“Okay, good enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”
As they headed around the corner, she looked at him and said, “You’re just … so visible.”
“Well, I can hardly shrink, but, if you want me to disappear, just say so.”
“Well, that’s impossible,” she joked.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “You might be surprised.”
“Well, that’s true,” she said. “Maybe you should make yourself a little bit invisible.”
“Done,” he said, and she kept walking, soon realizing that she’d lost him. She didn’t want to turn around and check where he was, blowing his cover, but she knew that he was out there, watching her back, and that was worth everything. Just the thought of him sticking around for a while and helping her out of this spot was worth so much too. He was a good man. She smiled, pulled her phone from her pocket as she walked, and sent him a message. You’re a good man.
Does that mean we’re still on for dinner?
We were never off.
Good. But that means we need a date afterward too.
A date? Why?
Sure, because this dinner is no longer a date.
Dinner was never a date! Her phone rang immediately, and she answered it, saying, “You’re hilarious.”
“Good,” he said, “just keep your wits about you.”
“My wits are about me,” she said, looking around.
“So, it’s a date then?” he asked.
“What’s a date?” she replied.
“Us.”
“The ribs?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “That’s not a date. That’s just dinner. We’ve already been through this.”
She groaned and said, “Fine, a date.”
“In bed?”
“Hell,” she said, “at this rate, maybe so.”
He let out a soft whoop on the phone.
She laughed and said, “No, I don’t go to bed on first dates.”
“But the ribs will be a date.”
“No,” she said, “the ribs aren’t a date. You just said so yourself.”
“Fine,” he said, “after the ribs.”
She groaned and said, “Enough.” She pocketed the phone and quietly walked up to the front of the shop, where three vehicles were parked outside, all in worse shape than any mechanics shop could possibly pull back together again. Good thing this wasn’t where her truck was being serviced.
As she walked up to the office door, she opened it enough to look inside. Nobody was in the office, which was nothing more than a small greasy little hole with blue shop towels on the counter and dirt all over the floor. Various cans of oil and other automotive fluids were stuck on a shelf, sitting beside a few other parts that looked like they’d been covered in dust and hadn’t been touched in many years.
With nobody here, she opened the back door and stepped forward into the garage, seeing if anybody was around. And again found nobody. She studied the area, not liking anything about this. But she was here, and that was what she needed to do. She called out, “Anybody here?”
No answer. She walked through the garage area. Of the four bays, two hoists were in use, a car up on one, a truck on another, but it was down. The others were empty. Tools were scattered about, as if people had been working; then suddenly nobody was working. She knew a large parking area in the back was full of vehicles, used more as a pick-and-pull junkyard area for parts and scrap.
That’s how the mechanics, another set of brothers, made their money as much as anything, and, so far, they’d kept it all reasonably clean and organized. And even though she’d been sheriff for a long time and knew they tended to waffle on the illegal side, they kept this operation on the right side of the law enough that she didn’t have too much trouble with them. Which is why she hadn’t considered them when this all went wrong—though now that she’d thought about it, they too were ripe for the picking.
As she walked through to the back door, she stopped at the exit and called out, “Anybody here?” And again was met with silence. With the back of her neck tingling, she stepped into the backyard toward the vehicles. As she gazed around, she slipped the back cover off her holster and walked forward ever-so-slowly.
“What’s the matter, Sheriff?” asked a man off to the side of her. “What are you doing here?”
She turned to see one of the brothers, Floyd, standing there, wiping his hands on a blue rag.
“I came to see if you’d had any visitors,” she said calmly. She looked him over, her gaze searching around the area.
“We always get visitors,” he said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Your friend was in town, working for me today.”
“Harry, yeah,” he said. “We would stop by but decided against it.”
“Well, that’s a lie,” she said calmly. “My cameras caught sight of you there.” He stopped and glared at her, and she realized she was right. “You disconnected the electronics but not quite fast enough. We saw your vehicle pull up to the side.” He started to swear. “So now that you’re already ID’d as part of that mess,” she said, “do you want to change your story?”
“No. Hell no,” he said. “I got nothing to say.”
“Good,” she said. “Then you won’t mind coming down to the station and having a little talk with me there then, will you?”
“I ain’t going no place,” he said. “I don’t care what kind of a sheriff you think you are. You’re just a pair of tits and a piece of ass,” he said, “and you ain’t got no jurisdiction over me.”
“Says you,” she replied, with a smile. “In fact, I have as much law as anybody.”
“Nah,” he said, “not for long anyway. There’s new law in town.”
“Oh, you mean Ronnie and Johnny? The ones you broke out of jail? You realize you committed a felony by killing Henry at the same time?”
He stopped, looked at her, and said, “Henry?”
“Or did you not realize that you hit him hard enough that he’s dead?”
He shook his head. “No, no, no, no, no. Henry was alive when
