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“So you think this is about you, and Van thinks this is about him, and you both think some designer-wearing ski douche is the one trying to kill you.” Max had a beer in front of him, but he’d foregone the hot wings he sometimes tried to sneak in. He was in town picking up a few things he’d ordered and was planning on heading back home for dinner.
But not until he had the latest gossip.
That wasn’t really fair. In Bliss, gossip was also a lot like caring. So far he’d been sent numerous well wishes and several casseroles because he’d been told nothing helped a person recuperate from a murder attempt like a warm homemade casserole. Given that the women and man who’d made them had actually survived attempts on their lives, he was going to give it a shot. If Hope Glen’s cheesy chicken and ranch casserole alleviated some of his anxiety, he would happily eat it.
“Given that I’m the one this guy seems to be coming after, I’m pretty sure it’s me.” He’d thought almost nothing else this afternoon and it pissed him off because he should have been thinking about how hot Elisa looked on a spanking bench, but no some jerk face had to nearly kill him and Mel.
Max’s head swiveled as he looked over at Van and then back at him. “I’m going to be honest. You two look a little alike. Some people still aren’t sure which is which. Not me, of course. I am excellent at remembering names and faces, but I’m pretty sure there are some people around town who are confused. Maybe this guy is, too. It’s unprofessional of him.”
Yes, that was the unprofessional part. “I have no idea why anyone would hire an assassin to come after either one of us. It makes zero sense.”
“That’s because you’ve only got one piece of the puzzle,” Max advised. “I’m sure it makes total sense when you look at it from the outside.”
“Like the snow circles.” Max was kind of on to something. “Mel had Cassidy send out a drone so he could get the full picture from overhead and figure out where the aliens were meeting.”
“Exactly.” Max pointed his way like he’d made an excellent argument instead of talking about aliens that didn’t exist except in an old man’s mind.
Or did they? He wasn’t sure it mattered beyond the fact that it mattered to Mel. Mel was happy with his life. Who cared that he believed in numerous alien species?
They would care in Dallas. In Dallas, he would probably be hospitalized and put on meds so he could be normal. Some people needed that. Mel did not.
In Dallas, he and Elisa and Van would be out of the norm, and the gossip wouldn’t be as kind as here in Bliss. Why couldn’t he get Van to see that?
“There’s something we’re missing,” Max continued. “I’ve been around this a lot. Are you sure you’ve never belonged to a cult?”
“Nope.”
“Multilevel marketing scam?”
“Do you see me as an effective salesperson? I don’t even talk much to the people I do like.”
Max nodded but kept moving on. “Biker gang or criminal gang of any kind?”
“I had two friends in high school who regularly stole food from the cafeteria, but I’m almost certain the lunch lady let us get away with that. There’s no way she didn’t lock that door.” It was the extent of his criminal past.
“Dude, that’s so fucking sad,” Max said with a shake of his head. “You’ve never been married or had a relationship with a woman who might want to mind erase you and turn you into a super soldier?”
“Now you’re just making shit up.” Sometimes Max went off on tangents.
“You talk to that Jax fellow River Lee married. Has that dude got some stories. Like he ends up winning shittiest thing to happen to a guy every time we play,” Max admitted. “Me getting shot and dragged by my horse should really rank higher. I swear I would win in another town. But I have to compete with Russian mobsters and guys who got tortured by MCs, and Henry alone has me beat by a mile now that he talks about his time in the CIA. What was your life like before you came here? I know you and Van moved around a lot and he got into some trouble, but you rarely talk about yourself.”
Hale was planning on being Bliss’s boringest citizen. “My mom was a single mom. Never knew my dad. She told me he was some married guy she had an affair with. He sent her money for a while, but I never met the man. When I was seven, she decided she’d had enough and took me to her sister’s and left me there. I never saw her again. I shifted through a couple of relatives until I ended up in foster care. It wasn’t great, but I don’t think I made any enemies who would come after me years later. I aged out at eighteen, lived in a camper for a couple of months, and then I met Van and we hit the road.”
