Free Dark Chocolate Demise by Jenn McKinlay Page B

but grim. “You need to go.”
    â€œCome on, Ange,” Tate said. “We can pack up and get out of town for a while.”
    â€œLeave town?” Angie sounded outraged. “I can’t leave. Not while Joe has this huge trial going on.”
    â€œHow is you being at risk helping your brother?” Manny asked. His voice was exasperated now.
    â€œI’m supporting him,” Angie argued.
    Mel felt her neck get hot. Manny and Angie had always had a tenuous relationship. Primarily, because Angie tried to be accepting of Manny’s interest in Mel, even while hoping that Mel and Joe got back together.
    â€œHe doesn’t need your support,” Manny said. “He needs you to be safe.”
    He looked at Mel when he snarled this last bit, and she nodded. She agreed with him completely. Besides, he was right.
    â€œI am safe!” Angie snapped. “You don’t know that this was meant for me.”
    â€œI don’t,” Manny conceded. “But guess what I do know? Frank Tucci is one sick bastard, and he’s going to do everything he can to rattle Joe’s cage until he can’t think straight, never mind argue his case in front of a judge and jury. Killing you sure would destroy your brother, wouldn’t it?”
    Angie blew out a breath. “You’re trying to scare me.”
    â€œDamn right I am,” Manny said. He shoved a hand through his hair. “Tucci is an animal. He’d think nothing of shooting you; hell, this is a guy who cut off his goomah’s right hand when she refused to make him a sandwich.”
    Mel felt dizzy, and when she glanced at Tate he seemed to wobble on his feet, too. Angie didn’t even blink. She nodded as if she’d heard it before, and Mel realized she had probably gotten an earful from her brothers.
    â€œFine, I’ll leave the festival,” Angie said. “But I still don’t believe that this was about me. She doesn’t even look like me.”
    Manny looked at Mel. His black eyes were intense when he said, “Go and be careful.”
    â€œI will,” she said. “I promise, but what about Scott?”
    â€œI’ll take care of him,” Manny said. “I promise.”
    Tate signaled to Marty and Oz to fall in, and the next thing Mel knew, she and Angie were being escorted out of the park.
    It wasn’t a walk back to the bakery so much as it was a jog. The only time Mel had been pushed this hard was when she’d signed up for fitness boot camp, in a not-very-well-thought-out plan to work off some excess buttercream. When the vein in her forehead had gone 3D and throbbing on her, she’d quit.
    They circled an in-ground fountain near the edge of the park and stopped as two men squared off in what was obviously an altercation. The bigger of the two men had arms the size of hams. Mel could tell just by looking at him that he was a gym rat, the sort of guy who checked his muscle definition in every reflective surface he passed.
    Tate tried to usher them around the men, but Angie stopped him. “We might be needed.”
    Tate opened his mouth to protest, but the two men shouting drowned out whatever he might have said.
    â€œDo you have any idea how much I spent on this?” the bigger man shouted as he grabbed the smaller man by his scarf. “You’re going to give back every dime!”
    â€œHey! Let me go!” Mel recognized Chad Bowman, the coordinator of the zombie event, by his scarf and his rectangular glasses. “Listen I can’t be held accountable for something like this. How could I possibly know a woman was going to be shot?”
    â€œI don’t know and I don’t care, but you’d better be insured, because I want every cent I spent on promo, swag, and merch back. I mean who the hell is going to want a souvenir T-shirt from an undead event where a woman was actually killed?”
    â€œYou might want to let him go,” Tate said