“Damn.” Arlo writhed around in the chair, hands clamped down and white-knuckled on the arms. His face had gone a sickly color. “The fucking lake. The thingy one, like a dam, up by the mines. Cave Lock Dam. My da used to take him fishing up there. Stupid wee bastard was too dumb to wonder why they never caught any fish. TJ goes there sometimes, hides out in the shack.”
His words had slurred together at the end, spat out as quickly as Arlo could get them off his tongue. Sweat dripped off his face as his foot scorched.
Clay supposed that wassomething.Not much, but enough to at least make it look like Clay had put the effort in. He caught Harry’s eye and gave him the nod to let Arlo go. The minute he did, Arlo slid onto the ground, with a crack as his tailbone hit the tiles, and he yanked his foot out of the oven
He tried to pull his charred shoe off with both hands but snatched them away as the hot rubber blistered his fingertips. Arlo whimpered at the pain and tried to scrape the overheated trainer off against the floor
“Hey,” Clay said. He snapped his fingers to get Arlo to look up at him. “Wash your fucking feet, Arlo. It smells like shit in here.”
He stepped over Arlo’s legs and headed for the back door. Harry waited long enough to give Arlo a kick in the ribs.
“And next time, keep your nails to yourself,” Harry told him.
§
“Look at it,” Harry grumbled as he stuck his arm out. Bloody scores ran across the back of his hand. “What am I going to tell Lanie about this?”
They were parked in the car just down the road from Arlo’s house, tucked into a dirt road pull-out under the trees. Crickets chirped in the undergrowth, and a particularly huge one had dropped with athwaponto the windshield a minute ago. Clay watched it idly out of the corner of his eye as he hung up on the man he’d sent up the mountain to look for TJ.
He didn’t like bugs. He hadn’t liked them before he went on tour in Afghanistan, liked them a whole lot less afterward.
“Cat?” Clay suggested as he put his phone away and got a smoke out. He flicked the flint on his lighter. It sparked twice before it caught. He lit the cigarette and sat back, exhaling blue-gray smoke into the cab. “Raccoon?”
The acrid taste of smoke on the back of his tongue, the heat of it in his chest, grounded him in the static of his thoughts. It always took him a while to get his brain back on the tracks after turning it back on. It puked up a dozen different ideas at once, like a toddler who’d had too much ice cream.
What the fuck was TJ thinking, killing the goddamn Catfish Mafia’s man in the fucking bathroom? Do it outside.
At least the cleaner was pretty, with his lemon eyes and green-smoke smell…
…what the hell? No.
Shouldn’t have called him in, whatever color his eyes are. It’d be better to come clean and grovel, but fucking Ezra has fucking pride.
Green eyes. He had green eyes, and he smelled of lemon bleach. That makes more sense.
Was it too late to pick up some BBQ ribs from the Chili’s on the interstate?
He ignored the scattershot explosion of thoughts and took another drag on his cigarette. Next to him, Harry pointedly turned the car back on so he could lower the window more.
“If a fucking cricket gets in,” Clay said, “I’m going to make you eat it.”
Harry put the window up about half an inch. Still plenty of room for a cricket, but that was on his head.
“What am I supposed to do?” Harry asked. “Tell Lanie I tried to catch her a raccoon that was a heavy smoker?”
The corner of Clay’s mouth curled up. “Some girls like that sort of thing.”
“She’s not a girl. She’s a woman,” Harry said dryly. “And since when do you know what women like?”
Clay flicked ash out the window. He’d thought about tapping it onto the floor, but he liked Harry. The big man was good at his job and could hold an actual conversation… and hopefully, once the thrill of getting back together with his ex wore off, he’d discover a topic other than Lanie again.
“She was a raccoon at that Halloween party Ezra’s mom threw,” Clay said. He held up his free hand and counted his points off on his fingers. “She works at a wildlife rehab place. Her phone case has a raccoon on it. Unless she’s got a tattoo that says ‘Secretly I hate raccoons’ on her vulva, I don’t see how fucking her would enlighten me any about what she likes.”
Harry grunted and put the window down again. “Don’t talk about fucking my wife.”
“Ex-wife.”
“Fuck you.”
