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“We don’t need money,” Bastian snaps. A flash of something crosses his features and he schools them. “We have plenty of money. I thought this bike shop was your dream.”
Dominic grips the neck of his beer so tight I worry he might snap it off. “This wasn’t my dream. You know what my dream was.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Bastian waves his hand. “We’re running the bike shop. Don’t worry about the money.”
“You know the benefits won’t last forever,” Dominic argues. “We need a plan.”
“Guys, can we just decide if we’re okay with the logo?” I point to the screen. “I gotta get it to the sign-maker guy today.”
“It’s fine with me,” Bastian shrugs. “Dom?”
Before Dominic can respond, Beau slips in through the back, carrying a huge bag of candy and humming to himself. He grins when he spots us and comes up, dropping into the seat across from me in the booth.
“Where’d you get that, squirt?” Bastian asks.
“Got info for you,” Beau says, ignoring the question. Knowing Beau, he’d probably conned it out of some poor innocent sap.
“Yeah?” Bastian asks, reaching for his wallet. “What have you got for me?”
“A lady was nosing around today, asking questions,” Beau tells us. “She says she’s doing research.”
“Yeah, I heard about that from Hutch,” Dominic says with a chuckle, taking another swallow of his beer. “Says she approached him outside of the Quik-Mart earlier.”
“What did she want?” I ask. “Did she say what kind of research she was doing?”
“Yeah,” Beau says, popping a gummy worm into his mouth. “Urban … re-still-ents.”
“Urban resilience?” I ask, furrowing my brow. “Wasn’t that the stuff …”
Bastian shoots me a look and I stop talking. He heads back over to the pool table. “Did you help her out?”
“After she bought me Takis,” Beau grins, his missing front teeth on display.
Dominic gives him a fist bump. “Good boy.”
“She was pretty,” Beau adds. “She has long red hair and she’s big and soft like my mom.” I chuckle at his description. “And she told me she was working for this guy. Dr. Thorn. No, wait, Dr. Thornton.”
The room goes quiet. The only noise is the soft whirr of the fan blades from above. My shoulders tense and I grip the table under my hands.
Glancing over at Dominic, I notice he looks pale like he’s just seen a ghost. On the other hand, when I risk a look at Bastian, his blue eyes have darkened, gaze hardening.
“I’ll get rid of her,” he promises. “Don’t worry about it.”
He tosses his stick on the table, but Dominic seems to come back to himself because he reaches out and pulls Bastian back.
“You can’t do that,” I say, half out of my seat. “Just because she’s working with … with him doesn’t mean …”
“I don’t care. She can fuck right off for all I care. Let me go run her off, dammit,” Bastian says, jerking his arm out of Dominic’s grip.
“You’re acting like a crazy person,” Dominic protests. “Calm the fuck down, dude. We don’t know why she’s here, maybe it’s innocent.”
“Did she say anything else?” I ask Beau, hoping that she dropped more info.
He shakes his head and eats another gummy candy. “No, but I get money if I do a longer interview with her. I told her no one was gonna help her if you guys said no.”
“Good,” Dominic says. “She ought to know that no one does shit around here unless we let them.”
“I think we should just tell her to get lost.” Bastian curls a lip. “She doesn’t belong here. She’s an outsider. We don’t want outsiders around here, do we?”
