Shepherd’s indigestion came back with nauseating force. He covered his mouth and looked down. A bald white man, wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a leather vest, lay spread-eagled on the tile.
His head was no longer as round as it should be.
Something sour hit the back of his tongue, and Shepherd gulped it down. “He’s OK, though—right?”
“Yeah,” Ginny said. “Yeah. We should, um”—she stood up, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in her dress as she did—“we should go, though. Like, right now.”
She hopped over the meth maker and grabbed Shepherd by the shoulder. “Take the bat.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Shepherd hissed.
“And what?” Ginny was walking with both of her hands over her heart. “Confess to murdering a random dude for no good reason?”
“No good reason?” Shepherd grabbed her elbow and forced her to spin around, worried she was holding herself oddly due to injury. But there was nothing noticeably wrong with her. “Ginny, he held you captive!”
She waved a hand. “I’m not saying he was agoodrandom dude. But he was unarmed, and you had a bat, and we would’ve outnumbered him, and so, yes, I would tell the police that I was in fear for my life even if I wasn’t. You understand?”
Sometimes talking to Ginny felt like trying to solve a word problem in fifth-grade math class. “What?”
“Just don’t touch anything,” she ordered. “And follow me. We have to get out of here before his boss arrives.”
“Cardello?”
She shook her head, scurrying down the hall. “Definitely not Cardello. Charlie is a more modern organized-crime guy—the kind women write romance novels about. He wouldn’t mix with a white supremacist, meth-making, biker gang.”
“Oh, well.Goodfor him! How great for the mob boss, leaning more modern, changing with the times!”
Ginny spun around at the kitchen threshold. Her fists landed on her hips. “Why are you snapping at me?”
“Are you joking?” He laughed. It felt like his head was on loose, as though his neck bolts had been undone. Like he was multiple people all mashed together and all trying to flee in opposite directions at once. “Are you joking, Ginny? Look where we are!” Shepherd used the bat to point at the meth lab behind her.
She cleared her throat and did not look where they were. “It’s not likeI’mthe one making meth.”
“You brought me here!” He laughed again. Was he floating? It felt like his feet were no longer on the ground. “This was supposed to be brunch!” Shepherd smacked himself in the face. His nose stung. “I was supposed to be eating overpriced brunch on the beach with my landlord and a scary lady who hurt my feelings! Butno, I just bashed a man in the head with my bat. He could wake up at any minute and kill us!”
“Oh, Shepherd.” She smoothed two fingers over his sore nose. Her perfume filled his nostrils, a soft vanilla scent that mixed with the coconut of her shampoo, and the pads of her fingers were soft and warm. It was almost enough to forget the horrors he’d suffered already today.
Almost.
“He’s not gonna wake up, honey.”
Shepherd glared, yanked away from her touch. “He might!”
Lots of people survived head injuries. In fact, on every TV show he’d ever watched, someone would bash somebody elsein the back of the head as a convenient scene change. He stomped past, the intermittent dripping and the constant hiss making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“I am stopping for Alka-Seltzer before we go to your dad’s house, and you are paying for it!”
“Fine,” Ginny snapped, “you big baby.”
“Excuse me?” He spun around, bat loose in his hands. He had more to say. Lots more. A big baby? He’d gone into the room she was being held hostage in and saved her freaking life like a man. And she had the nerve to insult him? He was going to say all that, sprinkle it with some expletives, but his palms were damp, and the bat was wet with some stuff he’d rather not think about.
The bat, quite of its own volition, simply flew out of Shepherd’s hands.
The plastic jugs gurgled and spat as they fell over. The quiet, constant hiss was no longer quiet. Shepherd acted without thinking—something he wished he could do more often, his damn brain never shutting off its narration except for sleep and sex—and ran towards Ginny at full speed. He shoved her out the back door, practically carrying her under his arm as he high-tailed it out of the building.
He was vaguely aware that she was screaming curse words in his ear, but she was quickly drowned out by the explosion.
TWELVE
