looked dubious. “If that were true, half the population of Michigan would be up to something nefarious.”
“Good word,” I piped in. “That word-of-the-day toilet paper is really working out for you.”
“Who told you about that?” Derrick turned on me. “Did Devon tell you about that?”
I took an involuntary step back, running into Eliot as I did. “It was a joke.”
“Oh,” Derrick’s face flushed. “I was just joking, too.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “You two are like kids when you get together, squabbling over your favorite toy.”
“Are not,” I stuck my tongue out at Derrick.
Jake glanced at me, trying to collect himself. “Why do you think it was Christine?”
I exchanged a quick look with Eliot, deciding on the spot not to tell Jake about seeing her buying ammunition the day before. If I was wrong on that front, I would never hear the end of it and it could just be a coincidence. “You saw her at breakfast the other day,” I said hurriedly. “She’s clearly got it out for me.”
“I don’t see how that translates to Derrick, though,” Jake prodded. “You have different last names.”
“She knows he’s my cousin.”
“How?”
I shrugged. “She told me the day at that press conference.”
Jake looked surprised. “She did?”
“Yeah, she basically inferred I was getting preferential treatment from you and Derrick.”
“She’s never even mentioned Derrick to me,” Jake mused, a far off look in his eyes. “She never even brought up his name.”
“I think the fact that we’re related is common knowledge,” Derrick said. “No matter how much I’ve tried to distance myself from her.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“You’re welcome.”
“Ludington knows, though,” Jake sighed. “And this is all stemming from him.”
“Because of me,” I said triumphantly.
“I wouldn’t be proud of that,” Eliot whispered in my ear. “That just means you’re to blame for all this because you drove the guy around the bend.”
“I didn’t drive him around the bend,” I scoffed. “He was already there when I met him. I just didn’t know it.”
“You didn’t help matters,” Derrick countered. “He’s still trying to dig out from that little press conference snafu you designed where you basically got every media person in the area to call him a racist for weeks.”
Yeah, that was kind of fun.
“And there was the time he tried to launch his own house for wayward teens and you posted the video you had of him – from years ago – where he said that at-risk teens were all prostitutes and drug addicts,” Derrick reminded me. “Where did you even get that footage from?”
“He really said it,” I protested. He just didn’t know I had been filming him when he’d been talking to one of his aides.
“Yeah, but you kept it,” Jake replied. “That was just weird.”
“I keep all the video I take of him,” I said honestly.
“Why?” Eliot asked curiously.
“Because he’s like a walking gaffe machine,” I shrugged. “He’s always going to say something that will come back to haunt him at some point.” And I was always going to be happy to use it.
“Yeah, but you fixate on him,” Jake said.
“He has it coming,” I whined.
“Well, now he’s going after you and we all have to pay for it,” Jake sighed, shaking his head. “Anyway, I need to be going.” He shook Derrick’s hand, nodded at Eliot and then moved towards his vehicle.
“Just a second,” I muttered to Eliot and then followed Jake over to his black truck.
He heard me coming and turned around. “I’m not in the mood to fight.”
“Well, I am.”
“Well, let’s table it until I’ve had some breakfast – or at least some coffee.”
“I don’t appreciate you blaming this on me,” I said.
“I’m not blaming it on you. We all helped create this situation,” Jake said tiredly. “You’re just the tip of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I did give you favoritism. I did step in when you were scrapping with Ludington – several times. I did let you get away with whatever you wanted pretty much whenever you wanted.”
That’s not exactly how I remembered it. “That’s bullshit.”
“Really?” Jake turned on me. “I found you at a crime scene where you disturbed evidence and I just let you go.”
“That’s beside the point,” I said guiltily.
“I know that you blackmail Derrick for information whenever you can and I don’t do a thing about it. I find it funny sometimes, mostly because he’s so straight-laced at work and you lighten him up,” Jake seemed like he was half talking to me and half talking to himself.
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” I started earnestly. “I did this. I’ll find a way to fix it. I’ll fix it.”
“Yeah?” Jake raised his eyebrows. “How, exactly, are you going to do that?”
“I’ve already started pulling Tad’s financials.”
Jake looked nonplussed. “So, you’re going to fix this by going after the guy that’s going after us because he already can’t stand you? And you think that’s going to make things better?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you think that will work? You think you’ll magically find something that will make all of this better?”
“I’m a vindictive bitch,” I said simply. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
“Or, maybe, you could just grow up and apologize” Jake suggested.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said immediately.
“And that, right there,” Jake pointed at me angrily. “That’s why you create enemies wherever you go.”
“And that’s why I always win,” I countered.
“Are you winning now? Because it doesn’t look that way to me. It doesn’t feel that way to me. Who here is winning? Because it’s not us.”
“Well, you just need to calm down,” I said angrily. “Just take a step back and relax. I’ll fix this.”
“You keep saying that and yet you have no idea how you’re going to do that.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Jake said bitterly, opening the door of his truck and climbing in. I’d obviously been dismissed. I moved out of the way as he started to pull out of his parking spot.
“I’ll fix this!”
Twenty-Six
Eliot was waiting for me in his truck when I turned around. I trudged over to the vehicle dejectedly and climbed in. “That didn’t go well.”
“What?”
“I tried to tell him I would fix things, but he seems to think I’m incapable of doing just that.”
Eliot was quiet as he focused on the road and finding his way back out to the freeway.
“What? You don’t think I can fix this either?” I turned on him.
�
��I don’t know,” Eliot shrugged. “I guess anything is possible.”
“Tad is a pain. He’s always sticking his nose into something. I will find a way to get my way. Heck, for all we know, Christine is the freeway shooter and it will be a moot point,” I said, glancing outside of the truck as the foliage sped by.
“Do you really think Christine is the freeway shooter?”
“I don’t know. Why was she buying ammunition?”
“Maybe she likes to shoot a gun. There are people out there that find it relaxing,” Eliot reminded me.
“It’s just too much of a coincidence.”
“What’s her motivation?” Eliot asked.
“Maybe she’s crazy,” I replied flippantly. “Maybe she’s trying to purposely set up a case that she thinks is impossible to solve and that will make Jake look bad? Maybe she has a multiple personality and one of her personalities is a sociopath?”
Eliot raised an eyebrow. “A multiple personality?”
“I watch a lot of soaps,” I grumbled.
“Maybe that’s it.”
“What?”
“The reason you’re so dramatic.”
There was a grim – and cold – tone to Eliot’s voice.
“What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eliot said evasively.
“Why are you being so . . . cold?”
“I’m not being cold,” Eliot countered. “I’m concentrating on driving.”
“You’re mad about something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “You’re just different. You weren’t this way a few minutes ago before I . . .” I broke off.
“Before what?” Eliot prodded me.
“Before I went and talked to Jake,” I said succinctly.
“You mean before you raced after him and left me just standing there watching you chase after you ex-boyfriend?” Eliot’s tone was biting now.
“I didn’t race off,” I challenged him. “I just wanted to tell him that I would fix things.”
“No,” Eliot shook his head. “You didn’t like him being mad at you so you felt the need to race after him to make sure he still loved you just as much as before.”
“That’s just . . . not true.“ I was flabbergasted. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Because you know it’s the truth,” Eliot charged on. “You know that you were so worried that poor Jake might have had his feelings hurt because we spent the night together – yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice that little reaction – that you couldn’t wait to run over there and make sure he was okay.”
“That is not true,” I said angrily. “I went over there because I didn’t appreciate him blaming this all on me.”
“It’s your fault, Avery,” Eliot slammed his hand down on the wheel of the truck. “You didn’t do it on purpose and you didn’t do it with malice but you did do this. You did.”
“That’s not fair,” I argued wanly.
“Why was Christine Brady hired?”
“To spy on Jake.”
“That’s being both simplistic and evasive. Why was she hired?”
“Because Tad felt I was getting special treatment and he wanted an inside person in the sheriff’s department,” I admitted reluctantly.
“That’s still too simplistic,” Eliot snapped. “Ludington hates Jake because of you. He wants Brady in there because it makes Jake uncomfortable. Jake has taken up your cause in front of Ludington at least once that I know of – and I have a feeling there have been a lot of other times. He did it one too many times and now, here we are.”
“You act like I did this on purpose,” I pouted.
“No,” Eliot shook his head vehemently. “I know you didn’t do this on purpose and, sometimes, I don’t even think you realize what you’re doing. It’s innate in you.”
“What is?”
“This need to always be right.”
“I don’t always need to be right.”
“Really?” Eliot rolled his eyes. “When was the last time you were wrong? Wait, let me rephrase that, when was the last time you admitted you were wrong?”
I wracked my brain for an answer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of one off the top of my head. Instead of admitting that, though, I decided to make the fight worse – which was further proof of just what Eliot was accusing me of. “You’re just jealous of Jake, and you have no reason to.”
Eliot’s face had turned red. “I am not jealous of Jake.”
“You’re mad that I went over and talked to him instead of staying with you. Just admit it.”
“You admit that you were more worried about poor Jake’s feelings than anything else.”
“No, because that’s not true,” I said angrily.
“And it’s not true that I’m jealous of him,” Eliot retorted.
“You’re acting jealous.”
I was frustrated. Days of Eliot watching my every move and early morning phone calls from my mother had collided with Eliot’s irrational anger and now things were spiraling out of control. I could see it happening. I could feel things slipping away from me. I did nothing to stop it, though.
“Avery, you are insufferable!”
Any semblance of the cool that Eliot emitted so effervescently on a normal day was gone. He was enraged – and I was the only one in his orbit to target with that rage.
“You’re not so easy to deal with either,” I sniffed obstinately.
“Shut up,” Eliot raged. “Just shut up for the rest of the drive. Do you think you can do that?”
I ignored Eliot’s statement and turned my full attention to the scenery speeding by along the freeway. I couldn’t figure out why he was so mad. I was having trouble figuring out why I was so mad. All I knew was that my gut was balled into a small knot of irrepressible anger – and it was, quite literally, making me sick to my stomach.
I endured the ride back to Eliot’s pawnshop in uncomfortable silence. I was hopeful that things would blow over once we got a little space from each other. When I jumped out of Eliot’s truck and headed straight for my car with just that in mind, Eliot was around the truck and his hand was on my arm in an instant.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” I said. “I need some air. You’ve been smothering me for days. It’s not cute anymore.”
“You’re not just leaving.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” I reminded him. “You’re not my father.”
“And you’re not a child, so stop acting like one,” Eliot shot back.
“Eliot,” I took a deep and steadying breath. “You don’t want to be around me anymore than I want to be around your right now. If I stay here, we are going to say terrible things to each other – and we might not be able to take them back.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re in danger,” Eliot countered.
“You think I’m in danger,” I corrected him. “I think it could have just been a coincidence. Even if it wasn’t, though, I’m in no danger as long as I stay off the freeways. I’ll take Gratiot back to my house.” I thought it was a reasonable compromise.
“I said no,” Eliot said stubbornly.
“Well, I say yes,” I shot back. “And of the two people here, I’m the one that’s the boss of me.”
“You’re just doing this because you know I’m right,” Eliot bellowed.
I glanced around the street and noticed we were starting to draw a crowd. Theater in the street is amusing for everyone – except those directly involved. I lowered my voice when I spoke again. “You’re jealous of Jake, and I don’t know what to do about that. You’re acting out because of that.”
“Maybe I am.”
I was shocked by his admission.
“Maybe I’m jealous because you’re always worried about Jake’s feelings. Maybe I’m jealous because Jake is always rushing to your rescue. Maybe I’m jealous because Jake looked like he
was going to blow an artery when he found out we spent the night together even though we’re adults and that’s what adults do.”
“I can’t do anything about Jake’s feelings,” I said helplessly.
“And what about your feelings?” Eliot turned the conversation around on me.
“My feelings? What feelings?”
“Don’t,” Eliot took a step towards me angrily. “Don’t sit there and pretend that I’m imagining all of this.”
“Imagining what?” Now I really was lost.
“There’s still something there between you and Jake,” Eliot said. “I see it. I keep telling myself I’m imagining it. I see it, though. I’m not oblivious. It’s in the way he looks at you. It’s in the way you look at him.”
“I’m not with Jake,” I said. “I’m with you.”
“Yeah, but for how long? Just until you and Jake stop playing games? Am I even a real person to you? Or am I just the guy you’re going to play house with until Jake gets his head out of his ass and you grow up?”
I was stunned by the question. “How can you even ask that?”
“It’s how I feel,” Eliot said darkly. “Every time I see the two of you together it’s like a punch in the gut. I know you have feelings for him.”
I decided to try a different tactic. “He’s always going to be part of my life,” I said. “We grew up together. We spent years together. Every dumb teenage thing I ever did was with him and Derrick. He’s my past, though. I can differentiate between the past and the present. I’m with you.”
“He’s in your present, though,” Eliot said bitterly.
“I can’t do anything about that,” I said cautiously – yet firmly. “Our jobs overlap. It is what it is.”
“Well,” Eliot blew out a long and shuddering breath. “Maybe I need you to cut him out of your life.”
I felt as if the air had been knocked out of me. “You know I can’t do that.”
Eliot’s dark eyes weren’t angry anymore. They were just tired. “Well, I think you have a choice to make.”
“I’ve already made that choice,” I said shrilly.
“Then why does it feel that you haven’t?”
Shot Off The Presses: An Avery Shaw Mystery Book 4 Page 17
