Page 41 of The Worst Possible Plan

A beat passed.

“And stop thinking about his ass in those jeans.”

Yeah, that was not going to happen.

10

ERIC

My SUV rolled slowly down Cedar Lane before turning into a long gravel driveway flanked by towering pine trees. At the very end sat a weathered two-story farmhouse with a detached garage big enough to hold three pickup trucks and half the town’s bad decisions.

Tonight it held four.

I pulled in beside Mike’s F-150 and killed the engine.

The garage door stood open despite the cool evening air, warm yellow light spilling across the driveway. The muted sound of a Bruins game drifted outside, followed by laughter and somebody insisting the Bruins hadn’t had a decent power play in years.

Some things never changed.

Every Thursday night, we ended up here. Didn’t matter if we’d had a quiet week or one that kept us working until two in the morning. Didn’t matter if someone had gotten married, divorced, promoted, or had retired.

Thursday was poker.

The rules were simple. Bring cash. Bring beer if you drank it. Don’t whine when you lost.

I climbed out of the SUV, grabbed the six-pack I’d promised Mike, and headed toward the side entrance of the garage. The smell hit me before I even reached the door. Pizza. Motor oil. Fresh-cut lumber. And whatever air freshener Mike’s wife insisted on hanging in here every few months to convince herself the place didn’t permanently smell like forty years of men hanging out.

It never worked.

I opened the side door without knocking. “You boys behaving yourselves?”

Four heads turned.

“There goes the neighborhood,” Dave said, tossing another poker chip into the pot. The retired firefighter still looked like he could carry someone out of a burning building if he had to. He was broad through the shoulders with cropped silver hair, permanent gray stubble, and the comfortable stomach of a man who’d traded a six-pack for beer without giving up an ounce of strength.

Mike grinned from behind his cards. “Took you long enough, Sheriff.” At six-foot-four, the owner of the garage had to angle his knees sideways beneath the poker table, his grease-stained hands making even a deck of cards look undersized. His thick dark beard had picked up more gray over the last few years, and laugh lines fanned from the corners of his eyes whenever he smiled, which was often.

I set the six-pack on the old workbench, stained with decades of oil, paint, and whatever Dave insisted was character. “Brought a peace offering.”

Mike reached over and snagged one before I’d even taken off my jacket. “Accepted.”

The garage looked exactly the way it always did—half workshop, half man cave. Pegboards lined one wall with enough tools to rebuild a small country while an ancient beer fridge hummed. Somebody had left the big garage door open to let the cool evening air drift through, carrying the smell of fresh rain and cut grass inside. The muted hockey game flickered on an old television bolted high in one corner, though nobody appeared to be watching it.

Dylan pointed toward the empty chair. At twenty-eight, he was the youngest guy at the table by a good decade. His faded Maplewood Falls Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt still had sawdust on it, and a fresh scrape crossed one knuckle. He looked like he’d come straight from a job site. “Buy-in’s fifty.”

“You boys trying to rob me?”

Dave snorted. “You make sheriff money.”

“I make government money.”

“Worse,” said Curt, nodding. “I get it.” The principal of Maplewood Falls High pushed his reading glasses onto the top of his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. His plaid shirt was as neatly pressed as ever, despite the streak of pizza grease on one cuff. Twenty years of dealing with teenagers had given him the patience of a saint.

I pulled out my wallet and tossed my cash into the middle before settling into the chair.

Mike shuffled with a practiced ease, likely born from cheating since high school. Or at least he wanted everyone to think he was. He never looked at the cards while he shuffled, carrying on conversations the entire time like his hands had long ago decided they no longer required supervision. “I don’t cheat,” he said without looking up.

I watched him. “I didn’t say anything.”