Free Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) by Shiloh Walker

but first you need to tell me what’s wrong.”
    “ I wrote you !” she said it again, her voice rising. “You and Moira. Once or twice a fucking month . I called .”
    She thought of the days she’d spent in the hospital, the calls the nurses had made the first few days. Then, when she’d told them to stop bothering. Even when she’d stopped trying to call regularly, she’d still written. It had taken forever to actually work up the nerve to write down what had happened, but after a while it had become cathartic and she’d poured her heart and soul out in those letters.
    But not a one of them had …
    But they were marked .
    Spinning on her heel, she stormed over to the car. It was probably locked, but—
    She frowned when it opened up on its own, then she popped the trunk. The backpack wasn’t in the trunk. Fine. She’d just go get it from her room.
    Brannon caught her arm before she hit the door and she jerked away. “Let me go.”
    She had to get her backpack. Had to get the letters and ask why.
    But the backpack wasn’t in her room.
    “Neve, damn it, we’re going to talk,” Brannon said, although he was practically running to keep up with her.
    “I need Ella Sue,” she said.
    *   *   *
    Her backpack was missing.
    A bewildered Mason had come back to the house when Ella Sue called him on her cell phone and asked him about the backpack.
    Neve wanted to think he was lying.
    The long, gangly kid had stood there in front of Ella Sue with what amounted to terror in his eyes as the diminutive black woman stared up at him, and finally, she nodded at him and he left, dashing out of the back door like his ass was on fire.
    Ella Sue came to sit on the island in front of her. “Is there any place else you could have left it?”
    Brannon was still standing in the entryway to the kitchen, watching her. Neve kept her back to him. She didn’t want to look at him, hear his accusing voice, or see the doubt in his eyes.
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I put it in there when I left Gideon’s place this morning. It never left the trunk.”
    “You spent the night with Gideon.”
    She glanced over at Brannon now. His voice, so carefully blank, jabbed a hot needle into her side. “He let me crash in his guest room. It was late and I needed some rest.”
    Brannon opened his mouth, but Ella Sue hushed him. “Maybe you left it at his place by mistake,” Ella Sue said. “Whatever is inside it, if he has it, you know it’s in good hands.”
    “That’s the problem,” she muttered. Gideon didn’t have it. She knew it. But she pulled out the cheap throwaway phone and the card he’d given her, punched in his number.
    He answered after three rings, his voice brusque and distracted.
    “Hey, Gideon. It’s Neve.” After a moment, she added, “McKay.”
    There was a pause and then he chuckled. “As if I know any other. How did the reunion go?”
    Her laugh sounded strained even to her own ears. “About as well as we can hope, I guess. Hey, listen … did you see my backpack this morning?”
    “Yeah. You put it in the trunk with your suitcase, crammed it in on the side.”
    She closed her eyes. “You’re positive.”
    “Yeah. I saw you do it with my own two eyes, Nevie.”
    Bracing her elbow on the table, she dropped her forehead into her hand. Shit . Out loud, she just said, “Thanks.”
    “What’s wrong?” Gideon’s voice was matter of fact and blunt. Not consoling like Ella Sue’s and not pushy like Brannon’s. Something about it just soothed her.
    For some reason, she found herself saying what she hadn’t been able to say. “Somebody stole it out of my trunk this morning. I think it probably happened when I went to the museum.”
    Ella Sue’s soft gasp made her squirm with embarrassment.
    Brannon’s muttered curse had her ducking her head even lower.
    “It’s missing?”
    “Yes.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened—leaving out just