No Gentle Giant: A Small Town Romance

by Nicole Snow

  Now, I don’t have to.

  Before I even round the corner to the town’s only gas station, I hear that piece of shit.

  The distinct gunfire-like bang and pop of a truck backfiring. The same kind of junkers he survived on back in Alaska—and it looks like some things never change.

  Thank God I’ve got a kid who thinks fast with his camera.

  I swerve around the corner, hoping to catch him before he takes off.

  Instead, I catch him tossing two gold bars into the trash can next to the pump with an angry shake of his head. Casual and plain as day, like he’s throwing out some leftover packaging from burgers and fries.

  What the fuck?

  Who goes to the trouble of stealing what’s probably five figures worth of gold, and then literally throws it away?

  I gun the engine, slewing my Jeep into the parking lot just as he’s firing up his truck with another rattling thunder-pop from hell.

  I deliberately stab my vehicle in front of him, blocking off his path, then cut my engine and get out.

  Casting a wide stance, I wait, folding my arms over my chest like a hall monitor who’s just caught an insanely boneheaded teenager.

  Coakley freezes, his lip curled in a sneering curse, only to go silent as his washed-out grey eyes lock on me through the windshield, the color of muddy rainwater beneath his thatch of unruly reddish-brown hair.

  Oh, yeah.

  He recognizes me.

  He also knows that I know damned well what he did.

  Balling one hand into a fist, I flick one finger up and crook it, beckoning like I’m talking to an unruly kid. “Out. Right the fuck now.”

  He spits out something I can’t hear from the corner of his mouth, then grudgingly pushes his truck’s door open and steps out, dropping down and slamming it shut behind him.

  “You got a problem, Charter?” he snarls without preamble.

  “Depends. Seems like you’ve got a problem with me, Gavin,” I answer. I’m not taking his bait. “Having a little tourist hop through town? What a coincidence, you washing up my way.”

  “I’m just passing through.” Sullen, sulking, he’s avoiding my eyes. “Small fucking world. If I’d known you were here, I’d have risked running out of gas between here and Missoula.”

  “Nice to see you too, asshole. So much for hoping you didn’t have any hard feelings about the mine.”

  “Don’t fucking talk to me about hard feelings or that stupid mine!” he snaps, narrowing his eyes. “You weren’t the one left holding the bag with nothing, practically living on the street like a bum.”

  “You don’t know what my life was like. So don’t think you know what I sacrificed to survive after things went bust.” I stare at him coolly. “And don’t lie to me, man. It’s interesting that you didn’t know I was in town, but you knew enough to go stealing from behind my woodpile. What are the odds? One in I-think-you’re-full-of-shit-tillion?”

  His shoulders jerk.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy.”

  “So you didn’t just toss two gold bars into the fucking trash?”

  “...don’t make me laugh. Gold? That’s some spray-painted rocks.” He starts toward me with his teeth bared, his fists balling up. “That how you’re scamming people now? Tungsten-plated bricks and you bilk ’em out of even more fucking money? You’re a sick dude, Paxton.”

  He can’t be serious.

  Right?

  But if by some unholy miracle he thought the gold was fake, that explains his epic stupidity.

  “I never scammed anyone,” I throw back, my hackles up, my fists clenched tight—but I stand my ground. “Least of all you.”

  “The hell you didn’t, Charter,” he cries. Next thing I know, I’ve got a man coming at me like a freight train, all raised fists and plowing force. “You’re lucky I don’t fucking kill you for what you did!”

  So tiresome.

  Looks like I’m in for a world of hurt. He may be a third my size—still big by most people’s standards—but he’s pissed enough to leave a few bruises.

  Still, I’m damn glad he doesn’t realize the gold’s actually real.

  Now I just gotta rescue those two bars in the garbage and get them home before anyone else gets up in our business.

  Even if it means weathering a little of that pain Gavin’s been storing up for me for what looks like ages. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty to return the favor.

  Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I don’t.

  I don’t know.

  I just know I need to get rid of Gavin and his pathetic grudge.

  I’m not letting this angry little hornet of a man pile more grief on Felicity’s plate.

  9

  Working In The Gold Mine (Felicity)

  I should’ve known this wouldn’t lead me anywhere except Bad Memoryville.

  Population: me.

  I sit on the hard wooden chair in Wentworth Langley’s postage stamp of a police station, my feet tucked under me, now and then shifting so the unforgiving seat will stop numbing one butt cheek or the other.

  My eyes feel like they’re bleeding as I pore through pages and pages of old documents from my father’s death.

  Good thing I left The Nest early. I know Langley likes to dodge out before sunset. He’s usually in bed shortly after dinner, fancying himself the hero of a one-horse town where he should be ready to rock and roll in the middle of the night, six-shooters blazing, to ride to the rescue of any damsel or dude in distress.

  Yeah, right.

  There’s a reason we call him Mayberry around here.

  But he’s still a nice guy—sweet, endearingly helpless, often frustrated with how much goes on right under his nose and yet completely out of his sight, and he can’t do crap about it.

  He almost seemed excited to help when I showed up and asked to rummage around Dad’s old case files again.

  I didn’t even have to promise him a cold brew or two on the house for his trouble, though I do anyway.

  And that’s how I find myself shut in the tiny closet of a break room, papers spread out in front of me, while I read through words I’ve studied so many times I can practically recite them from memory.

  Only, this time I keep holding my breath.

  It’s like now, I think there’ll be something different.

  Something I never noticed.

  This time, I’ll find the one magic word I always skimmed over before that will turn the key and make this insanity make sense.

  His death.

  The crashed plane.

  The overdose.

  The gold.

  How that’s connected to the Lockwoods.

  And if I can figure that out, I’ll finally know what I should do, because right now...

  Lost would be an understatement.

  Nor do I really know what I’m looking for as I sift through the ugly, harsh photos of my dad’s old truck. That dirty lighting hurts my eyes and only seems to exist in police crime scene photos.

  Sighing, I try to tell myself I don’t miss him.

  Not when Dad caused so much trouble. But when I see his limp body sprawled against the steering wheel, my eyes start stinging.

  My heart churns with a quiet old pain that says it’s been lodged below my ribs for too long, naked and waiting.

  Waiting for me to deal with it. To face it. To do something.

  There, I’m just as lost.

  I never learned how to process pain in a healthy way.

  So I guess I just...don’t.

  I focus on the details of the case, wiping my eyes and forcing them back to the photos I thumb at, sticking my tongue out in defiant focus.

  Nothing in the car.

  Nothing that might be connected with his plane or the stupid gold.

  Just traces of heroin. The report says it looks like he did a clumsy job melting it and then tying off and injecting it right there in the driver’s seat—almost like he couldn’t wait to get somewhere saf
e and had to do it right then.

  That in of itself seems weird as hell.

  I remember Dad when he was clean, and remember him when he wasn’t.

  He was always a cautious man, and even at his lowest, he wasn’t stupid.

  The love for the drug was his own dirty little secret.

  He hid it away from us.

  Doing it like this so clumsily just isn’t like him.

  What else catches my attention, though, is the fact that they found prints on the car. Unidentified.

  On the door handle, the seat belt, the driver’s seat, the steering wheel. Even on the seat belt buckle.

  Who was driving Dad’s car?

  I bite my lip, this angry voice hissing anxious questions in the back of my head.

  Wrong question. Shouldn’t you be asking who was strapping him in?

  My breath stalls, and I shake my head, wondering if I’m losing my mind.

  Am I really thinking like this? Really?

  This wild theory that someone else force-fed bad drugs into his veins and murdered my father?

  It’s totally ludicrous, especially knowing how the smack was this constant shadow looming large over his life, wrestling him back into its clutches again and again. No matter how hard he fought to quit the stuff, he always came back for another deadly kiss.

  The coroner’s report reads clear as day.

  Massive overdose.

  That’s the kind of thing you do to yourself when you’re addicted, just not on purpose.

  I don’t know.

  Something’s not adding up.

  Because Dad hid that journal for a reason—tucked it away so well the police didn’t even find it during a forensics sweep of his truck. It took Mitch pulling the truck to pieces to salvage it for parts. Even the electrical tape Mitch said was holding it in place fit the seat color.

  Almost like Dad was anticipating someone else might need it one day.

  Someone besides him.

  Did he know he was about to die?

  Was this twisted message in a bottle meant for Mom, for me?

  God. My face collapses into my palms.

  I’m imagining things. Hallucinating. I have to be.

  Looking for meaning where there isn’t any, and desperately trying to explain that multimillion-dollar payload he sank to the bottom of Glass Lake.

  Just what the hell was going on in his life when he’d jump in his plane and disappear, sometimes for days?

  What kind of secrets was he keeping?

  What awful cargo did he carry?

  I don’t get any answers—but I do get the scare of a lifetime when my phone abruptly rings, shattering the stillness.

  I jump, nearly swallowing my next breath, then try not to laugh at myself when I fish my phone from my pocket.

  Only to realize my instinct was right.

  I stare down in dread at the text message that pops up. I don’t recognize the number, but I know who sent it.

  Paisley Lockwood.

  You’d think we were Bee-Eff-Effs from the cutesy picture she sends.

  Her in a little poodle skirt with her hair up in pigtails, covered in bubblegum Snapchat filters with puppy ears and a nose, hearts floating everywhere.

  She poses and prances on a tree-lined, sunny street with a sunny smile, fingers up in a happy V sign.

  Except she’s still got that switchblade, obvious even with the blade retracted. It’s clutched between her fingers like a third digit bisecting that V, a subtle middle finger.

  And the house she’s prancing around so merrily—

  Oh, crap.

  It’s Mom’s.

  My mouth goes dry with fear as I read the text below. Dick me around much longer, daddy’s girl, and I’m stopping by for tea with Mommy dearest.

  It’s like she’s tightening a noose around my neck.

  I don’t have much time to figure this out and find some way to placate her.

  I’m frozen, just staring, struggling to breathe. My heart jolts like I’ve just taken that glittering knife to the chest.

  Then the silence in the police station erupts into shouting, men snarling, the sounds of furniture slamming and skidding around in a struggle as subtle as a gunshot.

  What now?

  I realize it’s after dark. I’m not sure how I let so much time pass without noticing, but there’s a gut punch of guilt as I realize I must’ve made Langley stay late for my sake.

  But what hits me harder is that I recognize one of the voices.

  Alaska.

  He’s not snarling, no, it sounds more like he’s trading barbs with someone who is. An unfamiliar voice calls him a “bastard whoreson.”

  To which Alaska calmly replies, “Little redundant, dude. You wanna try something more creative? I’m afraid I can’t give you more than a C for effort.”

  I don’t know if I should laugh or be worried as hell or just start crying when I’m surrounded by a million things going haywire all at once, and this is officially more than I can handle.

  Let’s go for worried as hell.

  Stuffing my phone in my pocket, I go rocketing out of my chair and into the main—well, the only other—room in the police station.

  Just in time to watch a redheaded man I don’t recognize get muscled into one of two meager jail cells. Meanwhile, Alaska mildly walks into the other with the air of a man who’s complying so he doesn’t cause trouble for people who don’t deserve it.

  His thick arms are bunched up in muscled knots of tension, tapestries of tattoo ink twisting like dark animals.

  He’s handcuffed behind his back, I realize.

  What the hell.

  The stranger flings himself against the bars just as Langley slams them shut and locks up.

  The redheaded guy looks bloodied, bruised, his face puffed and swollen. When Alaska turns to face out, I gasp.

  He’s got a pretty mean black eye himself, gone purple with broken veins spidering around his socket.

  Our gazes lock. His eyes widen.

  Alaska stares at me for a smoldering second before darkness crosses his face. Something I can’t quite read, but it worries me nonetheless.

  We need to talk, he mouths, slow and exaggerated.

  I nod subtly.

  Guess I’m using that eight hundred he gave me to pay bail, if I can’t talk fast enough.

  I shift my attention to Langley.

  “Hey, Sheriff, what happened?” I ask, trying to sound casual and curious and not one hundred and ten percent personally invested.

  Langley snorts and strokes his thick Wilford Brimley mustache. “Just a little bit of a disorderly scrum in town. Lemme tell you, I was pretty danged shocked when these two passed a breathalyzer.”

  Oh, no.

  Alaska doesn’t seem like the type to go around getting tanked up and picking fights.

  My mind goes one place. Considering the copper-haired man’s a complete stranger, not a townie, either he’s a tourist...

  Or this is about the gold.

  How many ways can Felicity Randall get screwed?

  Oh, let’s start counting.

  I take a moment to compose myself back in the break room.

  Just enough to screw my head on straight and think through a game plan.

  Is begging a game plan?

  Cajoling?

  Wheedling?

  Bribing?

  Um, I’ll stop short of the last. Barely.

  I will, however, flutter my eyes like a cartoon skunk if I have to. Sheriff Langley’s always had a soft spot for me since he was the one who found my dad, but I guess I’m about to find out just how squishy that soft spot is.

  Not to mention how much I can get away with by promising a lifetime of coffee on the house for him and his skeleton crew of deputies.

  ...does it count as a bribe if it’s not cash?

  Ugh.

  I gather up the folder with Dad’s file. Fingers crossed I can wrangle Langley into letting me take it home with me, along with A
laska.

  Wearing my best casual smile and hugging the folder against my chest, I step out.

  “Thanks for letting me look at this again,” I tell Langley.

  He sits at his desk harumphing and grumping over paperwork, muttering like the two men—one sulking, the other stoic—in the drunk tank have just ruined his whole month.

  “Say, would you mind if I borrowed this for a bit? I know you want to get home soon, and I just need it for another day or two. I can make copies at the library and I’ll bring it straight back.”

  He lifts his head, peering, squinting at me.

  “What’s so important in that file all of a sudden, Miss Randall?” he asks.

  “Well, there’s been some legal stuff with the house. Turns out, it’s still in Mom and Dad’s joint names all these years,” I lie so smoothly it almost disturbs me. “Something about the insurance and accidental death versus suicide, yada yada yada. I’m trying to give them proof so they won’t demand the life insurance payments back and possibly screw up some of the title stuff on the place.”

  “Well, that’s real crappy of them, dredging that mess up after all these years.” He frowns. “I can let you have ’em for forty-eight hours, but you bring those files right back to me. Every page. I could get in trouble, you know.”

  “I won’t let that happen, Sheriff. Cross my heart. And your coffee’s on me for a week.” I wink at him, then feign a nonchalant glance toward the cells. “So what were those two even fighting over, if they weren’t drunk?”

  “Who the hell knows.” He lets out an exasperated gurgle. “Something about an old mine or some gold? Meh. By then they were snarling and spitting like rabid bears and I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Had to nearly get my squad car between them to shut it down.”

  I’m trying to listen, to keep up my pleasantly neutral expression, but everything after the word gold turns into blank white noise.

  My chest constricts and my knees lock.

  I smile until it hurts because it’s all I can do not to dart a frightened look at that redheaded man.

  He must be working with Paye.

  And she’s onto the gold.

  They were watching us the whole time.

  That’s why she just had to fire off another text from hell.