Page 38 of Bountiful
“You’re not leaving until you tell me yourfuckingname.”
“Do you have one, too?” I asked. “Let’s allshare.”
That must have come out extra snarky because the guy launched himself at me, grabbing myshirt.
About a half-second later, O’Doul had pulled him back, trapping him in a hold. “Calm the fuckdown,okay?”
“Whoa!” another man said, stepping out of the shadows to join our tense little gathering. “You want to let him go? I’m off duty right now, I haven’t seen my brother in three months, and it would be a pain in the ass toarrestyou.”
“It all depends on whether your brother’s gonna lunge at my teammate again,” Doulie saidcalmly.
“Alec, don’t lunge,” the new guy said, sounding bored. This was another Rossi brother—a younger one.Ben. His name leapt into my mind, because I’d seen him before. He and Zara had gotten into an argument right in front ofmeonce.
Fuckmylife.
“But you all have ten seconds to tell me what the fuck is going on,” Benadded.
O’Doul loosened his hold, and Alec shook him off. “They were at the bar talking some smack about getting a local girl pregnant. Look athim,” Alec said, pointing at me. “Tell me I’m notcrazy.”
The newcomer’s eyes widened. He gave me the same quick scan I’d given him a minute ago. “What’s your name?” heaskedme.
“David Beringer,” I said immediately, just to pissAlecoff.
“Spellit.”
“B-e-r-i-n-g-e-r.”
“With an ‘e’?” He tipped his head back toward the stars. “Fuck. An ‘e.’ Why didn’t I figurethatout?”
“Benito,” Alec demanded. “What the hell are you talkingabout?”
“We searched for him,” Benito said. “We searched through a whole lot of Davids from New York City. Barrister. Barrier. Barer. Currier. Carrier. We never got the nameright.”
“But Zara knew my name,” I argued. “I put my ID in front of the security camera…” The sentence died away as I tried to figure out how to finish it.Before we banged for the first of manytimes.
Benito gave me a stare. “Took Zara a couple months to realize she needed to know who you were. That footage was long gone. We tried rental-car records and cabin rentals, too. No name like yours came upanywhere.”
“I rented everything,” O’Doul grunted. “His name wasn’tanywhere.”
“We figured it was something like that,” Ben said withasigh.
But his brother Alec still looked like a bomb waiting to explode. If possible, he looked even angrier at his brother than he’d been at me. “You werelookingfor him? Zara told youhisname?”
Ben put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah. She didn’t want to talk aboutit,okay?”
“Excepttoyou.”
“I’m in law enforcement,” Ben said quietly. “Who would you ask if you needed to findsomeone?”
Alec’s jaw remainedclenched.
Ben, who I had decided was the calmest member of the Rossi clan, turned his attention back to me. “So now you’re back inVermont?”
“For a fewweeks,yeah.”
“Did you, uh, seeZarayet?”
I smiled in spite of my tension. “This afternoon. Walked into the coffee shop and there she was.” I cleared my throat. “We talked for about sixty seconds. The shock hasn’twornoff.”
