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I swiveled my head like an owl towards him, eyes open as wide as I could, and deepened my voice dramatically. “Do you like… trains?”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Uh, yeah, sure I do. So, you’re from around here?”
“I love watching the switchers the most,” I said, not blinking. “Most rail fans don’t, but I love the locomotives. The T-one-twenties. The old English shunters. I could watch them all day.”
“That’s great.” His smile faltered, but he plastered it back on and tried again. “I’m Benny. I run the cement works down in Wildwood Canyon. What’s your name?”
“I’ve got eighty-seven hours of English bogey T-four-six-three-two in my audio files,” I deadpanned, tilting my head slightly. I still hadn’t blinked. “I listen to it at night to go to sleep.”
“Uh. Okay. Do you–”
“In Niles Canyon, they got an old S-P-six-four-three-zero-three. They used that old hydraulic to pull a passenger train from Oakland to Truckee.”
“Right.” Benny blew out a breath and tapped the bar in front of him. “Have a great night, honey.”
He practically ran back to the other side of the bar.
I glanced at my watch. Twenty-eight seconds. I should give lessons.
It wasn’t even the crazy train enthusiast-talk, the deep voice, or the unsettling lack of blinking that did it, although those special touches hurried things along. The truth was, most men didn’t know how to cope with a woman that just didn’t listen to them.
Cherry moved back my way, her frenzied wiping slowed down a fraction. She was looking at me again; I could feel her assessing my face and body carefully, trying to figure me out. What was a girl like me doing in a dump like this?
We were probably around the same age, mid-to-late twenties, but she looked older, and I looked younger. Her hair was a brassy bottle-blonde; mine was a soft ash. She was wearing a tight white tank top, showing off too-perky, round fake breasts; I was wearing jeans and a designer t-shirt, expensive-looking but casual enough that I could wear it anywhere. Cherry obviously had a rough life; it showed in the tension around her eyes and the tiny wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. I’d had a rough life too, much worse than hers, but the difference between the two of us was billions of dollars’ worth of training and resources. I could see a few faint scars underneath her tattoos. Most of my own scars had been healed by high-tech lasers and plastic surgery.
Curiosity got the better of her. “You alone, hon?”
I shook my head, eyes glued to the glass in front of me. “No. I’m with my dad. We’re on a road trip.”
“Your dad, huh?” Cherry glanced around the bar. It was a tiny place, a kitschy road-house style bar just off the Redlands freeway in California. There was a group of five grizzled, hard-looking men laughing uproariously in a corner booth, and a handful of lone, mostly silent middle-aged men scattered around the other side of the bar, including Benny, who was now quite deliberately looking away from me. An older couple shared one of the few small tables. I got the feeling everyone was a local apart from me. Cherry would know. “Is your dad around?”
“He’s gone to visit an old girlfriend not far from here.”
“Leaving you here alone?”
“I made him drop me off. I didn’t want to cramp his style.” I curled my lip up slightly.
Cherry huffed out a breath, understanding dawning in her eyes. She thought she knew why I wanted to get drunk. “Oh, I got you.” She was still a little worried about me, though. “So, are you staying here in Calimesa tonight?” She started stacking glasses vigorously. The frantic movement drew my eye, and before I knew it, I was looking right at her again. Watching her thoughts.
She was thinking of me as if I was an innocent little baby deer that wandered into a den of wolves.
It was kinda ironic—the men in the corner were all werewolves, but Cherry didn’t know that. She was human; she still had the veil over her eyes so she couldn’t See, but she knew danger when she smelled it. She thought I had the words easy victim - come get me! tattooed on my forehead.
It wasn’t the werewolves that she was worried about, though. The rugged group of men in the corner booth were keeping to themselves; none of them had even glanced my way. So far, anyway. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if one of them approached me.
Maybe I’d pick a fight. Hopefully, one of them would kill me.
But Cherry wasn’t worried about them. She was thinking about an older, dark-haired man with a distinctive square jaw, a man who would hurt me if he got hold of me. A man who knew exactly how to torture a woman until she begged for death. A man who knew how not to leave any marks for the cops to see. An image of him ripping into my body while I screamed floated through her aura like some sort of horrific snuff movie.
I tore my eyes away from her, feeling sick. “We’ve got a hotel in the valley,” I replied, trying not to slur my words. “Dad’ll come pick me up in an hour or so, and we’ll head back there. Once he’s done with his girlfriend.” I wrinkled my nose.
Cherry nodded, obviously relieved. My drunk ass would be someone else’s problem very soon. “Oh, okay. Great.”
Dad wasn’t picking up anyone. I murdered him two weeks ago.
He’d been first on my list.
Chapter Two
