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“That’s right, I totally forget you were a jailbird,” Becca said, playfully bumping Kate’s bum with her own as she walked past her to leave the bathroom, singing, “Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do…” as she went.
“Skank,” she heard her sister say behind her, and that only made her smile more as she walked her way out of the restaurant.
The cool night air eased across her as she stepped out onto the street, making her way back to the car. She almost lost her balance as her heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk, but she wobbled her way out of it expertly and kept going.
Look at that, she thought, happy over the small victory of not taking a spill in public,I am getting my groove back.
She was halfway back to the car when she saw it. Some jerk, sitting in his beat up muscle car parked along the street, smoking a cigarette. Becca watched him as he dumped out a large plastic cup of soda and then dropped the cup into the gutter, leaving it there.
Ugh, she thought.So gross. No class at all.
She shouldn’t have said anything, but it just grated on her. Everyone in this town was so nice, and seemed to go out of their way to keep the place decent, that to watch this one guy dump his trash onto the street out of laziness seemed like it demanded a response.
The lawyer in her took note of his license plate number, almost as a reflex. She couldn’t help saying something as she drew next to the dirtbag’s car.
“Littering,” she said as she walked past his open window.
“What?” he said.
Becca stopped and turned toward him. “There’s public trash cans everywhere on this street. Do you see any garbage lying around… well, other than yours? That’s because everybody else around here has the decency to know that when you have some trash, you drop it in the trash can, and that keeps the town nice for everyone.”
The man sneered at her from the depths of his car. It was dark out, and while there were plenty of street lights, the angle of where he sat in the car kept his face in the shadows.
“I mean, would it kill you to get out of your car and walk five steps to the trash can right there, instead of just dumping your trash on the street like a loser?” she said.
“Bitch,” the man said, gesturing with his cigarette, “you best get to steppin’ before I get out of this car.”
Becca rolled her eyes, emboldened by the fact that there were plenty of other people on the street. “Get to steppin’? Did we suddenly get teleported into a Nineties hip hop video?”
“I’m about to teleport my boot into your ass,” the man said, leaning his head out of the window toward her.
He was young, early twenties, with a chin-strap beard and bad skin. Big, baggy white T shirt and lots of tattoos, including one on his forearm that read Back Da Fuk Up.
Classy, Becca thought.Tell the world to fuck off, but phonetically and misspelled.
She opened her mouth to retort and then she saw it. Another tattoo. On his neck. Very distinctive, very familiar.
It was a Grim Reaper, with the words “Death Comes To All” in a circle around it.
Everything in her brain stopped. The breath caught in her throat. Gone was her witty retort, gone was her righteous indignation over his littering, gone was any trace of any thought other than panic.
She’d seen that tattoo before. Months ago, when Kate was having her issues with Wyatt’s ex-wife, three members of a murderous street gang called Death’s Head had cornered her and her sister in an alley.
To call it a terrifying experience would be an understatement. Death’s Head had been armed with guns and knives and were there to kill the both of them, and it was only the timely arrival of Wyatt and Griz that had prevented their gory deaths.
And they all had that tattoo. That same tattoo of a Grim Reaper, on the same place on their necks.
The sight of the tattoo brought Becca instantly back to that dark alley and the terror she’d felt. The glint of the knives in the dark. The evil grin on the man telling them how he was going to gut them and leave them to die. The shocking boom of gunfire.
The man in the car was saying something, but Becca heard nothing, lost to the memory of that nightmare experience. She’d never been so scared, before or since, and now, one of those gang members was right here in front of her, close enough to touch.
“Bitch, you hear me?” he said to her.
“What?” Becca mumbled, backing up a step awkwardly. “I… um, I’m just… going to… go get steppin’.”
“Fucking right,” the Death’s Head member said, staring her down through his car window as she stumbled down the street away from him.
Becca went as fast as her heels would allow, and then pulled those off so she could go faster, her heart racing the entire time. God. Hadn’t Griz and Wyatt said something about Death’s Head coming into their territory?
