Chapter Ten
WRENCH
I make it two miles.
The damaged part of me wants to drive to the shop, pull an engine, and not talk to anybody for a year.
But the rational part of me is pattern matching. Lila built those sentences too well. Word by word, fitted to my softest part with no waste, and nobody aims that careful at something they don't care about. You don't torque a bolt you're planning to throw away.
And she did it the day after that note arrived.
I pull onto the shoulder. My phone buzzes: Taryn, a photo. Rosie at the kitchen table holding a hand of cards with a poker face that needs work, and lying across her feet, on duty, Waffles. I’d asked Hawk and Taryn to look after the dog tonight so I could make Lila dinner without him going crazy for the steak.
The dog is with the kid. Lila’s making sure Rosie’s safe, but where is she?
I turn the truck around, drive around to the corner of Strawberry Street, kill the lights, and call Savage.
He picks up half a ring in. “Brother, the Carlton room's cleared out. Wrappers and a burner box. He's fully dark…”
“Forget the Carlton. I figure he’s made some kind of threat and she's meeting him tonight… she lied to me to do it. Broke up with me.” Saying it out loud puts rocks in my throat. “I’m going to follow her.”
Savage's voice comes back, serious for once. “Tell me once you know where they are. I’m there.”
The loaner pulls out at last light. I follow well behind, her taillights threading the mountain road like a slow fuse. My hands are steady on the wheel and some part of me is quietly, bitterly proud of how brave she is. She’s walking herself into the fire so the rest of us won’t burn.
Never again, dulzura. This is the last night you try to pull this kind of stunt alone.
Once I see her car stop ahead, I park and take the last stretch on foot, off the shoulder, through the pines. From the treeline I've got forty feet of gravel, one guardrail and him. I text Savage the location and watch.
Shawn Jebson leans against his ugly red car like the parking lot owes him rent. Sandy hair combed for the occasion. She gets out, and a shit-eating grin spreads across his face. It’s the smile of a man whose favorite show came back on the air.
She leaves the headlights on. Smart. She stands there, brave and beautiful, her arms loose at her sides.
I can't hear them, so I walk closer. He pushes off the car, strolling the gravel path like he owns it. My girl holds her ground
Shawn's voice climbs a register. The charm's sliding off it now, the paint job going to reveal the rust underneath. He points at her. Points north, toward town, toward everything of hers. She says one word, and even from the trees, even with the wind going in the wrong direction, I know what it is.
No.
His hand snaps out and closes around her wrist.
I'm out of the trees before his fingers finish landing, gravel loud under my boots, forty feet closing fast. I made one vow to her, and I keep my promises.
Nobody touches her but me.
Chapter Eleven
LILA
“You're coming with me, Lilabelle.” Shawn says it the same as he used to say we're staying home tonight. The hand-on-the-back-of-your-neck gentle with an edge underneath. “We'll start over somewhere warm. You'll come around.”
My thumb found the record button before I got out of the car. In my pocket, my phone is filling itself with his words: admissions about the notes, the school, all of it offered up in that easy voice, because Shawn has always underestimated me.
“No,” I say.
The charm drops off his face like a discarded mask.
“See, that's new.” He comes closer, and the light from my headlights carves him up until his face looks like a skull. “That big mouth. You didn't have that before. Is this the biker's work?” His voice frays at the edges, the tone I used to organize whole days around. “You think I drove all this way to fucking hearno?”
