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"Yeah, I saw."
Both men sat in the grove of trees, thirty yards back from the road, too far to hear what Gabe and the Widow Snopes had been discussing, but close enough to have caught a few glimpses of what they were doing when they'd stepped in front of the headlights.
After Russ had set fire to the cross, he and Donny had hidden to watch it burn while they drank their second six-pack of the night. They'd just about been ready to leave when Gabe's truck had pulled up, and they'd had the satisfaction of seeing how upset Rachel Snopes had been.
"She's a slut," Russ said. "I knew she was a slut first time I met her."
He didn't know any such thing. In his days working security at the Temple, he'd mainly seen her with her kid. She'd always been nice to him, and he'd even liked her. But that was before it had all fallen apart.
At the beginning, everything had been great for Russ. The man who was in charge of security at the Temple had hired Russ to be his second-in-command. As Russ had guarded G. Dwayne and supervised building security, he'd felt as if he were finally doing something important, and the people of Salvation had stopped looking at him as if he was a loser.
But when G. Dwayne had fallen, he'd taken Russ down with him. Nobody would hire him because he'd been associated with the Temple, but Russ had family here, and he couldn't move away, so he was stuck. Eventually, his wife kicked him out—these days she barely even let him see his kid—and his life had turned to shit.
"Boy, I guess we showed her," Donny said.
Donny Bragelman was the only friend Russ had left, and he was a bigger loser than Russ. Donny had a habit of laughing at the wrong times and grabbing his crotch in public, but he had a regular job at the Amoco, and Russ could borrow money from him. He could also talk Donny into just about anything, including helping him with the cross tonight.
Russ wanted Rachel Snopes out of here, and he hoped the sight of that burned cross would scare her away. She'd been a big part of what had happened at the Temple, and he couldn't stand having her come back as if she hadn't done anything wrong, not after what had happened to Russ. The fact that Gabe Bonner had given her Russ's old job had been the final straw. For the last week, he hadn't been able to think of anything else.
Russ had gone to work for Gabe right after he'd bought the drive-in. It had been a shit job, and Gabe had been a prick to work for. He'd fired him after the first couple of weeks just because he'd been late a few times. Bastard.
"We sure showed her," Donny repeated, scratching his crotch. "Do you think that slut'll go away now that she knows nobody wants her here?"
"If she doesn't," Russ said, "she'll be sorry."
Three days later as Rachel applied a coat of royal-blue rust-resistant paint to the jungle gym, her gaze kept straying to the roof of the snack shop where Gabe was putting down tar paper. He'd taken off his shirt and wrapped a red bandanna around his forehead. His chest glistened with sweat and sun.
Her mouth felt dry as she observed the strong muscles of his back and arms: well-defined, tightly roped. She wanted to run her hands over them, sweat and all.
Maybe it was the food. Since she'd started eating well, her body had come alive again. That must be why she couldn't seem to get enough of looking at him. It was the food.
She dipped her brush in the paint can and decided to stop lying to herself. That dark embrace they'd shared in the road had changed something between them. Now the air was charged with sexual awareness whenever they were together. They did their best to avoid each other, but the awareness was still there.
She was hot, and she unfastened another button at the neck of her dark-green housedress. Kristy had found several boxes of old-fashioned housedresses stuck away in the sewing-room closet and passed them over to Rachel, who had gratefully accepted them. Accessorized with her clunky black oxfords, they looked almost trendy, and she was delighted to replenish her meager wardrobe without spending a penny. Still, she couldn't help wondering what Annie Glide would think about the infamous Widow Snopes wearing her old dresses.
Right now, though, the dress felt as if it were suffocating her. Or maybe it was the sight of Gabe's muscles bunching as he moved a heavy roll of tar paper. He paused from his work, and her hands stilled on the paintbrush. She watched as he rubbed the back of his hand across his chest and looked over at her. He was too far away for her to see those eyes, but she felt as if they were stroking her body like silver smoke.
Her skin prickled. Both of them looked away.
With grim determination, she returned her attention to her work. For the rest of the afternoon, she forced herself to think less about lust and more about how she was going to get back into her old house and find the chest.
Rachel's hand stilled on the wooden spoon she'd been using to stir the pot of homemade marinara for tonight's dinner. She'd known it would be bad, but not this bad.
"They were killed instantly." Kristy looked up from the lettuce she'd been breaking into a pale-pink Tupperware bowl. "It was terrible."
Rachel's vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. No wonder Gabe was bitter.
"Jamie was only five," K
risty said unsteadily. "He was a perfect miniature of Gabe; the two of them were inseparable. And Cherry was wonderful. Gabe hasn't been the same since."
For a moment it was hard for Rachel to breathe. She couldn't imagine the kind of pain Gabe was enduring, and she ached with pity for him. At the same time, some deep instinct warned her that pity had become his enemy.
"Anybody home?"
At the sound of Ethan Bonner's voice, Kristy dropped the paring knife. She drew in her breath, fumbled for the knife, and dropped it again.
Rachel was so shaken by what she had just learned that it took her a moment to register how strangely Kristy was behaving. Ethan was her boss, and she saw him nearly every day. Why was she so rattled?
