Dylan clammed up, refusing to be manipulated. Unlike Travis Sanchez, he was nobody’s stooge. “We didn’t see Yesenia Montes,” he said finally, “and we didn’t see any lions. If you want to find out what Angel was doing that night, you’ll have to ask her.”
“We’ll do that,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”
Dylan stood up. “I can go?”
Luke leaned back in his chair. “Sure.”
“Should I send in Chad?”
Luke nodded reluctantly, remembering the way the kid had spoken to Shay. Times like this, he wished he could play bad cop. Luke doubted he would get any new information out of Chad, and he’d rather staple the mouthy little bastard’s lips together than hear him talk.
15
After school, Dylan borrowed Shay’s car and headed out to the construction site.
To his surprise, she hadn’t freaked out about his new job. She’d just gotten really quiet and looked kind of sad. “What are you going to do with the money?”
Buy drugs, he’d wanted to retort. “Save up for my own car,” he said instead. “Yours sucks.”
Her face took on a pinched look. She had dark smudges under her eyes and he knew she hadn’t slept last night. Well, neither had he. “You’re still planning on going to UCLA?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course. You think I’d give up a choice scholarship to dig ditches?”
She stared at him as if he were a complete stranger, and she couldn’t possibly predict what he would do next. “Dinner’s at seven.”
He took off, eager to escape her measured glances and long-suffering sighs. She was in another one of her weird moods, and he couldn’t really blame her. Living in Tenaja Falls wasn’t easy for a woman like her, but she was too stubborn to leave.
Sometimes he thought she cared more about this goddamned town than she cared about him.
People here liked to gossip, and there was always speculation about her love life. She was criticized for her affair with Jesse Ryan, envied for being young and pretty and unmarried. Her tough attitude and casual style didn’t help matters. Once, he’d heard Chad’s mom say it wasn’t proper for her to go braless when there was a teenage boy in the house.
As if he were checking her out or something.
Scowling, he turned into the dirt lot just inside the front gate. Unlike yesterday, today the site was bustling with human activity. A newly poured flat of cement, probably for an outbuilding or security office, stretched across the lot. It covered a large area, but was nowhere near the size needed as a foundation for the casino.
They wouldn’t be ready to lay down the main slab for a while.
Dylan felt a flutter of nerves. After a sleepless night, a shitty day at school, and a miserable run at basketball practice, what he really wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Because he couldn’t call in sick his first day on the job, he straightened his shoulders and tried to look tough as he approached a group of men standing near Bull Ryan.
Bull gave Dylan a brief glance, nodded toward a short, dark-skinned man beside him, and continued shooting the breeze with his work crew.
The short man greeted Dylan with a warm handshake. “My name is Pedro. You are my new slave, no?”
He mumbled an affirmative.
Pedro laughed and led him toward a series of shallow black washtubs full of dingy water and jagged tools. “You clean these,” he said, picking up a triangle-shaped piece of metal with a wooden handle. To demonstrate, he gave the tool a few quick swipes with a sponge and dropped it back into the water. “Don’t bang them together or scratch the surfaces. If you damage them, I will fire you.” He smiled, but it didn’t take the edge off his words.
Dylan gulped.
“Ah… one more thing.
Dylan looked at Pedro’s hands. They were cracked and dry, riddled with dozens of thin white scars. “Tools like these are used to smooth the surface of the concrete, and they are kept very sharp. Be careful.”
“Do I need gloves?”
Pedro laughed again. “They would only fill with water and slow you down.”
It took him an hour to get through the first tub. He didn’t cut himself, but it was a near thing. The sun was blazing down on the back of his neck, he was dying of thirst, and he felt like crap. This job was already totally fucked.
Pedro returned and inspected his work. “You are very thorough,” he said, nodding his approval. “But much too slow. Do the rest.”
Dylan stared at the other tubs in disbelief. It would take him forever to finish. Resigning himself to an afternoon of agony, he went on to the next set of tools, trying to work fast and keep all of his fingers attached. It wasn’t wise to let his mind wander, but he’d always had difficulty concentrating on mundane tasks. He liked to do math problems in his head when he was running for PE, and he often worked on rote memorization in the weight room.
After an arduous night and exhausting day, his brain was mush. It traveled the path of least resistance, to an oft-visited, infinitely pleasurable place.
Angel Martinez, naked.
He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to dispel the image, sunspots swimming behind his lids. Damn her. She’d wanted him to kiss her last night. He knew by the way she’d kissed him back. Maybe he’d gone for it with a little too much gusto, but what the hell? All she had to do was say no.
Her schizo sexuality was driving him crazy.
It occurred to him that he should call and give her a heads-up about his interview with Luke Meza. The idea of talking to her again excited him more than it should have. He tried to stay focused on the work he was doing, but pictures from the past and sensations from last night melded together, swirling in his head. He wondered what it would be like to join her in the shower, to cup the soft weight of her breasts in his palms and feel them against his bare chest. To lift her up against the shower wall…
The tool he was cleaning slipped from his hands, gliding along the base of his thumb. Flaying his flesh.
“Motherfucker,” he swore, startled by the intense flash of pain. Blood dripped from the cut, splashing into the grimy pan of water below him. He looked around for help, and for something to staunch the flow of blood, but there was nothing, no one.
The site was deserted.
Cursing, he yanked his shirt over his head and wrapped it around his hand. When he didn’t see any red stains blossoming through the fabric, he figured the wound was minor. Still, there was no way he was putting his hand back into that grainy, disgusting water.
He wandered out to the parking lot and found Pedro with three other guys, hunkered down in the shade next to a heavy-duty work truck, drinking ice cold Coronas. Dylan’s mouth watered for the taste of beer, but nobody offered him one.
He cleared his dry throat. “Uh… I think I need a Band-Aid. I’m bleeding.”
They all laughed. One of the men said something in rapid-fire Spanish, too fast for Dylan to catch a single word, and they kept laughing.
“He said his wife keeps some tampons in his truck,” Pedro translated with a smile. “If you’re on your period.”
Dylan felt his face flame. “I cut myself,” he said through clenched teeth.
Pedro didn’t bother with a first aid kit. He glanced at the cut, which had already stopped bleeding, and wrapped Dylan’s hand with a piece of clean cloth and duct tape. “Have your mom put a real bandage on it when you get home,” he recommended.
Dylan felt the humiliating press of tears behind his eyes, and could only nod.
