by Skye Darrel
I cross my arms. “What?”
Asher unsnaps his seatbelt, holds my hand in his. “Forget it, bad example. Point is, I’m not leaving her out there.”
“Mr. Wade, speaking as a former sixteen-year-old girl, I know more than you about the intricacies of warding off boys who get too touchy.” I snatch my hand away. “Cora is a smart girl, she wouldn’t date a douchebag. You’re being overprotective.”
Asher he leans in so close I feel his breaths on my mouth. “Better safe than sorry.”
We glare at each other, and for a strange moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. Then he pulls back and the driver’s door is already open.
I get out too, marching down the sidewalk.
“Where are you going?” he says.
“I’m gonna find them first so you don’t commit homicide!”
Asher smirks. “Thank you, doll face.”
We arrive at the ice cream parlor to find their table empty and the sundae melted. The night is too hot. Two slushies in weeping plastic cups sit untouched, straws stuck through the caps. One of the straws has a trace of lipstick.
Asher goes ballistic, walking around the other tables, startling everyone and asking if they saw where the teens went.
“You’re being ridiculous!” I say.
“You don’t know how wild Cora can be. Help me look.”
The man who’s running around like a berserk grizzly searching for a lost cub may have a point, but I’m sure he’s overreacting. I swear to God this is the last time I let Asher Wade take me out for a drink.
Not to mention I ruined Cora’s date.
I spot a thick wad of gum on the sidewalk three feet away under a streetlamp. “Hey Asher? You keep looking here. I, uh, I’m gonna see if they went up the block.”
“Roger that.”
I better find her before he goes all Army on us.
There’s an alley further down the street. When Asher’s not looking, I jog over and enter a lane between the ice cream parlor and a tool store. It’s dark. I make out the outline of a trash bin and not much else.
“Cora?” I hiss. “You in here?”
Nothing but crickets and fireflies blinking in the night. Sweat rolls down my sides. I hear whispers ahead.
My eye adjusting, I take another step.
A flash of blonde peeks out from behind the bin. “Natalie? Asher with you?”
Relief fills my chest. “Yeah, sorry. We were coming back from a da—a dinner. I spotted you and told him. My fault. Just come out and tell him you’re fine, I’m sure he’ll stop going crazy.”
Cora steps out with the boy, who looks more scared than she does. He’s skinny and pretty in a boy band surfer way. It’s a look I lost interest in during college, but I can see why Cora would like him.
“I’m Eli,” he mutters.
“How you doing, Eli?”
“Been better.”
“Tell me about it,” I say. “You know Asher Wade?”
The boy nods. “My dad knows him. He knows my dad.”
“Whew. So just come out—”
“You don’t understand,” Cora says. “It’s not a good knowing. His dad and Asher hate each other.”
I stare at them.
Cora tugs his hand. “Tell her. Nat’s cool.”
“My dad,” Eli says like he’s ashamed, “is Titus Quinton. He’s the head of security at Lucky Cherries, the casino? He works for Mr. Resnik. Asher has a bad feud with Mr. Resnik.”
I do not freaking believe this. “A feud about what?”
“Not sure,” Eli says shakily.
“Asher and Mr. Resnik used to be super close,” Cora says. “But they had a falling out two years ago after Asher’s sister died. No one knows what happened.” She shifts her feet. “Maybe my mom knows, but she won’t tell me a thing. Says I’m too young. But she tells me all the time to stay away from the casino and anyone who works there.”
Eli looks down.
“Asher had a sister?” I ask. Now that I think about it, the inside of Asher’s house may be super neat, but there are no photographs at all. I haven’t been in the basement or upstairs of course.
“Priscilla,” Cora says. “We called her Pris. They found her body in the river, that’s all I know. The news said she killed herself.”
Priscilla. That name Dale Buckley had mentioned. “Oh my God.”
“Nat, you can’t tell Ash I’m seeing Eli. If you think he’s crazy now you haven’t seen crazy. He’ll tell my mom too and she’ll ground me until the world ends.”
“I . . .” Whoever said ignorance is bliss had a good point. “I won’t,” I say eventually. “But this date is over. You’re coming with me. Asher’s throwing a fit out there.”
The teens hug, then kiss. I look away.
Cora sighs. “Let’s go then.”
We walk off leaving Eli all puppy-eyed. I don’t know what kind of boy he is or who his father is, but his affection for Cora seems genuine.
“How long have you two been dating?” I whisper.
“About a year. We met at homecoming. He’s really sweet, nothing like his dad.”
“His dad isn’t sweet?”
“No. That’s one guy I have no problem staying away from.”
When we get back to the ice cream parlor, Asher is inside speaking to a woman who looks like the manager. I hurry in with Cora and he turns around, first relieved, then angry.
“Don’t even start,” Cora tells him.
“Where’s the boy?” Asher asks me.
I feel Cora’s eyes on me. “Didn’t see him,” I say.
Asher stares at me for a while then nods.
He holds Cora’s shoulder. “Young lady, your mother would be very upset if she knew you weren’t in bed.”
“Dude, you are so not old enough to call me young lady.”
Asher sticks his chest out. “Let’s get you home. Stay there, don’t leave, and stay there every night, and I won’t tell your mother. Deal?”
Cora considers this thoughtfully. “Deal. Brought your Mustang?”
“Yeah.” He dangles his keys. “You can drive us back.”
Cora brightens and grabs the keys before she runs outside.
I’m about to follow, but Asher puts his arms around my waist, holding me inches from his face.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“You’re a terrible liar, but I trust your judgment.”
I gulp. “How nice. I trust Cora’s judgment.”
“You just met her yesterday.”
“You just met me yesterday,” I whisper.
He tucks a wisp of hair behind my ear. “True, but I trust you.”
“Can we just go?”
“Yeah.”
I’m blushing like crazy as we leave the parlor, with Asher holding the door for me.
“Who wants to ride shotgun?” Cora says from the driver’s seat of his Mustang.
Asher and I trade a glance before we both scoot into the backseat.
“Wow,” Cora says. “If I weren’t such a lady, I’d be singing a song about Natalie and Asher sitting under a tree.”
“Not if you want to live,” I say loudly.
“Ha! I’m a lady.”
“See what I have to deal with?” Asher says.
“Starting to.”
Cora tunes the radio to Taylor Swift. “Don’t go all auntie on me, Nat.”
For all her haughty bluster, Cora Newlin is the safest driver I’ve ever met. She stops at stop signs and checks both ways and treats yellow lights like reds. We stay under the speed limit. In fact she drives like an old lady. Thirty minutes later, we arrive at a small one-story house with a neat lawn, right at the edge of town.
“My stop,” Cora says as she gets out. “Thanks for the driving privileges, Ash.”
“Study hard and don’t do drugs,” he calls after her.
I think he’s joking with such a tired line, but Asher’s face is deadly serious in the night.
He drives me back t
o Goldilocks in silence, parking in the back lot, which has emptied except for my Beetle. We sit in his car for a while and he seems ready to say something but doesn’t.
I’m too tired to care what he thinks of me. It’s been a long, long day. I open the passenger door and put one leg out.
“Natalie.”
“Yes?”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll do the yard work,” he says. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Why the kindness?”
“I don’t like to see you in pain,” he says evenly.
My eyes turn to him as my face warms, and the bandage on my knee feels itchy. “You’re very direct, aren’t you?”
“Get out before I change my mind, doll face.”
“Whatever.”
When I reach the back door to Goldilocks, I look back to see Asher’s headlights cut through the night, the Mustang backing out of the lot before it roars away.
I must be losing my mind, but I’m starting to miss him, and I almost wish he was coming up to my room.
Almost.
6
Blackjack for Beginners
Asher
There are two reasons why I drive a black 1965 Ford Mustang.
First, the car belonged to my brother. Eugene’s one vice was antique muscle cars and he would’ve driven this Mustang to Afghanistan if the Army had let him.
Second, I use it mostly at night, and the color provides camouflage. Daylight driving in Salma’s Hope can be dangerous for me because I never know when a red pickup might pull alongside and shoot me full of holes.
This afternoon was the first time in a long time I rode out before sunset. For Natalie.
That girl is trouble all right.
Too innocent, too sweet.
Good with kids too if she managed to coral up Cora Newlin. Although Cora’s not a kid anymore and I have to stop thinking of her as one. Teenagers will be teenagers. But I will find out what boy she’s seeing, that’s for damn sure. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone in this town good enough for Cora.
Just like I’m no good for Natalie.
Can’t let doll face get any closer.
People close to me tend to die.
She doesn’t know how she affects me. Just being in her presence stirs my cock, and I keep telling myself it’s an animal thing, nothing more.
Animal urges might explain why my dick hardens whenever I see her, but not the far more dangerous longing I feel when I don’t. She’s trouble and distraction all rolled into one.
I got to get my head straight.
Focus on my mission. Justice for Pris. Burying Resnik.
I don’t need or care about anything else.
Thirty minutes to midnight, I park my Mustang at a secluded gravel lot north of town with a great view of the forests around Salma’s Hope. This place used to be a scenic overlook, with the river right below. Only one road leads up here through the hills. No one can sneak up on me.
Leon Costello’s Jeep is already here.
I see the silhouette of him leaning against the railing, watching the river. He’s a good man who moved to Salma’s Hope from Boston many years back. Like most people who came to stay, Leon was running from something. He got a job at Resnik’s casino as a blackjack dealer a few months after it opened.
He knew my sister too, and they became lovers before she died. Resnik never found out.
Leon hates Resnik’s guts as much as I do, and he’s a trusted employee at Lucky Cherries, which makes him my perfect informant. We linked up when I came home two years ago, and we’ve been working together since to bring down Resnik’s corrupt empire.
I notice the six-pack of Heineken on the hood of his Jeep.
“Where the hell were you today?” I say, walking over. “We were supposed to meet at six.” We’ve been meeting at this overlook every other Tuesday for the past two years. Always around six.
“Long shift at the casino,” Leon says. “This Russian guy came in, started betting big at my table. I couldn’t get out.”
“How much did he win?”
“You know how it is at Lucky Cherries, Asher. You win until you don’t. He walked out forty grand in the red.”
“House always wins?”
“Resnik’s house,” Leon says.
“I damn near missed my date tonight.”
He raises an eyebrow. “When’d you start dating?”
I grunt. It wasn’t a date—but it sure the hell felt like one. “Just now.”
“Who’s the unlucky gal?”
“A real estate agent.”
Leon grins like a goddamn idiot while I pull a can out of the pack. He asks if I’m selling my Colonial in a tone that’s too smartass and tells me there are easier ways to find a date. “Have you heard of Tinder or eHarmony?”
“Why don’t you shut the hell up,” I say. “I’m not selling my house. Gatsby’s been trying to sell his since I scared him off with the barbed wire.”
Leon snorts. “Nothing says here lives a crazy motherfucker like barbed wire.”
True enough.
My former neighbor Zacharias Gatsby used to be one of Resnik’s best customers. A regular at Lucky Cherries casino, he’d throw away a few grand every Friday at the roulette table. Gatsby seemed to enjoy losing money. He knew Resnik’s security guards were part-time drug dealers, but that never bothered Mr. Gatsby. Oh no.
Gatsby also dabbled in a long list of other diabolical shit at the casino’s VIP Lounge. Young women work there as dancers, and for a price, men like Gatsby can do whatever the hell they want to the dancers. Shit involving whips and gags for example. Leon told me once that not everything is consensual.
A few months ago, Gatsby was starting to suspect I might make trouble for the casino. He would’ve told Resnik. So I hung up that barbed wire on my fence and started shooting guns in my backyard every day.
That convinced Gatsby I was truly batshit insane, a broken war veteran who can barely keep his head together, never mind investigate the casino. He got so scared he left town altogether.
Everything worked out well until Natalie showed up to sell his house.
“This real estate agent gonna be a problem?” Leon says.
“No. Once she sells that house, she’ll leave town. She’s not involved in anything.”
We’re silent for a while.
“Sounds like you don’t want her to leave,” Leon says.
“How the hell did you get that?”
“Your inflection.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t lose focus,” he says. “That’s what I mean. I’m working in the lion’s den. You fuck up, I die first.”
I feel like punching him. “I won’t fuck up. I’m focused.”
“She pretty? This real estate agent?”
“She draws,” I say.
“What?”
“She likes to draw. She wants to be an artist.”
Silence falls again. I hold the full can of beer in my hand and suck down the warm night air.
“Don’t lose focus,” Leon repeats, this time with no hint of humor.
“I won’t.”
We clink our cans together before we empty them over the railing into the river below.
“In memory of Priscilla Wade,” we say together.
My sister loved her Heineken.
We go to his Jeep, and he pulls out a folder from the glovebox and hands it to me. He’s been feeding me info on Lucky Cherries for the past two years, anything he can get his hands on. But so far, nothing that incriminates Verne Resnik directly.
I take out a pocket flashlight and read through the folder.
“Why do you even need evidence?” Leon says after a while, and not for the first time since we began our partnership. “Wade, you’re a special forces badass. Sit your ass in a tree somewhere and blow Verne’s brains out. I bet you can shoot the wings off a fly at five hundred yards. We both know Verne Resnik murdered Pr
iscilla, we both know his casino is a drug den. Just end it.”
“Only people I know who can shoot the wings off a fly at five hundred yards work in Hollywood.” I snap the folder shut. “You think I don’t want Resnik dead? I want nothing more.”
“Killing him is the only way to get justice,” Leon says.
I know that too.
Verne Resnik comes from old money. He’s the only child of Joshua Resnik, who’d been the wealthiest man in Salma’s Hope before the old man died. When Verne was only eight. His mother left him to the care of nannies and butlers while she partied in Vegas.
I’ve always wondered if that’s why Resnik built his casino in the first place, to fill some hole inside him. The land Lucky Cherries sits on had belonged to his father.
Resnik understood loss. It was another thing we had in common growing up.
But unlike me, he also has a tribe of extended family in high places. The county sheriff is Resnik’s second cousin. His connections give him legitimacy and influence.
Mayor Landry calls him a respected member of the community who’s injected new life into Salma’s Hope. Resnik’s casino is a cash cow for the town government, and no one prods a cash cow without good reason. People who might otherwise scrutinize his dealings look the other way. If Resnik went to trial today, a jury would acquit him of any wrongdoing within minutes.
As far as law enforcement, the only person I can count on is Hoyt Dunkel, local police chief of Salma’s Hope. Dunkel is old school and detests the casino on moral grounds. But against Resnik’s influence, he’s a small fish in a big fucking pond.
I know my odds.
I know the only way to bring Resnik down is to end his life.
There was a time when I would’ve walked into Lucky Cherries and shot Resnik without hesitation. But my time in the Army taught me a few things about revenge. It’s a dish best served frozen.
“We can’t kill him without evidence,” I tell Leon, not for the first time. “Evidence enough to convict him if we were in court. Incontrovertible proof he murdered my sister. Evidence I can see.”
“We’re not a court, Asher. What difference does it make? You don’t need to shoot him, just make it look like an accident, use all that assassin shit the Army taught you. Who’s gonna know if we kill him?”