A grinding sound met my ears, and it took me a long moment to recognize it as the sound of my own teeth gnashing together. I was struggling to keep a grip on my rage, but that wasn’t easy to do with Kevin flaunting the fact that my personal life was about as private as a celebrity sex video.

“Rumor has it your dad’s had you under round-the-clock surveillance for the last five years just to keep you safe and in one place. If that’s true, he’s not only been consistently one man short, but he had to break up a team of enforcers to keep one man free to watch you prance around campus with all your college buddies. Greg hasn’t had the manpower to check out every trespassing report in years. Because of you.”

Even as I shook my head in denial, fury sending sparks of indignation up my spine, part of me wondered if he was right. Had I kept my father from doing his job? Had I forced him to divide his loyalties between me and the rest of the Pride? Had I compromised the security he worked so hard to give us all?

I hadn’t meant for any of that to happen, for my decisions to affect everyone else so drastically. Yet they had. I’d just wanted a little freedom, but the entire Pride had paid for my liberty. If an ass-clown like Kevin Mitchell had seen that, why the hell hadn’t I?

Fortunately, Kevin was so consumed in his own defense that he noticed neither my fury nor my self-doubt. “I was doing your father a favor.” He crossed his arms, as if determined to make himself believe the load of cow shit he was shoveling. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping an eye on the odd stray who wanders across the border without having to bother Greg. If there was a real problem, I’d have given him a call. But there wasn’t. I had it under control.”

Marc took another step forward, and Kevin mirrored him with another step back, flinching and uncrossing his arms when he bumped into the Dumpster. Marc stared down at him, gold-flecked eyes glittering in rage and unspoken challenge. “Then how do you explain Harper winding up dead in an alley?”

Kevin held up his hands, palms out. “I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t here yesterday. I have no idea who killed him.”

Stunned, I blinked at Kevin, and from the corner of my eye I saw Marc stiffen. He’d heard it, too. “You weren’t here yesterday?” he growled.

“Meaning you were here on other days? With Harper?”

Kevin stuttered as comprehension surfaced in his eyes. Finally, he understood how deep his pile of shit was. And he had no idea how to dig himself out of it.

“Spit it out, Kevin.” I made no move to intercede as Marc closed in on him. Marc was the better bad cop, anyway —not because I couldn’t carry it off, but because he wasn’t believable as a good cop. “Did you and Harper go to Forbidden Fruit together? Were you strip-club buddies?”

“Don’t bother. The answer’s obvious,” Marc spat, his voice dripping with disgust. He watched Kevin the way a cat watches a mouse he plans to play with, rather than eat. “The only thing I don’t understand is why a prissy little snot like you would hang out with a scratch-fevered stray.”

Kevin glanced at me around Marc’s shoulder, having evidently decided I was the lesser threat. I saw no reason to disillusion him. “He paid me.”

I cocked my head in mock confusion. “He paid you to hang out with him? Isn’t that a little ‘desperate-schoolboy’? ”

Kevin glared at me, shaking his head as sweat dripped down his hairline. “He paid me to keep my mouth shut. To let him cross the lake and hang out in a city that doesn’t roll up its sidewalks at 9:00 p.m.”

“And you went with him?” I asked, prodding him on.

“Yeah, to keep an eye on him. So what if I got paid? Your dad should be paying me, anyway.”

“Why weren’t you with him yesterday?” Marc asked.

Kevin stared at the ground, nudging a broken bottle with one foot.

“My boss called me in to work, so I couldn’t go. I had no idea he was dead till Greg called last night.”

Marc lunged forward, and his fists slammed into the Dumpster on either side of Kevin’s head, leaving two deep dents in the metal. “If you’re lying, you’ll walk with a limp for the rest of your life.”

Kevin glanced anxiously at Marc, then around him at me, and his left eyebrow began to tic. “It’s the truth.” Though he was clearly angry, his voice came out in a high-pitched whine. “You want to see my fucking check stub?”

Satisfied, Marc took a step back and dropped his hands to hang at his sides, but even then he was no less of a threat. He seemed to tower over Kevin, intimidating the smal er man with his very presence. “Do you know Kellie Tandy?” Marc’s question lent credence to my own suspicion that the missing stripper was somehow involved.

“Only by sight. She’s hot.” Kevin paused and shrugged, looking at me over Marc’s shoulder. “Wel , I assume she’s dead now, but she was hot.”

Nausea rol ed through me at his complete lack of sympathy for the missing girl. Diplomacy be damned, Kevin was inches away from stepping past my point of no return.

“You think Robby killed her?” he asked, completely unaware of my mounting irritation.

But his question gave me pause. I pushed damp strands of hair from my face, considering. I had no intention of answering him, but it would have been nice to actually have an answer. Did I think Harper had killed the stripper? Because if he’d attacked her at all, the only possible result would have been her death.