I've been going slow. Learning her orders, what music she likes, her almost-cussing, just waiting for the day I trusted my mouth enough to say more than two words to her without proposing.
I'm a patient man. I once spent a winter finding a short in Savage's wiring harness he swore was haunted.
But my patience just died in that parking lot.
I whistle Waffles off the door. He comes to heel with his tongue out, back to being the town's most diligent bacon inspector, and we walk to the bike while I take out my phone.
Savage picks up on the fourth ring. There's crunching.
“You're eating my fucking food,” I say.
“I'm eating what was in your kitchen.” More crunching. “You’re out of mustard, by the way. I made myself a peanut butter, pickle, mayo, and mustard sandwich.” He burps.
“I have a job for you.”
The crunching stops. Savage has the manners of a man raised by coyotes, but he's known me since we prospected together, and he can read my tone. “Club thing?”
“Not yet.” I look back at the diner window once. She's laughing at one of the deputy's terrible jokes, and the laugh doesn't get anywhere near her eyes. “This is personal.”
“Wrench, you don't do personal. You have an oil-change schedule and that dog. Now I’m intrigued…”
“I’ll tell you tonight,” I growl, and hang up on whatever he says next. Waffles is already loaded in the sidecar.
I swing on and start the engine. Inside the diner, Lila glances up at the sound. Just for a second, through the glass, she’s looking straight at me. Even scared and hiding it, she's the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Up ahead there's a red car getting farther away every minute, heading up toward the highway, and I don't need to catch it. There's a little green dot riding along in his wheel well, and tonight, when he parks that loud paint job outside whatever shitty motel he's calling home, my phone will know before he's got his boots off.
Run all you want,pendejo. I already know where you sleep.
Chapter Three
LILA
I finish my last two tables early and tell Marvin I'm stepping out to walk Rosie back from school.
He doesn't ask why, today of all days, when she's walked those few streets with her friends since the first week of term. He looks at me over his glasses for a second, then waves a spatula. “Bring me back my best customer.”
As I walk outside, I'm still turning it over. Wrench told me to stay inside, and crossed that lot toward Shawn's car with his dog standing sentry at my door, and the whole diner watching. The car left and his bike growled up the street not long after, and he never came back in.
How much does he know? What did my face give away that made him act like that? And why, underneath all the fear, is there a warm glow for a man I barely know, because he put himself between me and danger without me even asking him to?
The afternoon is all blue sky and mountain air, the same pretty view that stopped my car here three months ago and made me think, well, maybe this is a good place. I wave at Viv sweeping her steps and smile at the deputy's wife coming out of the pharmacy, while my eyes sweep every parked car on bothsides of the street, cataloging colors and plates. The whole time my heart bangs away and my chest is tight.
No car.
The bell at the school lets out its flood of children, and there's mine, dark braids flying, a drawing held over her head in triumph.
“Mama! We did the solar system… I got Saturn!”
“Saturn's the best one, baby.”
“I know. Miss Patel said my rings were very realistic. Poor Maria got Uranus, and Benji wouldn’t stop teasing her.” She fits her hand into mine, sticky with marker, and starts telling me about the rest of her day, and I hold on to that little hand the whole walk back and try to pretend everything’s normal.
By the time the afternoon lull rolls around, she's at the counter with her coloring book, and I've talked my heartbeat down to normal. Almost. Every time the door chimes, it thuds in my chest. Near closing, it skips a beat for a low engine’s growl that my body knows before my brain does, and there he is.
Wrench parks his bike across the street in the exact spot where the mahogany car sat. Front toward the diner, claiming the spot back, and I stand there with a rag in my hand, unable to stop gawking at him.
He comes in with Waffles at his heel and takes his seat at the counter. No plate this time. Just coffee, and his eyes move over the room slowly, checking the door, the windows, the back exits, before they get to me.
