Page 20 of Whiskey Chase
“Jesus,” I whispered. That voice. The face. It was like staring at a ghost.
“And who might you be?” Cassidy asked.
“Jonah Bodine.”
9
Scarlett
The stranger had my father’s face but someone else’s eyes. Looking at him next to my brothers, anyone would have thought he was a fourth Bodine boy.
“Jonah Bodine?” I repeated, peering over Devlin’s shoulder on my tip toes.
He nodded and held up a hand to block the beam of Cassidy’s flashlight. “You mind?” he asked.
I wedged my way between my brother and Devlin. “I’m Scarlett,” I said, walking down the dock to meet him. The bodyguard crew moved as one behind me, crowding in against my back. “You have my father’s name… and face.”
“Guess that makes himourfather,” Jonah said with a shrug.
There was a lot that went unsaid in that simple statement. The rounding of his shoulders against what sure sounded like the truth. His lined brow, the narrowing of his eyes, the bitterness behind his words.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, man,” Gibson began.
“He’s our brother, jackwagon,” I said, whirling around to glare at him. I always was the one to recover fastest from a sucker punch. “Dang it! Another fucking brother.” I was pretty tired of being the only girl in the cock-blocking, judgmental, overprotective family.
“Bullshit,” Gibson argued.
“Christ. Look at him. Take one good look at him and tell me he’s not Bodine blood,” I snapped.
“Y’all got some ID?” Cassidy asked.
If Jonah thought it was weird to hand his driver’s license over to a girl in cutoffs and a Madonna tank top, he didn’t say so.
“Be right back,” Cassidy announced, heading toward her car. “No one kill anyone while I’m gone.”
Jameson stared at Jonah. “How old are you?” he asked finally.
“Thirty.”
Bowie flinched next to me. He was thirty, and I imagined there’d be some kind of feelings there. “Hang on, Cass,” he called and jogged after her.
“What are you doing here?” Gibson demanded. There wasn’t anything friendly in his tone.
“Saw the obituary. Saw I had siblings,” Jonah said simply. “Your dad and my mom. She was a waitress in a diner.” He added the last defiantly as if he was daring us to say anything against his mama.
“Did you know? I mean, did you know our dad?” I asked.
“Met him once when I was a kid and once when I was nineteen in the summer.”
I did the math.
“Fuck,” I breathed. Jonah Bodine Sr. had gone looking for his other son—or his son’s mother—right around the time my own mother died.
“This is ridiculous,” Gibson began.
“What do you want?” Jameson asked shortly.
Jonah shrugged again.
