She licked her lips. “I got a call from Marnee. Guess who she ran into at her school dining hall?”

He had no fucking idea and wasn’t sure he cared. But that clearly wasn’t the right answer. “You tell me,” he said.

“Your ex-wife.”

“Jacqui?”

“You have more than one ex-wife?” she asked.

Of course not. “That’s odd,” he said. It was the best he could come up with. And it only came to him because Rena had said it earlier about the storage shed.

“Odd,” she repeated. “It’s not odd, it’s damn ridiculous. And I won’t have it, A.L. I won’t have Marnee pulled into your ex-wife’s drama.”

Jacqui could be a pain in the ass but she wasn’t the devil. “I don’t think she’s dangerous.”

She stared at him. Her pretty blue eyes were fierce. “Are you deliberately missing the point?” she asked. “Your ex-wife was on my daughter’s campus, in her dining room. Do you really think that was coincidence?”

“No,” he said. “What happened?”

“Jacqui made up some bullshit story about having a friend whose daughter was interested in UW-Eau Claire and they were touring the campus together.”

That probably was bullshit.

“Your ex-wife is stalking my daughter,” Tess said. “I’ll say it again. I won’t have it. She is too important to me.”

“I get that. My daughter is important to me, too.”

“You can’t understand. It’s just been the two of us for a long time,” Tess said.

“We’re not really going to argue over whose daughter is more important to them, are we?” A.L. asked.

Tess closed her eyes. Took a breath. “No. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Tess. Jacqui pulled a fast one. Traci no doubt told her about meeting you at the mall and she decided turnaround was fair play. I don’t know what she’s trying to prove but I’ll tell her it needs to stop. Now. I’ll let her know—”

He paused at the knock on the door. Took two steps and opened the door. It was Rena.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, A.L.” Rena looked past him. “Hi, Tess.”

“Rena,” Tess said.

“What?” A.L. asked.

“We’ve got something.”

Thirteen

Rena felt like shit interrupting A.L. and Tess. The tension in the room was palpable.

“Tess, I’m...”

His voice trailed off as Tess held up her hand. “I’ve said my peace. Just take care of it, Able.”

Able. Rena stepped back to let Tess walk past her. She barely waited until Tess was through the double doors before turning back to A.L. “Your first name is Able?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then why did she call you that?”

“Is that the important question now, Morgan? I’m hoping you knocked on the door for something else.”