“Who's she answer to?”
“Well, That's the thing." He crosses his arms. "Between me flying her in and my brother working that place from the inside, one of us should've turned up a name by now. We've got nothing. And people like that always answer to somebody."
I nod. “Tell Prez when he's back.”
“Tell him yourself, you're his favorite since you fixed that bike of his.” He grins, then remembers he's aggrieved. “Also the pool's void, thanks to you and Lila kissing in private. Striker wants to donate it to the cat shelter.”
“Go ahead.”
He straps his helmet on. “Oh, and Savage says yousmiledtwice yesterday. The brothers are worried, Wrench. There's talk of an intervention."
In my chest pocket, folded in thirds, is a print out. Striker’s fiancée Bethany is a computer whiz. She turned it around in a day, the information hand-delivered by Striker with nothing but a nod.
Shawn Jebson. Aggravated assault; put a man through a plate-glass window over a card game. A protection order out of another county, another woman, from before Lila ever met him. A parole sheet with a list of things he can't do and a state line he shouldn't have crossed. Lila wasn't the first.
The phone chimes at half past school run.
I built a fence around that school on the tracker app, a circle on a map, and the alert says the dot marking Shawn’s location just crossed it.
I'm on the bike before the stand stops rocking, my dog jumping into the sidecar beside me.
Four minutes across town with my heart running fast, and I come up Gray Street from the south as the gates open and the sidewalk floods with kids. Lila's at the fence in her diner uniform, scanning for Rosie, and half a block past her, rolling slowly on the far side with its windows up, is the dark red car.
I take the middle of the street and stop the bike in it.
He rolls closer. Slow. I don't move and I don't reach for anything; I sit my bike in the road in front of forty kids and their parents, letting him take a long look at what's between himand that fence. I get my first look at Shawn Jebson: sandy hair, mirrored glasses, a thick jaw working tirelessly at a piece of gum.
The car slides past without stopping, Waffles growling low as it passes. Taillights, corner, gone. The dot on my phone drifts back toward the highway, casual as you please.
Lila hasn't moved from the fence, her hand at her throat. When Rosie comes flying out of the gate waving a piece of paper, she catches her, smiles, says all the right mama things, but her eyes never stop working the street.
We walk home. I keep myself on the outside, curb side, and Waffles takes point without being told, and Rosie holds up her test to me: nine out of ten, a red star.
“Which one d'you miss?”
“Necessary. It has a sneaky ‘s’.”
“It does,” I agree. “Never trusted it.”
At the yellow house, Rosie and the dog crash in front of the television to watch cartoons. Lila makes it as far as the porch rail. Then her hands start, finally, the shake she's owed all afternoon, and she grips the rail to hide it and stares hard at the apple tree.
“He was at her school, Wrench.”
“He was near it. He wants to scare you first.” I come up beside her. “He wants you scared and packing, because you scared makes him think he has power over you.”
“It's working.”
“No, it isn't.” I turn her by the shoulders, tipping her chin up. “You're still here. You’re not going anywhere.”
She grabs my cut in both fists and hauls me down, and I let her. This kiss has nothing gentle about it. It's hard mouths and fast breathing, and my hand flat on the small of her back, my rock hard cock grinding into her. All that fear burns off her into me and turns into desire, and when we break apart she's steadier but I'm not.
“Let him watch. He needs to figure out I’m looking out for you now. That's the part he hasn't figured out yet, and God help him when he does.”
She laughs, shakily, one hand still holding my cut like the porch might tilt. Then she shakes her head and steps back.
“I need to get dinner on,” she says.
“Okay.”
