Bobby made one of those tooth-brushy sounds that could have meant anything.
“And I know the sheriff has a legitimate reason to consider Indira a suspect,” I said.“I mean, she was standing there with a gun.I get it.But there’s an explanation for that.”
Bobby spat.He swished water in his mouth, and he rapped the toothbrush on the edge of the sink to get the last drops of water off (that’s our Deputy Bobby), and he spat again.Wiping his mouth, he said, “Dash.”
“Don’t say it,” I groaned.
But hedidsay it—because, again, he was Deputy Bobby.“I love Indira.She’s a great person.But you know as well as I do—maybe better—that anyone, under the right circumstances, can do things they never would have done otherwise.”
“What circumstances?”I asked.“What made Indira snap?You saw her at the restaurant.She saw Mal.She was…upset, I guess.But for heaven’s sake, she straightened the silverware.It’s not like she started blasting away right in the middle of the restaurant.”
Bobby, as usual, ignored all of that.“Let’s wait—”
“If you say, ‘Let’s wait and let the sheriff figure it out,’ I’m going to scream.”
About five seconds passed.
Five seconds can feel super long when Bobby Mai is looking straight at you.
“Let’s wait,” Bobby said gently, “and see what happens tomorrow.Then we can decide what we’re going to do.”
Listen: I’m all about crusades.I’m all about fighting the good fight to the bitter end.I’m all about being completely, totally unreasonable in the name of doing what you think is right.But the way he saidwe—knowing that Bobby would help me, that we’d figure this out together—took a lot of the wind out of my sails.
I tried to put this into words, but what came out was “I want to yell at you some more about why I’m right.”
That big, goofy grin shone out at me.“Okay, babe.”
And then he got out his floss.
I left Bobby to his dental care, pulled on a pair of trunks—these were black, and they had a neon green design that looked like the Xbox power button right on the, uh, front—and grabbed a sleep shirt.Then I hopped into bed.A quick check ofCrime Catscaught me up on the news (there was this tuxedo cat who refused to let her hooman work and kept putting her paw on his hand; really solid stuff).Bobby finished getting ready for bed and padded around the room for a while, doing some end-of-the-day straightening up (yes, still naked).I was so caught up in reading that I only noticed in the background when Bobby answered the phone.
It's not like I wanted to eavesdrop, but it also wasn’t like Bobby was aiming for privacy.He stood a few feet away, phone pressed to his ear, his back to me.There wasn’t much to the conversation—“Hi,” and then a long silence, and then, in a flat, hard tone, “What do you mean?”
“Indira?”I asked.
But he didn’t seem to hear me.
Bobby’s shoulders were tense, and combined with that terse little question, it was enough to make me sit up in bed.What had happened?Had someone else gotten hurt?Had the sheriff found additional evidence?But why would the sheriff call Bobby?Why would the sheriff say anything to him, knowing that it would put Bobby in a tough spot, since I wasn’t part of the official investigation?
“Okay,” Bobby said.“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
My phone buzzed, and I glanced down at it.Some part of me expected disaster—it had been the right day for it.A text from Millie that Keme had flown the coop.A message from Fox about Indira.What could be worse?
But it was an email.
From an agent.
The month before, I’d started querying my novel.Yes, it was finished.(I mean,technicallyit was finished.I still wanted to give the ending one last pass.) And I wasn’t thrilled about the title.(A Work in Progresssounded very clever, and no, it wasn’t because I couldn’t come up with anything better.) But it was done, and I’d been sending it out to agents—querying was a fancy word for shooting off emails blindly in the hope of finding someone who would represent my work, more or less by sheer chance.
One decision Bobby and I hadn’t agreed on—if you could call Bobby’s constant encouragement anything approaching disagreement—was my decision to use a penname.I wanted to use one.Bobby said I should do whatever made me happy, but I could fill in the blanks.So, I’d gone with Danny Lock.It was kind of an homage to my parents (Jonny Dane, of the Talon Maverick series, and Patricia Lockley—her latest hit wasThe Mistress in the Manor).The bottom line was that I didn’t want to capitalize on my parents’ reputations.I didn’t want agents to pluck me out of the slush pile because of my mom and dad.I wanted to succeed—or not—on my own merits.
Maybe it was stupid.Maybe I was making my life unnecessarily difficult.Maybe I was self-sabotaging because I was afraid of success.(Bobby didn’t say any of those things; I’ve just seen alotof therapists.)
And so far, I’d gotten a lot of nos.
All nos, in fact.Each and every agent responding with a polite negative, my little tracking sheet slowly turning red as I highlighted the rejections.
This had been the last one.