Page 6 of Tell Me Why
They’d madea mess of her back seat that she was going to have to clean up at some point, but it wasn’t the first time the back seat had gotten ripped to shreds, and the body shop where she took it to get fixed wasn’t in the habit of asking questions, so that wasn’t anything more than a minor inconvenience.
She took the elevator up to the penthouse, leaning against the bar at the back of the elevator as she waited.
Hunter had been here recently enough that she could smell him distinctly. Tell, she couldn’t really be sure when he’d last come or gone, because the box of the elevator so commonly smelled of him, but she was trying to learn to pay attention to what she could learn from the smells around her as readily as she did what her eyes told her, and it was taking practice and intention, so she was putting in the effort.
The elevator doors opened and she followed the sound of the two men watching television in the den. The trip to the schoolhad been relatively uneventful, given the state of her backseat, and she’d gone into the condemned building to make sure that the bennaxes inside had at least gotten a rumor of her threat to spread amongst themselves before she’d left. In all, she’d been gone for perhaps three hours, and she hadn’t had a firm guess whether Tell would be done with Hunter’s mysterious errand by now. They were still a few hours from dawn, and the two of them had a lot more latitude with getting in late than Tina did.
“Heya, sweetie,” Hunter said, throwing an arm up to invite her to come join him on the couch next to him. He was grinning in that way that suggested he had a surprise or a secret that was going to make her angry.
“You’re not still in white,” Tina observed of Tell as she sat down, leaned in against Hunter.
“I’m not speaking of tonight ever again,” Tell answered.
Tina licked her lips and turned her face directly toward Hunter.
“That bad?” she asked. “I’m hurt you told him to leave me home.”
“Seems like you found something to do,” Hunter said cheerfully.
“Everything go okay?” Tell asked passively. She didn’t owe it to him, but she’d texted him to let him know where she was going before she’d left.
“I told them that if I caught them again, I’d ship them to Australia,” Tina answered.
Tell pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded.
“That might actually work,” he commented dryly. “I would have broken one of them into three pieces.”
“See, Ithoughtthat you might,” Tina said.
“Nasty pieces of work, bennaxes,” Hunter said. “Death-wishes, every last one of them.”
“Just the little ones,” Tina said. “The young ones were lovely.”
Tell nodded, scratching his throat with the backs of his fingernails.
“You going to go do invoices like a nerd?” he asked.
“Someonehas to,” Tina said. “It’s like you’re constantly trying tosneakbad filing in behind my back.”
“I do,” Tell said, the corner of his mouth belying the threat of a grin.
She huffed, just for show.
“Whatdidyou do tonight?” she asked Hunter.
“If I tell you, he’ll kill me, no kidding,” Hunter said. “So, in the interest of self-interest… we sat calmly at a bar and drank hard liquor.”
He nodded sagely, mocking Tell with a quick side-eye.
“Wearing white?” Tina asked, and he nodded again.
“You want something to eat?” Tell asked.
“You mean popcorn or a fountain?” Tina asked, and he jerked his chin slightly. The fountain.
She sighed, pinching her mouth.
She wasfine. She’d run another few days on her last meal. But he didn’t like her doing it, and he was nudging her - again - to keep herself better topped-up.
