Page 20 of In Her Sights
“Desperate.” The word was forced between gritted teeth. The truth of it made it especially painful to hear. She needed to get away from John before she did something embarrassing—like burst into tears or admit that he was right. “Go away, Carmondy.”
He made a frustrated sound. “You’re taking this the wrong way. I’m trying to look out for you.”
“Stop trying.” She reached the bus-stop shelter and halted. “You don’t need to look out for me. I have four sisters who do that already.”
“At least let me give you a ride home.” He pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen. Although she was curious, she refused to crane her neck to see what he was doing.
“No. I’ll take the bus.”
“You’re going to be waiting hours.” He held up his phone with the screen toward her so she could see the bus schedule. He was right.
Suddenly, all of the anger that had been filling her whooshed out like a balloon with a leak, leaving her limp and tired. She sagged against the side of the shelter. She hadn’t felt so hopeless and desperate since she was twelve and the heat had been turned off in January because Jane hadn’t paid the gas bill. So many times, Molly had come up with solutions and worked hard and thought she’d succeeded in making life better for her sisters, only to have her mom destroy everything Molly had just built with one casually selfish decision.
John’s mention of Sonny Zarver reminded Molly that Barney wanted her to bring in that particular skip. Now that he had leverage on her and her family, she couldn’t see how they could get out of taking the job. Molly needed to call Jeremy Tremaine, an attorney her mom had used for years until Jane had finally chased him off, as she eventually did all of her lawyers. Jeremy would know whether Barney really could take possession of the house before Jane’s next court date if it appeared that she’d fled. Molly’s stomach twisted and churned.
Gentle, enormous hands on her shoulders brought her out of her galloping thoughts, and she looked up to see that John was watching her intently. “Let me give you a ride home,” he said. “Please.”
Her knee-jerk reaction was to turn him down, but she hesitated before saying the words. Her options were limited. She could walk several miles back home or wait hours for the next bus or text Charlie for a ride. The last was her only real option, and it wasn’t ideal. Charlie and Felicity were doing the rounds of Jane’s friends, trying to find out where their mom had landed after leaving the Denver jail. They didn’t need to come all the way back to Langston to give her a ride home, especially not when John was right here, offering her his taxi services, and the only thing stopping her from accepting was her pride.
“Okay,” she said before she could reconsider.
His eyes widened briefly before he grinned, playing it off as if he’d always known she’d give in and take him up on his offer. Somehow, that brief startled moment made him seem less like a rival and more…sweet—a term she’d never thought she’d use in reference to John Carmondy.
Pushing away from the side of the bus shelter, she headed back toward the parking lot in front of Barney’s office. The closer they got, the more her thoughts tangled and turned. They’d reached the edge of the lot, a scraggly hedge separating them from the few vehicles, when Molly put a hand on John’s arm, silently bringing him to a halt. His forearm tightened under her light touch, and the movement, for some stupid reason, made her insides buzz like she’d swallowed a whole hive of bees.
Reminding herself firmly that this was not the time for any of that, she shoved those thoughts away and focused on the reason she’d stopped. Barney was bent over, retrieving something out of his car. John took his cue from her and went still, his gaze scanning the area as if he was searching out potential threats.
Although such careful perusal wasn’t necessary in their current situation, she still appreciated it. Molly usually had to be the responsible and cautious one, so it was nice to have someone else to watch her back for once.
She watched Barney as he found whatever he was looking for and slammed his car door. As soon as he’d disappeared back into his office, Molly moved out from behind the hedge that had been giving them cover. “Thanks for letting me avoid him,” she said, giving John a quick glance.
“No problem.” He steered her toward his SUV with a hand hovering just over her lower back—not quite making contact, but near enough that she felt the heat of his palm. “I get it. If I can manage to not talk to Barney, I do it in a second.”
Molly huffed out a laugh. “Me too—obviously. Plus, we just had a not-so-friendly conversation, so I didn’t want to have to start that up again.”
He studied her out of the corner of his eye in a way that shouldn’t have been cute, since he was a huge, built, tough-as-nails bounty hunter, but it was cute—adorable, even. “Can I ask what you talked about?”
“You can ask, but I probably won’t tell you.” He seemed to accept that with just a small dip of his chin as he unlocked the doors and opened the front passenger side for her, so she relented. “You already know Barney wrote Jane’s bond.”
He didn’t respond, just waited for her to continue, and she wondered how much of what she was about to tell him he already knew. John’s network of informants put Molly and her sisters’ connections to shame. He always seemed to have information before anyone else. It was a bit infuriating, and Molly secretly wished she had access to his sources. Today, though, there was something freeing about knowing that John already had all of the information she had—and probably more. She didn’t have to hide anything about the case from him, since that would’ve been futile. It was a sign of how desperate she was to talk to someone about what was happening, someone who wasn’t one of her sisters, since she had to protect them. John, though, could take care of himself.
Because of this, she started talking as soon as he circled the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. “She put the house up as collateral.”
He shot her a quick but penetrating glance, and she wasn’t sure whether that look meant he was surprised by the news or already knew and was just checking to see how she was taking it. Knowing John, it was the latter.
“It’s my fault.” The words started tumbling out more quickly, the relief of talking about it making her spill what she probably should’ve kept to herself. “I should’ve pushed Mom to transfer the title over to us rather than taking the drama-free route of just paying it off while it was still under her name. I never thought she’d yank it out from under us like this.”
As she heard her words out loud, she realized how silly and naive she had been. Why had she assumed that Jane wouldn’t grab any and all assets she could? When had her mom ever kept her sticky, greedy fingers off any source of money, no matter how sacred? If she hadn’t cared if her kids had enough to eat or heat in the winter when they were small, why would she care if those same kids were suddenly homeless as adults?
“None of this is your fault,” John said, sounding so sure that what he was saying was the absolute truth. The utter confidence of his words untied a sticky knot in Molly’s chest, and her tight shoulders relaxed a fraction. “This is all on your mom.”
“I was stupid,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to deal with a huge fight, so I put all of us in this situation. We could lose our house because I was too big of a weenis to insist she sign it over when we paid it off.”
He made a sound somewhere between a cough and a choke. “Weenis?”
Molly gave him a stern look, trying very hard not to be charmed by the way his suppressed smile dug vertical grooves into his cheeks. “Focus, Carmondy. We’re not twelve.”
His expression turned offended, although amusement still lurked under the surface. “I’m not the one who said ‘weenis.’”
