Page 52 of Rising Heat

“She wasn’t home…at first.”

I know I’ve made a mistake before the words are fully out.

“Ooooh—” they all say in unison like a bunch of middle schoolers.

“No way.” Coop pushes up from the bench. “She caught you?”

“She was annoyed,” I say. “Thought I was breaking in.”

“Wait, you didn’t tell her you were coming?” Tyler stares at me in disbelief.

“I knocked.”

“Mack.”

“After I was already under the sink.”

A few faces stare back at me.

I drag a hand down my jaw.

“She wasn’t home yet.”

Tyler’s eyebrows lift.

“Convenient.”

“It wasn’t a guess.”

The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made things worse.

“Meaning?” Tyler asks.

I should’ve left it alone.

Instead I say, “I saw her leave that morning.”

I’d seen her leave that morning with her laptop bag over her shoulder and headphones already on. She spends most workdays out of the house for hours and doesn’t usually make it back until early evening.

The silence stretches long enough for me to realize I’ve somehow learned Darcy Reed’s schedule.

“Wow,” Coop says.

“So she found you in her apartment,” Trick announces slowly, “crawling out from under her sink.”

“Fixing a drain she’d been fighting for three weeks,” I growl.

“She didn’t know that,” Ty unhelpfully adds.

“She knows now,” I say matter-of-factly.

Tyler looks at me the way he does when he’s trying not to laugh and losing.

“Did she say anything?”

I think about the way she’d planted herself in front of the bathroom like she was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than she actually was. About the fact she genuinely seemed prepared to defend herself with a wooden spoon.

“She had a spoon,” I raise a brow.