“Hey, Bill?” Danny cut her off. Making a major production out of the cop’s assholeness wasn’t going to help her brother. Bill’s gaze lifted to Danny’s knees. “My hand really hurts. Could you get me a bag of ice?”

“Sure, Danny.” Bill slunk through the door like a kicked puppy.

The door closed behind Bill. Mandy glared at Lang. “You could be nicer.”

“I don’t have time to coddle your retarded brother,” the cop shot back.

“Do not use that word in my house.” Mandy’s tone was blast-chiller cold. “It’s an insult.”

Danny’s good hand clenched into a fist, and he itched to plow it straight into the cop’s face. But Danny wasn’t a teenage troublemaker anymore, and he wouldn’t be much use from a jail cell. He had no doubt the cop would love to arrest him. Power-hungry Lang would enjoy arresting anybody.

“Sorry, handicapped. No, mentally challenged. Is that the politically correct term these days? It is what it is, whatever you call it,” Lang shot back.

Mandy’s eyes narrowed to tiny, furious slits. “You have no right—”

“No right to do what?” Land interrupted. “Come here when someone calls the police?”

Mandy looked as pissed off as Danny felt. Her glare was a freaking dagger, sharp, pointy, and ready to disembowel the cop standing in front of her.

Lang inflated his chest like a rooster. “Have you asked all your neighbors if they left this for you or if they saw anyone around the inn?”

“Well, no,” Mandy admitted. “But none of them would leave me something like this.”

“You neighbors never give you anything?” The cop lifted his sunglasses from his nose. Unnaturally large biceps threatened to burst the seams of his too-tight uniform shirt’s sleeves.

Mandy sighed. “Mr. Kane gives me cucumbers and tomatoes if he has too many, but nothing like this.”

Doug emitted a long-suffering sigh. “Look, Mandy. Everybody knows you like flowers. Maybe one of your neighbors bought too many. In any case, flowers,” he glanced at the door, “or a twig are hardly dangerous.” He snapped his notebook closed. “I’m busy. I spent the morning hauling a crazy homeless dude into county for a psych evaluation. Claimed an alien with a ray gun tried to abduct him. Please tell your mother not to call the police again unless there’s been an actual crime.” He pivoted on a heel and strode back to his car.