“Food always makes me feel better,” I said, eating a chunk of egg off the tip of my finger. “Thanks, Cas.”
“No problem. I know how the Big Dog gets. No time to savor the good things in life. Don’t worry—I got your back.”
I smiled. “What was Sam like in the lab? Really like?”
Cas popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth and leapt from the bench. “Sammy is hard to explain.” He sauntered over to a maple tree that stood between a pair of benches. He started climbing as he went on. “Let me put it this way: Sammy has the intensity of a Rottweiler and the stubbornness of a mule.” He grunted as he hoisted himself up into the heart of the tree. “Expects everyone to do exactly what he wants, when he wants. Except…” He trailed off, his silence piquing my interest more than his words had.
I went to the base of the tree. “Except what?”
“Well…” Cas propped himself in a fork in the branches and looked down. “Are you pumping me for gossip? Because that’s what it feels like.”
I warmed. “What? No!”
“Come on, Anna, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I could barely make out his facial features in the darkness, but I didn’t have to in order to hear the sly smirk in his voice.
If Cas knew about my feelings for Sam, did Sam know? Of course he did. I wasn’t exactly secretive about the whole thing. But hearing it out loud changed everything. I suddenly felt nauseous.
I put my face in my hands. “Oh my God.”
The tree branches rustled. Cas dropped to the ground next to me and patted my head. “It’s all right. Go ahead and admit you’re in love with me, too. Let’s get everything off our chests while we’re at it.”
I swatted at him but he dodged away. “You’re not making me feel better.”
“Who said I was trying to make you feel better? Fact: Sam’s got swagger. Fact: I’m straight. Fact: Even though I’m straight, I sorta love the dude. So I can’t say I blame you.”
A sliver of a smile touched the corners of my mouth. “All right. Maybe I feel a little better.”
He hooked an arm around my neck and messed up my hair. “You’re so cute when you’re upset.” He let me go after I shrieked.
“God. You’re so annoying!” I said between bursts of laughter.
“But charming.” He fell into step with me. “Let it be known that if you’re ever in need of a good make-out session, I happen to be available Tuesday nights.”
“Only Tuesdays?”
“Maybe Thursdays, too.”
“Yeah, all right,” I said with a fair amount of sarcasm. “I’ll let you know.”
“Come on.” He ushered me in the direction of the vehicle. “We should probably get back.”
We crossed the street. “One more thing?” I asked.
“Yes?”
My insides knotted just thinking about asking Cas what I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t help it. He knew Sam better than Nick and Trev. They were closer. So if anyone knew the answer to my question, Cas would.
“Does Sam… ah… does he—” The words didn’t want to come out.
“Does he like you?” Cas filled in.
I cringed, completely mortified. “Um… yes?”
In the glow of a streetlight, Cas’s expression blanked, and he cocked his head to the side. “Do you really want to know the answer to that? At a time like this?”
Did I? When we reached the end of this, whatever it was, I couldn’t stay with Sam. He’d move on to his new life, wherever that might be, and I’d return to mine. I couldn’t have him in the way I wanted. And that killed me.
“In the immortal words of the Magic 8 Ball,” Cas continued, the wind flattening his blond hair to his forehead, “ ‘Ask again later.’ ”
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. If Sam had no feelings for me, I didn’t want to know.
20
“I GOT A NAME,” NICK SAID WHEN WE met up. “And an address.”
“Where?” In the darkness, Sam looked impatient, as if being in one spot for too long had already gotten to him.
Nick sunk his hands into the pockets of his new black fleece, which he’d either bought or stolen at the mall. It wasn’t what I would have pictured him in, but then again, I didn’t think he cared what he wore as long as it functioned properly. He had specific tastes when it came to specific things, but clothing apparently wasn’t one of them.
“Ten miles east of town on a dirt road: 2757 Ax Lane,” Nick said.
Cas snorted. “Well, that’s pleasant.”
Sam shifted, the glow from the street lamp highlighting the planes of his face. “What’s the contact’s name?”
“Tommy. That’s all I got. No last name.”
“Tommy sounds like the name of an illegal arms dealer to me,” Trev said.
“Sure does.” Cas nodded.
My teeth chattered as we slid back into the Jeep. I held my hands in front of the vent after Sam started the engine, wishing I had grabbed a pair of gloves at the mall. I would have loved to have the scarf, too. It might have been in my possession for all of ten minutes, but in that amount of time I’d come to think of it as an extension of my mother. Like owning that scarf would somehow bring me closer to her.
But maybe I wouldn’t even need it. Maybe the miles were bringing me closer to her.
I grabbed her journal and flipped to the very back, to her recipe for garlic mashed potatoes. In red pen, she’d drawn a heart at the top of the page and scribbled a message below. Arthur’s favorite, it read. I couldn’t help but analyze everything now, looking for hidden meanings.
What I really wanted to find was an answer. Why she left. If she thought about me.
If she is even alive, I reminded myself.
With Nick navigating, Sam drove. The vehicle jolted as we exited the highway and turned onto Ax Lane, the pavement giving way to dirt. A truck passed us on the opposite side, shooting gravel into the driver’s door.
“Damn rednecks,” Nick grunted in the back.
“Keep that kind of thing to yourself when we get there, all right?” Sam said and Nick went quiet.
Number 2757 was a mobile home, the white sheeting on the outside sliding off in places like loose window shutters. Several cars and trucks filled the front yard. Farther back, taking up most of the lot, was a garage twice the size of the trailer. Smoke curled from a stack jutting out through the roof.
Sam parked alongside a black truck.
“We all going in?” Trev asked, eyeing me. I appreciated his concern, but I was not staying in the vehicle. Not in the middle of nowhere.
“Since we have no idea what we’re dealing with,” Sam answered, “it’s probably best if we stick together.”
The trailer in front was dark, but music pumped from the garage, so we went straight there. Sam knocked on the metal access door. I counted the seconds it took for someone to answer, hoping that the classic rock blasting inside had drowned out the sound of the knock. I started to fidget.
Sam was reaching to knock again when the door opened. A man in his late forties peered out at us, scraggly gray hair hanging in a ponytail over one shoulder. His bloodshot eyes lingered far too long on me. I should have felt uncomfortable under his stare. Old Me would have. New Me just felt angry. I straightened my shoulders and held my chin high.
Look confident. That’s what my instructor used to say. Predators prey on the weak.
“Yeah?” the guy spit out. “What can I do for ya?”
“Are you Tommy?” Sam asked.
The man’s brows knitted together in suspicion. “Maybe. Why?”
“We need guns.”
He snickered. “Kid, I ain’t got no guns. Now run home to Mommy.” The man, obviously Tommy, started to shut the door, but Sam blocked it with his foot.
I braced myself for a fight.
“What the hell do you—”
“See that Jeep out there?” Sam said.
Tommy craned his neck. “Yeah, what about it?”
“It’s stolen.” Sam pulled the cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Not only do I think you’re an illegal arms dealer, I think you’re also a drug dealer. Is that weed I smell?” Sam gave the air a sniff. “What else will the police find if I call to report a sighting of that stolen vehicle?”
Tommy jabbed his finger in Sam’s direction. “Now listen here, you little punk—”
“We just want a few guns.”
By the look of his trailer, Tommy needed money, and he certainly didn’t want the police prowling around this place. He readjusted his hold on the door. “Well, you got any cash?”
Sam pulled a clip of money from his pocket and held it up.
Tommy snorted. “Fine. This better not bite me in the ass.”
Permitted entrance, we filed in. I counted a total of ten people inside, including Tommy. A few guys stood around a computer watching Internet videos. Another group played poker at a foldout table. Two of them were women, somewhere in their thirties. The one on the left hunched forward, allowing her cl**vage to spill out of her low-cut shirt. The other woman flung a hank of kinky brown hair off her shoulder, catching a few wisps of it in the big hoop earrings dangling from her ears.
They studied the boys—my boys—then settled their attention on me.
“Tommy!” one of the guys at the computer said. “Hurry up. You got to watch this.”
“Later,” Tommy said.
The guy turned around. “Oh,” he said when he saw us. “Didn’t know we had company. You need me?”
“Yeah, get your pansy ass over here.”
Tommy’s friend joined us as we approached a closed door in the back. His eyes landed on me. “So, what’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“Name’s Pitch. And it’s a fine pleasure to meet you.”
Pitch was younger than Tommy by about ten years. He shared Tommy’s long, thin nose and pronounced chin, but his hair was some shade between brown and red, cropped in a short shag around his face.
In another life, Pitch might have been cute, but in this garage, he gave off a sordid vibe that made my insides scuttle. With Sam’s earlier suggestion running through my head, I stayed close to him and pretended to be flattered by Pitch’s attention, wanting no hard feelings or trouble.
Tommy unlocked the closed door with a ring of keys attached to his belt loop and pushed through, flicking on an overhead light. The room looked like a library, which seemed so out of place here that it was obvious it was a cover. Three bookcases lined the walls. Car manuals took up most of the shelf space.
Tommy shoved aside a manual on Ford Mustangs and revealed a silver lock embedded in the back of the bookcase. He pulled out the same ring of keys, undid the lock, and swung the bookcase out.
Behind it was an entire rack of weapons. Handguns, shotguns, knives, brass knuckles.
“So what can I do you boys for?” Tommy said, revealing the weapons like a street dealer holding out his suit coat, showing off a load of watches pinned to the inside.
“Browning Hi Power?” Sam said.
Tommy pulled a sleek black pistol from two pegs on the pegboard and handed it to Sam. “How’s that?”
Sam nodded at a little folding table open against the far wall. “May I?”
Tommy shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Sam removed the clip and set it on the table. Next he pulled back and locked the slide, checked for bullets. He wiggled something and a piece popped out.
Even though he’d told me he remembered using guns, it still amazed me to watch him dismantle this one like it was something he could do in his sleep.
He pulled out a spring, then the barrel, and inspected the pieces with the keen eye of someone who knew exactly what to look for.
“No problem. I know how the Big Dog gets. No time to savor the good things in life. Don’t worry—I got your back.”
I smiled. “What was Sam like in the lab? Really like?”
Cas popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth and leapt from the bench. “Sammy is hard to explain.” He sauntered over to a maple tree that stood between a pair of benches. He started climbing as he went on. “Let me put it this way: Sammy has the intensity of a Rottweiler and the stubbornness of a mule.” He grunted as he hoisted himself up into the heart of the tree. “Expects everyone to do exactly what he wants, when he wants. Except…” He trailed off, his silence piquing my interest more than his words had.
I went to the base of the tree. “Except what?”
“Well…” Cas propped himself in a fork in the branches and looked down. “Are you pumping me for gossip? Because that’s what it feels like.”
I warmed. “What? No!”
“Come on, Anna, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I could barely make out his facial features in the darkness, but I didn’t have to in order to hear the sly smirk in his voice.
If Cas knew about my feelings for Sam, did Sam know? Of course he did. I wasn’t exactly secretive about the whole thing. But hearing it out loud changed everything. I suddenly felt nauseous.
I put my face in my hands. “Oh my God.”
The tree branches rustled. Cas dropped to the ground next to me and patted my head. “It’s all right. Go ahead and admit you’re in love with me, too. Let’s get everything off our chests while we’re at it.”
I swatted at him but he dodged away. “You’re not making me feel better.”
“Who said I was trying to make you feel better? Fact: Sam’s got swagger. Fact: I’m straight. Fact: Even though I’m straight, I sorta love the dude. So I can’t say I blame you.”
A sliver of a smile touched the corners of my mouth. “All right. Maybe I feel a little better.”
He hooked an arm around my neck and messed up my hair. “You’re so cute when you’re upset.” He let me go after I shrieked.
“God. You’re so annoying!” I said between bursts of laughter.
“But charming.” He fell into step with me. “Let it be known that if you’re ever in need of a good make-out session, I happen to be available Tuesday nights.”
“Only Tuesdays?”
“Maybe Thursdays, too.”
“Yeah, all right,” I said with a fair amount of sarcasm. “I’ll let you know.”
“Come on.” He ushered me in the direction of the vehicle. “We should probably get back.”
We crossed the street. “One more thing?” I asked.
“Yes?”
My insides knotted just thinking about asking Cas what I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t help it. He knew Sam better than Nick and Trev. They were closer. So if anyone knew the answer to my question, Cas would.
“Does Sam… ah… does he—” The words didn’t want to come out.
“Does he like you?” Cas filled in.
I cringed, completely mortified. “Um… yes?”
In the glow of a streetlight, Cas’s expression blanked, and he cocked his head to the side. “Do you really want to know the answer to that? At a time like this?”
Did I? When we reached the end of this, whatever it was, I couldn’t stay with Sam. He’d move on to his new life, wherever that might be, and I’d return to mine. I couldn’t have him in the way I wanted. And that killed me.
“In the immortal words of the Magic 8 Ball,” Cas continued, the wind flattening his blond hair to his forehead, “ ‘Ask again later.’ ”
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. If Sam had no feelings for me, I didn’t want to know.
20
“I GOT A NAME,” NICK SAID WHEN WE met up. “And an address.”
“Where?” In the darkness, Sam looked impatient, as if being in one spot for too long had already gotten to him.
Nick sunk his hands into the pockets of his new black fleece, which he’d either bought or stolen at the mall. It wasn’t what I would have pictured him in, but then again, I didn’t think he cared what he wore as long as it functioned properly. He had specific tastes when it came to specific things, but clothing apparently wasn’t one of them.
“Ten miles east of town on a dirt road: 2757 Ax Lane,” Nick said.
Cas snorted. “Well, that’s pleasant.”
Sam shifted, the glow from the street lamp highlighting the planes of his face. “What’s the contact’s name?”
“Tommy. That’s all I got. No last name.”
“Tommy sounds like the name of an illegal arms dealer to me,” Trev said.
“Sure does.” Cas nodded.
My teeth chattered as we slid back into the Jeep. I held my hands in front of the vent after Sam started the engine, wishing I had grabbed a pair of gloves at the mall. I would have loved to have the scarf, too. It might have been in my possession for all of ten minutes, but in that amount of time I’d come to think of it as an extension of my mother. Like owning that scarf would somehow bring me closer to her.
But maybe I wouldn’t even need it. Maybe the miles were bringing me closer to her.
I grabbed her journal and flipped to the very back, to her recipe for garlic mashed potatoes. In red pen, she’d drawn a heart at the top of the page and scribbled a message below. Arthur’s favorite, it read. I couldn’t help but analyze everything now, looking for hidden meanings.
What I really wanted to find was an answer. Why she left. If she thought about me.
If she is even alive, I reminded myself.
With Nick navigating, Sam drove. The vehicle jolted as we exited the highway and turned onto Ax Lane, the pavement giving way to dirt. A truck passed us on the opposite side, shooting gravel into the driver’s door.
“Damn rednecks,” Nick grunted in the back.
“Keep that kind of thing to yourself when we get there, all right?” Sam said and Nick went quiet.
Number 2757 was a mobile home, the white sheeting on the outside sliding off in places like loose window shutters. Several cars and trucks filled the front yard. Farther back, taking up most of the lot, was a garage twice the size of the trailer. Smoke curled from a stack jutting out through the roof.
Sam parked alongside a black truck.
“We all going in?” Trev asked, eyeing me. I appreciated his concern, but I was not staying in the vehicle. Not in the middle of nowhere.
“Since we have no idea what we’re dealing with,” Sam answered, “it’s probably best if we stick together.”
The trailer in front was dark, but music pumped from the garage, so we went straight there. Sam knocked on the metal access door. I counted the seconds it took for someone to answer, hoping that the classic rock blasting inside had drowned out the sound of the knock. I started to fidget.
Sam was reaching to knock again when the door opened. A man in his late forties peered out at us, scraggly gray hair hanging in a ponytail over one shoulder. His bloodshot eyes lingered far too long on me. I should have felt uncomfortable under his stare. Old Me would have. New Me just felt angry. I straightened my shoulders and held my chin high.
Look confident. That’s what my instructor used to say. Predators prey on the weak.
“Yeah?” the guy spit out. “What can I do for ya?”
“Are you Tommy?” Sam asked.
The man’s brows knitted together in suspicion. “Maybe. Why?”
“We need guns.”
He snickered. “Kid, I ain’t got no guns. Now run home to Mommy.” The man, obviously Tommy, started to shut the door, but Sam blocked it with his foot.
I braced myself for a fight.
“What the hell do you—”
“See that Jeep out there?” Sam said.
Tommy craned his neck. “Yeah, what about it?”
“It’s stolen.” Sam pulled the cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Not only do I think you’re an illegal arms dealer, I think you’re also a drug dealer. Is that weed I smell?” Sam gave the air a sniff. “What else will the police find if I call to report a sighting of that stolen vehicle?”
Tommy jabbed his finger in Sam’s direction. “Now listen here, you little punk—”
“We just want a few guns.”
By the look of his trailer, Tommy needed money, and he certainly didn’t want the police prowling around this place. He readjusted his hold on the door. “Well, you got any cash?”
Sam pulled a clip of money from his pocket and held it up.
Tommy snorted. “Fine. This better not bite me in the ass.”
Permitted entrance, we filed in. I counted a total of ten people inside, including Tommy. A few guys stood around a computer watching Internet videos. Another group played poker at a foldout table. Two of them were women, somewhere in their thirties. The one on the left hunched forward, allowing her cl**vage to spill out of her low-cut shirt. The other woman flung a hank of kinky brown hair off her shoulder, catching a few wisps of it in the big hoop earrings dangling from her ears.
They studied the boys—my boys—then settled their attention on me.
“Tommy!” one of the guys at the computer said. “Hurry up. You got to watch this.”
“Later,” Tommy said.
The guy turned around. “Oh,” he said when he saw us. “Didn’t know we had company. You need me?”
“Yeah, get your pansy ass over here.”
Tommy’s friend joined us as we approached a closed door in the back. His eyes landed on me. “So, what’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“Name’s Pitch. And it’s a fine pleasure to meet you.”
Pitch was younger than Tommy by about ten years. He shared Tommy’s long, thin nose and pronounced chin, but his hair was some shade between brown and red, cropped in a short shag around his face.
In another life, Pitch might have been cute, but in this garage, he gave off a sordid vibe that made my insides scuttle. With Sam’s earlier suggestion running through my head, I stayed close to him and pretended to be flattered by Pitch’s attention, wanting no hard feelings or trouble.
Tommy unlocked the closed door with a ring of keys attached to his belt loop and pushed through, flicking on an overhead light. The room looked like a library, which seemed so out of place here that it was obvious it was a cover. Three bookcases lined the walls. Car manuals took up most of the shelf space.
Tommy shoved aside a manual on Ford Mustangs and revealed a silver lock embedded in the back of the bookcase. He pulled out the same ring of keys, undid the lock, and swung the bookcase out.
Behind it was an entire rack of weapons. Handguns, shotguns, knives, brass knuckles.
“So what can I do you boys for?” Tommy said, revealing the weapons like a street dealer holding out his suit coat, showing off a load of watches pinned to the inside.
“Browning Hi Power?” Sam said.
Tommy pulled a sleek black pistol from two pegs on the pegboard and handed it to Sam. “How’s that?”
Sam nodded at a little folding table open against the far wall. “May I?”
Tommy shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Sam removed the clip and set it on the table. Next he pulled back and locked the slide, checked for bullets. He wiggled something and a piece popped out.
Even though he’d told me he remembered using guns, it still amazed me to watch him dismantle this one like it was something he could do in his sleep.
He pulled out a spring, then the barrel, and inspected the pieces with the keen eye of someone who knew exactly what to look for.
