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Chapter Thirteen
Shee couldn’t remember many car rides as awkward as this one.
Once, a boy tried to kiss her under the guise of teaching her how to drive. Surprised, she’d jerked the wheel to the left and popped both tires against a curb.
Awkward.
But the current trip hit a ten on the awkward scale. She couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if she were bound and gagged in the trunk with the dead guy.
Angelina flanked her in the back seat of an aging black Cadillac sedan, simmering somewhere between sobbing and livid. She tapped her bright orange fingernails against the bangle dangling from her left wrist in a strange rhythmic pattern Shee suspected to be some profanity-laden Morse code.
The earbud-clad young woman riding shotgun wore attitude like a cloak of invisibility. Though, she didn’t try to hide the scathing looks periodically thrown in Shee’s direction.
What did I do to her?
A gibberish-speaking giant sat behind the wheel, seemingly unfazed by the cauldron of bubbling emotion in which they all boiled.
The dead guy in the trunk didn’t have much to add.
Shee stretched her back and tried to identify the tinny tune leaking from Croix’s earbuds. She didn’t know it. It sounded like someone beating a guitar with a chicken.
“Well. This is fun,” she said.
No one responded.
She looked at her watch, eager for their task to be over so she could see Mick.
“Why is he in a coma?”
Angelina didn’t look at her. “Later.”
“Why can’t you tell me—”
“You made him wait. You can wait.”
“Oh, that’s mature.”
“Right. I’m the immature one.” Angelina had eyes on her now. She hissed the words.
Shee opened her mouth and then shut it, noticing Croix squinting at her.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, tired of been made to feel like a criminal.
Croix rolled her eyes and faced forward.
Shee turned to the window and watched the trees go by.
Kids. Can’t live with them, can’t sell them to the circus.
They drove for a long, silent time down an increasingly rural road until the headlights shone on a cemetery’s wrought-iron gates. A man wearing dirt-streaked cargo pants and a faded Lynard Skynard t-shirt appeared from the darkness. He spat as Angelina rolled down her window and then reloaded his sinuses with bubbling nasal friction.
Shee grimaced. “Charon could use a tissue.”
Angelina dangled herself from the window like bait and Charon shuffled over, intrigued.
“Hey, A,” he said, running the back of his hand across his nose.
Shee looked away.
Oh come on with the snot.
Angelina reached out a hand and presented him with a wad of money produced from thin air.
“Thanks, Biff, we appreciate it,” she purred.
Shee cocked an eyebrow. “Biff? I did not see that coming.”
Biff took the money and nodded. “Just be quick.”
Angelina patted Shee’s knee but directed her next comment to Biff. “Don’t worry. We brought our best digger.”
Biff leaned down to bless Shee with an unsettling stare before ambling to the gates to enable their passage to the underworld. Bracco eased the Cadillac through, rolling down a stone path deep into the cemetery. As he parked at an angle, marble headstones shone beneath his headlights, glowing like stars against the thick, dark grass.
Bracco popped the trunk as the rest of them clambered out of the car.
Croix plucked the buds from her ears and jerked two shovels from the trunk, handing one to Bracco and holding the other aloft in front of Shee. “We only brought two shovels. You can take first shift.”
Shee placed a hand on her own chest. “No please, you first. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Croix frowned, but kept the shovel and followed Bracco to a nearby grave.
Angelina sat on a white stone bench tucked beneath a gumbo limbo tree, known as a tourist tree for the way its bark peels like a sunburned snowbird.
“I suppose I should officially introduce you all,” said Angelina, sounding as enthusiastic as a coroner. “Bracco, Croix, this is Mick’s daughter, Shee.”
Bracco looked over his shoulder. “Oughta plaster hearts.”
Shee’s brow knit. “What?”
“Aphasia,” Angelina reminded her.
Oh. Right.
Shee nodded to him. “Nice to meet you, too.”
Croix either nodded or stretched her neck in Shee’s general direction. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she muttered. Before Shee could comment, the girl replaced her earbuds, slipped on leather gloves and started digging.
Shee sat beside Angelina on the bench and bumped her with her shoulder. “They’ll warm up to me.”
Angelina grunted.
Time to get to business.
Shee took a deep breath. “Can you tell me now? When did he come back to the hotel?”
“About two years ago. He spent six months waiting for you, and then found himself a new mission.”
A tsunami of guilt crashed against Shee’s heart, so real it actually hurt.
Move on. Nothing to see here.
“New mission?”
“Uh huh. Helping people.”
Shee scoffed. “He always did that.”
“Not like this. He came up with a grand plan to make up for his whole life.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know. Save a life for every life he took in the service, blah blah blah.”
“I see you were moved.”
Angelina shrugged one shoulder. “I wanted him to retire. To run the hotel like a normal person. Instead, he sat still for about five minutes before some guy came looking for his lost son.”
“He thought he was in the hotel?”
“No, he wanted to hire Mick. Lord knows how he knew Mick the Savior was open for business.”
“Did Dad find the kid?”
“He did. Kid was fine. Just irresponsible and cruel. Sixteen years old.” Angelina chuckled. “He tried to fight your father.”
“I’m sure that went over well.”
“Oh yeah. Mick delivered him to his father in a golf travel bag.”
They laughed. Croix paused to glace at them, her scowl deepening.
“And then
