Page 46 of Valley Girls
She couldn’t resist. “Why are you so sweaty?”
His face contorted with rage. “Come with me, you little monster.”
Sixteen
Thea leaned back, glaring in that way Rilla found especially chilling when it was directed at her. “Excuse me?”
Dick Face blinked, a flash of panic crossing his eyes.
“What has she done?” Thea demanded.
Lauren sat up and leaned her elbows on the back of the couch, to watch.
“She was selling ...” He had to stop for air. “Water bottles. At the bottom of.” He put his hand up and braced himself against the door. “Vernal.”Gasp.“Falls.”
“Do you need to sit down, Reid?” Lauren asked. “Or would you like some water?”
He glared at them each in sequence, taking off his Stetson and waving it over his red face before gesturing to Rilla. “I got you. I saw you. I know it was you. There’s no way out of this one, Thea.”
Rilla widened her eyes, then made them normal. She didn’t do innocence nearly as well as irritated injustice. She folded her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me,” he seethed.
“Oh god, you’re like a bad parody of yourself,” Thea said, coming back with a glass of water.
He took it. “I saw her. It’s done. Over.”
“I don’t know who you saw, but I’ve been upstairs since lunch doing trig.”
“Bullshit,” he said over the water glass.
Thea turned to Rilla, dead-eyed and irritated. “You been selling water bottles at the bottom of Nevada Falls?”
Rilla kept her face still. “Nope.”
Thea’s eyes got narrower. She knew.
Lauren snorted and turned back around. Rilla resisted glaring at her.
“I came home with her from lunch,” Thea said. “And she went upstairs to do schoolwork. Reid, I haven’t ... seen her come through here at all.”
“She obviously went out a window.”
Rilla groaned. “Are you kidding me? What do I have to do here? Even if I’m studying, you’re somehow figuring out a way to get me into trouble.You’rewhy people hate cops.”
Thea held up her hand. “Rilla, you’re not helping.”
Ranger Dick Face’s face was red as a rooster. “You. Can’t. Escape.”
A shiver ran up Rilla’s spine, like she had, for a moment, looked into the red, sweaty face of all her worst fears, but she tightened her arms around herself to hide it.
“Reid. Come on. You can’t do it this way,” Lauren said from the couch. “The fact is, you’ve got two rangers who say she’s been in her room the last three hours. A girl who isn’t sweating and breathing hard. A girl who says she wasn’t there. And you.”
Rilla wanted to hug her. But she just tried to look innocent.
Thea leaned against the door. “Yeah, are you saying she ran back here faster than you?”
“I drove partly,” Dick Face said defensively.
