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“Curling,” he insisted, and when I burst out laughing, he added, “I can’t help it! It’s weirdly compelling. Those poor guys out there on the ice with their little brooms.”
“I have no problem with that,” I promised him. “Chunky or creamy?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Wow, I hope you’re talking about peanut butter.”
And so it continued for almost an hour, with Caleb attempting to ask me reciprocal questions. I dodged all but the most trivial, giving him bits and pieces of information that couldn’t come back to bite me. Bruce Willis. Florence and the Machine. Born in Kansas. (A lie.) Chicago Cubs fan. (Also a lie. Go, Cardinals.) Chunky over creamy. (True. It was the only way to keep my chunk-phobic father out of my Jiffy stash.) I avoided questions about schooling, employment, past relationships, even the places I’d traveled.
“I don’t have much time for vacations,” I told him.
“Not even when you were a kid?”
I shook my head. “My family didn’t travel much.” Another lie. My relatively well-off parents had taken me on wonderful trips to Disney, the Grand Canyon, Mexico. We’d even spent a Christmas in New York City to satisfy my mother’s fascination with oversized Christmas trees. But I hadn’t talked about my parents in years. And it hurt too much to talk about it casually.
“Still not much of a sharer, huh, Rabbit?” he asked, when I’d sidestepped a question about my birthday. “See? Cagey.”
I had opened my mouth to make some excuse, when an indignant squeal sounded from the backseat. Saved by the bell . . . or the tied-up felon, as it were. Muffled by the gag, Jerry’s pleas for us to let him go plucked at my heartstrings, and I rolled around in my head the many alternatives to giving him to Caleb’s clients. Until Jerry called me a not-very-nice four-letter word beginning with C, which came across loud and clear even with the gag. And while my sympathies cooled considerably, Caleb got angry enough that he pulled over, got a black cotton bag from his serial-killer tool kit, and pulled it over Jerry’s head.
“You are really good at that,” I told him. “Truly, disturbingly efficient.”
“I briefly considered a career as a preschool teacher,” he said, chuckling when my eyes went wide.
“Try not to be too angry with him,” I told Caleb, patting his arm gently. The gesture seemed to settle him, relaxing his shoulders and smoothing the firm set of his jaw. “I would probably call me names, too, if I was in the same situation.”
“I wouldn’t let you get into this sort of situation,” he retorted. And when I gave him an amused look, he added grudgingly, “I would try.”
I snorted. He really seemed to think he could control the universe, but I found it reassuring that he didn’t seem to think he could control me. As much as he might want to lead me in one direction or the other, he seemed to have accepted that it was futile. I liked that feeling, knowing that I’d shown some backbone in this bizarre situation, that I hadn’t backslid to the faulty instincts that got Tina Campbell into trouble.
I decided to enjoy this small victory and keep quiet for the rest of the drive to the airstrip. Caleb had turned up a Tim McGraw CD to cover Jerry’s muffled curses anyway, so further conversation wasn’t necessary. I would have to list Caleb’s taste in music as the chief of his personality flaws. I could forgive the overprotectiveness and the questionable job, but I drew the line at boot-scootin’ music.
As our headlights flashed over the faded red Quonset-style hangar, Caleb motioned for me to slide low in my seat and slipped a baseball cap over my head, covering my face. He unbuckled and turned to me as Jerry noticed we had come to a stop and began thrashing violently.
“I know you don’t like being told, but trust me when I say the less these people see of you, the better. Just act like you’re taking a nap or something.”
I nodded, pulling my collapsible weapon of choice from my bag, but I kept it low and out of sight of the trio of burly men standing near the faded red metal building marked “Bird in the Bush Piloting Service.” Considering the sheer size of Caleb’s clients and the flash of what looked remarkably like a Russian mob tattoo on the tallest one’s hand, I decided that just this once, I wouldn’t be contrary. I slouched down and yawned widely, pulling the cap lower over my eyes. I would keep an ear out for any sign of trouble, but a “waking nap” didn’t sound too bad, either.
Jerry was deeply unhappy to be unloaded from the truck and marched across the frosted grass, if his colorful, anatomically unlikely insults were any indication. Even after his use of the unforgivable C-word, his whimpers and whining still struck a guilty chord within me. How could Caleb just go through the transaction as if he was dropping off a bag of laundry? And he was delivering it to people who would beat the absolute crap out of that laundry—and that was being optimistic.
While I kept low and still in the truck, I found myself getting more agitated by the minute. What if that was me? What if some bounty hunter came and packed me up like so much luggage and dropped me at some nondescript location to return me to Glenn? Would Caleb help me? Or leave me to the bounty hunter out of professional courtesy? What would become of me if the price of selling me out went higher than the price of keeping me at Caleb’s side?
I was pondering these cheerful issues when Caleb yanked the truck door open, beaming from ear to ear, and clapped an envelope into my hand. I stared down at the plain white paper, marveling at its weight. How much had he been paid for Jerry’s head? How much would Glenn be willing to pay for information about me? The thought made my stomach pitch, but Caleb seemed oblivious to my queasy distress.
“I don’t know about you, but I feel like eating a steak the size of a placemat,” he crowed, pulling out of the parking lot with all due haste. “And you, you are getting twenty percent. As much as I hate to admit it, we never would have caught up to him without your boob-showing offer.”
I frowned at that and didn’t reply, which caught his attention.
“What’s wrong?”
“How many of these jobs do you do a month?” I asked hesitantly.
“Depends on how big the payday is. Some catches are worth more than others. There are some months I only have to do one job. Why do you have that look on your face?” he asked.
Without realizing it, I’d been giving him a pretty healthy dose of stink-eye. I sniffed and schooled my features into a more neutral expression. I hated the timidity in my voice as I said, “I don’t feel good about what we just did.”
I expected him to get defensive or angry. In fact, his lack of reaction was unnerving.
“Other than his penchant for gender-offensive four-letter words, Jerry didn’t seem like such a bad guy. And he sounded so scared. I hate to think what those goons are going to do to him.”
“Honestly? They’re probably going to do something permanent to his kneecaps. But he’ll be able to walk away from it.” When he saw the doubtful expression on my face, he amended, “Limp away. He’ll be able to limp away. The people I look for, they’re not squeaky-clean, innocent souls. There’s a reason they end up on my radar. It’s not because they jaywalk or take more than one penny from that dish by the gas-station cash register. They’ve done something serious, and that leads me right to them.”
