Read Online Left on St. Truth-Be-Well by Amy Lane - Free Book Online Page A

Carson started a pass with the razor, but he still caught Stassy’s horrified expression in the mirror.
    “Ew! No! But you know, I think one of the boys who changed the sheets was loaning rooms out by the hour. There were a couple of rooms with busted locks that got a lot more use than they shoulda.”
    Carson paused for a second until the whirring heat was uncomfortable against his skin. “Okay, so your lock wasn’t broken?”
    Stassy looked uncomfortable. “Uhm, no, Carson. Not with what we were doing in there, right? I mean, shouldn’t that sort of thing be, uhm, you know. Private?”
    The shaver slipped, and his soul patch almost went the way of the stubble. Wow. Nothing like seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of an idealist, right? With a sigh, he trimmed the soul patch a little closer than he’d planned and dumped the stubble in the trash before packing the thing away.
    “Yeah, but it was broken when we found the body. I’m thinking that someone broke the lock to drag that guy in there.”
    “So?”
    “Well, I don’t know, Stassy, did he kill the guy on the porch and drag him inside? Did he invite him inside and then kill him? Did one person kill him and the other one hide the body? Seriously, these are questions we’ve got to get to the bottom of, before the cops start looking too closely at you!” Beard taken care of—would aftershave be overkill? He’d never slept with someone he’d wanted to strangle before either. Maybe not. He fished some out of his kit.
    Stassy gnawed on a crust ruminatively and then looked stricken. “Oh geez, you don’t think this will get Uncle Ivan in trouble, do you? I know he’s worried about me. I don’t want the cops looking at him!”
    “Ivan can take care of himself, kid. I’m more worried about you.” Just a little aftershave, right? Oh hell. Maybe that was too much. Maybe he should take a shower. Maybe he should just grab Stassy and haul ass to Chicago—that would be good, right? Just deliver Stassy and let Ivan’s lawyers take care of it?
    “Yeah, that’s nice, Carson, but I’m more worried about Toby. They’re not excited about strangers here, but they’re really not excited about Toby. I guess he was sort of a fuckup or something in high school.”
    “I am aware. Don’t worry, the guy he works with at the youth center has his back. We’re going to go ask the hotel people some questions—”
    “Won’t the police do that?”
    Carson winced, not wanting to explain the deal between Dale and his brother. Not that he didn’t think Stassy wouldn’t understand, but Carson felt an odd surge of protectiveness: he didn’t want anyone to see Dale as anything but self-contained. Carson had gotten a glimpse of the frustrated brother and the devoted son. Like Stassy said, those things were private.
    “Yeah, but they don’t seem that quick on the uptake. I don’t trust your fate in their hands, right?” He wet a comb and ran it through his hair and then repacked the shaving kit and put it on the bed. He grabbed another T-shirt, a fresh pair of socks and underwear, and his clean jeans, and walked into the bathroom for a look-see, wondering if he should take anything else.
    “Yeah, that’s sweet,” Stassy said from outside the bathroom. “I’d feel better if you weren’t acting more like this was a chance to get laid than the deal with my life.”
    Oh for fuck’s sake—Carson had had enough. “You know, Stassy, you got this thing in your head, like I’m a big player, but you know something? My last girlfriend got pregnant with someone else’s baby.” He pulled the shower curtain back and slammed it forward for no other reason than because he was pissed. “She told me this in a note, if you feel me, that she wrote on the way to her wedding. You want to guess when that baby was born?” He peered around the corner to see if Stassy could still see him from the dresser, but Stassy had apparently moved back toward the bed. “I’ll save you the