Next of Kin, page 1
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For my dad
Chapter One
I settled in behind the wheel and took a deep, rib cage–opening breath. Wyatt buckled his seat belt and I turned the ignition. We were running late to my cousin’s party after our cat, Tate, refused to let me catch him and put him up for the night. Wasn’t about to let the devil stay out past dark and end up a coyote’s supper, but he’d tried me.
Our house, a limestone seventies ranch we rented out in the country, shrank in the rearview as I pulled away. “Did you turn the hose off?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
He reached over, gently cupped the back of my head in his hand. He liked to touch my hair when I wore it down. “You’re stalling. Quit trying to get out of this.”
I laughed—he was right and he wasn’t. I wanted to celebrate my cousin Nikki and her fiancé, Sonny, but always found it hard to leave that little house behind. That slice of time between sunset and nightfall when we watered the tomato plants and peppers, talked—that was what I’d be missing. Wyatt cranked the AC and I turned down the farm-to-market road toward town. Life is long. Hard to see a shape or any kind of arc while you’re living it. I never thought I’d be living this life—a good life, but one of a million possible options. Decent options. I could’ve stayed gone after college and never come home to Garnett, and who knew what would’ve happened then. But, also, being with Wyatt felt like a cascading row of dominoes. Click after satisfying click. He was someone I felt my truest self around.
Clint, Sonny’s brother and also his best man, had offered to host a get-together for the wedding party at his place. The address was on a nice, sycamore-lined street in the older part of town. I parked in a line of cars that stretched from the driveway down the block. Smoke hazed the air, tinting the blue dusk bluer. The smell wafted over me as I got out and I straightened my neck. No crispness to the breeze, no hint of fall. This smell was an alarm sounding in the animal part of my brain. Like when our neighbors burned trash in the pasture and the wind changed course—stinging, sour. I looked at Wyatt. “Where’s that coming from?”
Wyatt stretched, swept his eyes over a sky ribbed with pink and dark purple. “Another wildfire west of town, I’ll bet.”
We’d had a long, dry summer after a wet and volatile spring. The land as it was now reminded me of the chaparral in old westerns, with its cacti, mesquite, and gnarled live oaks punctuating an endless brown. A tumbleweed had even rolled down Main Street the other day. Nights like this when it would stay a hundred out, I felt a slow-building panic, a sense of waltzing into the impending apocalypse. But that was August in Garnett every year: hot as hell and quite literally on fire. I grabbed a six-pack of Shiner from the backseat of the bullet—I drove a used Pontiac I’d dubbed the silver bullet on account of my superstitious nature and its color. Dinged up and not much to look at now, but it got me where I was going.
We cut across the grass toward the white bungalow. Wyatt’s fingers grazed mine, but it was too hot to hold hands, and neither of us were really hand-holders anyway. I moved mine to his waist, my thumb through his belt loop. The wide front porch had string lights tacked onto the railing, which a couple of old bikes leaned up against. It was crowded with cardboard cases of crushed beer cans. The front door was open, laughter spilling out. Nikki, bride-to-be, saw us coming and met us in the hall, wrapping me in a sweaty hug. She wore a white eyelet sundress that flattered her, her mess of blond curls bouncing around her shoulders. I spied her other bridesmaids not far behind, another cousin of mine using her car keys to shotgun a beer.
“What’s up?” Nikki said, a bite in her voice.
“You look great. That’s a cute dress,” I said, figuring she was nervous. “Sorry we’re late.”
A pretty woman with long, balayage’d hair met us in the hall. She twisted her hands, letting out a deep breath as though she’d been eagerly awaiting us. Tall, thin, and angular, she looked like a model. Sharp, contoured cheekbones a contrast to pillowy lips, a soft smile. She managed to pull off one of those prairie dresses that look dowdy on anyone but models. “Annie, right? Nikki’s said so much about you. I’m with Clint,” she said, leading us into the kitchen. “I’m Amanda.”
“Hey, nice to finally meet you,” I said, wiping my hand on my shorts—denim, a fashion nonchoice I now regretted—before offering it. “This is my boyfriend, Wyatt.”
They exchanged pleasantries as I looked over Wyatt’s shoulder. Clint had come in from the backyard. He sauntered through the living room with an acoustic guitar in one hand, a beer in the other. I normally would find the guitar red-flag behavior, but Clint Marshall was a real-deal musician. He’d opened for some big country acts on his last tour, and had a single on Spotify that was rumored to hit the Americana charts any day now. He looked the part of lead singer with his square jaw and handsome smile. His sandy, dirty-looking hair was loosely knotted into a bun, a strand left hanging into dark eyes. He adorned himself with turquoise rings and leather bracelets, with ink on his arms, black vines that traced his collarbone. He’d grown up around here, was around my age, our mothers had even been acquaintances, and yet I hadn’t known him before Sonny introduced us.
He laid the guitar on a stained, worn-out couch that looked like many a guy had passed out on it still wearing their shoes. The whole place had that vibe—like a house where fraternity brothers lived, or, I supposed, a band. I was pretty sure Clint had moved here alone, though, to be closer to his family. Nikki had said this was his and Sonny’s late father’s house, and it was a nice house despite the mess, with high ceilings, crown moldings, wooden built-ins. Like with the right décor it might’ve been on some HGTV special. Clint smiled and shrugged at me in the way of hello, and I nodded back.
Amanda clapped her hands together, turning her gaze on me. “Everyone like Patrón?”
“Girl, you’ve already done too much! That’s expensive, stop,” Nikki said, edging out Wyatt to stand between Amanda and me. Limes were sliced and in a neat pile on the cutting board, a dish of flaky salt beside them. There were cocktail napkins, homemade guacamole, three types of salsas, warm chips, veggie platters—all of this was on real plates, too. Despite Nikki’s protests, Amanda took a tray of shot glasses she’d been icing from the freezer and handed me the bottle of tequila. The whole presentation was a little at odds with the beer cans piling up and the lone box of Tombstone on the freezer shelf.
“We’re going to toast to you and Sonny,” Amanda said, mock stern. “In fact, Wyatt, how about you and Clint round up the others?”
Wyatt looked relieved to be given a task, and Clint clapped him on the back as they walked outside. He knew Sonny, of course, but none of the groomsmen, who were all Sonny’s friends from high school or his army buddies. Wyatt was always fun and laid-back at parties, but I knew part of his chillness was actually a preference to draw inward, be the one listening instead of doing the talking. He was curious—a quality I liked about him—though he sometimes came off as aloof or shy. There was an exuberance specific to weddings and wedding-adjacent events that tired him—tired me, too, for that matter.
I placed a lime on the rim of each glass, trying to pinpoint why I felt sheepish—because Amanda was being a good hostess, I realized. I needed to up my maid of honor game. When Nikki and Sonny got engaged last spring, I’d been openly skeptical. I knew they were in love, but worried they’d break each other’s hearts. They’d gotten engaged after only six months of dating, during which they’d split up twice. Besides that, Nikki was twenty-five, only a year and change older than me. Too young. Nikki liked to say she and Sonny kept each other on their toes, that if you fought you got to make up. Me and Wyatt, not our style. We’d been together since high school. Well, in high school, and later, after college when our paths detoured back to Garnett. The restlessness I felt about the future wasn’t him, though—I’d never wanted a relationship I had to guess at. No, my problem was like loving the wind but being afraid of flying. I’d always had a hard time being present, whether I wanted something different or was worried about losing what I had.
The rest of the wedding party trailed in behind Wyatt. Sonny took a tequila shot off the tray as I walked past him, whooped, and beat his chest. That was Sonny, happy to be here and proud to tell it. He grinned at me, giving me a quick sideways hug. I liked Sonny, I did. Even if at first I’d thought his keep-the-party-going persona made him shallow. I now saw his nature for what it was, that he was infected with a strong desire to please. He cared too much, and damn it if I didn’t know what that felt like.
“Here’s to the happy couple,” Amanda said, raising her glass.
Nikki sipped the shot. One of her false eyelashes was coming
Amanda cut her eyes between me and Sonny, giving me a knowing look. “So, Annie,” she said, raising her voice so that everyone could hear. “Sonny was telling us you’re a private detective. You must have some insane stories, yeah?”
“A few,” I said tightly. Didn’t mind talking about my work, but hated making light of the hard parts. Requests to tell crazy stories delivered in a bemused, slightly condescending tone often came to me at bars and at parties. And I got defensive, not because I was embarrassed, but because it mattered. Being a detective wasn’t a job to me; it was me. What started as a shaky-at-best situation—working for my ex-sheriff grandfather until I figured out what to do with my life—had become my life. Me, the straight-A student that always wanted a career-identity. I told myself it was ambition, this intensity, but my desires weren’t so much about competition or comparison anymore. I felt like my heart was flint in want of a whetstone. Maybe that was what people saw, what they also wanted—to glimpse the dark, to touch the sharp edges. Like a podcast come to life, they wanted me to lecture on the criminal mind in a deep, seductive voice, to give them a scare. Mostly, they wanted me to dish on other people’s secrets.
“Have you found killers and stuff like that?”
“It’s not usually like that,” I said, meeting Amanda’s wide-eyed gaze. “But yeah, I have.”
“Like, who’s the evilest criminal you’ve investigated?”
“I don’t think people are evil, only that our actions are good, or bad, or a bit of both,” I said. “Or yeah, evil.”
“So, you think it’s nurture then?” Clint leaned over Amanda, his face slack but intense in the way drunk people can really focus. His hair dangled in front of one eye and he moved it behind his ear all seriously. “You think criminals are made, not born?”
“Well—”
“Here we go with the nature and nurture bit,” Amanda said, shooting me another knowing glance, a quick eye roll and half smile. Like I hadn’t only met her. “Did you know Clint was adopted? Speaking of that, did you get the results back, babe?”
Clint blinked hard and shook his head.
“I ordered him a DNA kit,” Amanda said to me. “It’s just so fascinating, right?”
Sonny slung his other arm around Clint’s shoulder, spilling beer onto both Nikki’s dress and down his expensive-looking western shirt. “Man, it’s weird how I always forget.”
“Yeah, man, it’s ’cause it doesn’t matter,” Clint said quickly, fooling with a guitar pick left on the counter. “Not to me. My parents are my parents. Sonny’s my brother. They’re who raised me.”
“And that’s the truth,” Sonny said. “Hell, we ought to drink to that.”
Nikki lifted Sonny’s arm, freeing herself from where she’d been pinned against his wide chest. Amanda was measuring out more shots, but I excused myself and followed Nikki down the hallway, finding her in the guest room where all of our purses had been deposited onto a daybed, the rest of the room a catchall for moving boxes and junk.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Something the matter?”
She shrugged. “No, these wedding get-togethers just make me self-conscious. Feels like I’m watching all of it on home video in my mind. Does that make any sense?”
“I know what you mean,” I said, leaning beside her. “There’s a lot of pressure for it to be perfect. Moments to treasure that you’ll tell your grandkids about. You know that Aunt Jewel’s going to start asking how long until the baby comes the minute y’all get back from the honeymoon—”
She laughed, palming her forehead.
“Just relax,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. Easier said than done. I knew that level of anxiety, I felt it all the time, and I hated that my outgoing, free-spirited cousin felt it, too.
“What do you think of Amanda?”
“She’s really nice,” I said. “Maybe trying a little too hard, but can’t say I blame her. Think she just wants for y’all to be friends.”
Nikki lowered her voice. “Clint told Sonny that he’s thinking of proposing. She worked for a music promoter or something, that’s how they met. This guy, her old boss, he’s a kiss-his-ring-to-get-airtime kind of guy and they’re still close.”
“That’s convenient. But she seems like a catch regardless of who she knows.”
Nikki smirked. “Yeah, she is. She’s in nursing school, too. Sonny says Clint’s crazy about her. But I mention it to say I think she has him wrapped around her little finger. He’s good, you know.”
I’d listened to Clint’s single. The lyrics were forgettable—not quite catchy, either—but his voice more than made up for his songwriting skills. And of course, he had the look. “He’s talented,” I said. “So, wait, what did she do? Why don’t you like her?”
“I do like her. I’m just in a mood.”
“Go in the bathroom and splash your face with cold water. I’ll get you a fresh beer when you come out.”
I watched her go into the bathroom, then walked down the hallway. The living room and kitchen were now empty, the group had moved out into the backyard, and I relaxed, realizing I was alone. There was a record player on one of the bookshelves, next to it a massive stack of vinyl. I pulled a couple out, mostly sixties country records, some folk albums. Townes Van Zandt, Dylan. I flipped over an old Marty Robbins record, startling when I heard footsteps.
Clint held a trash bag out. “Grabbing up empties.”
“Oh, here you go,” I said, handing him an abandoned White Claw. “If you’re worried that I’m snooping, I definitely was.”
He smiled, flashed perfect teeth. “Gunfighter Ballads. One of my grandpa’s favorites.”
“My granddad loves this one too,” I said. “And me. I like old songs.”
“I’ve been working on some new old stuff. You’re giving me hope someone’d actually listen to it,” he said, looking at his feet in what felt a little like false modesty.
I eyed a Red Raiders pennant behind the shelf. “You go to Tech?”
“Got a business degree I’ve put to exactly no use. My real major was playing around Lubbock.”
“Bunch of musicians from there.”
“Nothing to do but join a band or go to church. I’m butchering someone else’s quote, but you know what I mean.”
“Has to be more exciting than Garnett.”
“It is. I kind of don’t recognize myself down here anymore. Don’t know what I’m doing if I’m not working—not playing, I mean—like I’ve got too much time to think. Too much time with the old Clint,” he said, looking at me for a moment with tension in his brow. Despite the contemplative singer-songwriter cues, moodiness wasn’t a natural look for a face like his. He also wasn’t as drunk as the others, I realized. He looked over my shoulder at the sound of the toilet flushing through the wall. “Nikki feeling okay? I probably should’ve put the burgers on before the tequila came out.”
“She’s fine,” I said. “Think she’ll be out in a minute.”
“When I was here at Christmas and got introduced to Nikki it was ‘Annie and me this, me and Annie that,’ all day. It was like that with me and Sonny, too. We drifted apart when we got older, but we’re solid like y’all are. Always have been. Which reminds me, you never answered my question earlier.”
“About what?”
“Nature or nurture?”
“Probably both, I guess. Why do you care so much what I think?”
“Because I think I can trust you,” he said, leaning on the shelf next to me, his elbow propped next to my head. Heat radiated from his arms, and his chest looked flushed through his open collar. His skin was smooth, and a warm cologne, like sun and pine needles, lifted off him.
“Maybe,” I said, laughing a little.
“No, I’m serious,” he said. His lips were slightly parted, tongue pressing against his teeth. He wasn’t talking about the question anymore—what, exactly, I didn’t know, but something inside me lit up. Sharpening, coming into focus. I wanted him to know that he was right, that trusting me was in fact like betting on a winning horse.
