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“There’s nothing in there,” he reminds me.
“Oh yeah. What’d you eat?”
“Peanut butter sandwich.”
“You can’t eat that every single day.”
“You keep saying that, and yet, here I am.” He gestures to himself like his continued aliveness means it can’t possibly be doing him harm.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I just thought someday you might aspire to have the muscle mass of, say, a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Strength is overrated,” Jude says. “I prefer to use my brain.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing all day? How come you’re filthy?”
God knows it’s not ‘cause he finished clearing out the library like I asked—I didn’t see any tattered books tossed on our trash heap.
“I’ve been in Ernie’s workshop.”
“Yikes.”
Jude’s eyes are wide and manic. “You wouldn’t believe the shit he’s got in there.”
“I was kind of thinking we should douse the whole place in lighter fluid and throw in a match. We don’t need the outbuildings to sell the house.”
“Don’t do that!” Jude cries. “The barn’s still good. I’ll clear it out.”
“You need to help me in the house. Did you even touch the library?”
“Come on,” he wheedles. “You could turn it into, like, a really bougie four-car garage.”
Thatwouldbe a good selling feature. Goddamnit.
“Alright,” I relent. “But you have to do the whole project yourself. I’m not helping until it’s empty.”
“You do what you’re good at, I’ll do what I’m good at.” He points between us, grinning.
Actually, this could be perfect. Jude is excellent at finding valuables in the houses we flip. He sells them on eBay and Craigslist and on strange little forums where he can offload hard-to-find items at inflated prices. Convincing him to put the cash in his college fund is a separate issue.
When Jude gets a bee in his bonnet, he’s surprisingly productive. I’m much better off giving him his project of choice than trying to make him do what I want. If he can get the whole workshop cleared out, that’s a hell of a lot better than burning down the barn. Which I’m pretty sure is illegal, not that it would stop us—but I’d like to keep our felonies to a minimum.
“Fantastic,” I say. “And I’ve got the electrician coming tomorrow.”
“Thank god. I’m so fucking tired of warm drinks.”
Tom Turner is the one and only electrician in Grimstone, so I hope he knows what he’s doing. And doesn’t charge too much. I doubt he accepts fence-fixing in payment—or semi-consensual kisses.
My face burns. Jude notices, and all of a sudden, his eyes are flicking everywhere, finding evidence.
“Whose pants are those?”
Fuck.
“Dane’s. And get your dirty mind out of the gutter. My shorts were covered in blood.”
“Whose blood?” Jude says, going still. Jude can’t stand gore of any kind. He’s practically vegetarian, and not only out of laziness.
“Mine,” I admit. “I cut my leg.”
