He pushed out of the chair. “I’ll keep my phone on,” he said, heading out.
Tourmaline followed aimlessly. The smell of the food hit her as soon as she stepped into the hall, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten all day. Anna May still wasn’t there, so Tourmaline grabbed a paper plate off the stack, putting the ruffled edge to her mouth and looking over the food. Roasted chicken. Mashed potatoes with flecked things in them. She dug out a spoonful and inspected it with a frown. She should have told Dad about what Hayes had said. Wayne Thompson is looking for you. She should go right now. Find him. Tell him.
She stared at the potatoes. What if it was just a rumor? Of course the guard could know if Wayne was released—they’d probably alerted everyone involved in the trial. Mom included. And Mom only knew via the guards. What could Dad do about it, anyhow?
“I think it’s rosemary,” Jason said from her right. “It’s pretty good, but don’t tell him I said that.”
She blinked. “Better question: Is it edible? I’m still scarred from your charred hot dogs and unfried French fries. Oh God, and the peanut butter and bologna sandwich you made for my school lunch. Remember that?”
“Yeah, I was a nightmare as a conscript,” Jason agreed. “I think they rushed to patch me out just to stop me from having to do any more cooking.”
Tourmaline snorted, plopping a spoonful onto her plate, half covering the chicken. “I know I was grateful when Dad went back to school-lunch duty.”
Jason’s eyes and the diamond stud in his ear winked at her, but that was just him. He was beautiful and baby-faced; and playing the charming boy soldier was a routine he’d been running long past boyhood. And his clear hazel eyes always looked bright and sober, no matter how drunk he was.
It was strange to think of him from Virginia’s perspective. Most of the things people talked about centered on Jason.
At Mom’s trial, Tourmaline had heard all the rumors. There under fluorescent lights, with the stenographer tacking away and the judge leaning forward on his elbows. The federal prosecutor seemed as if he’d spent a week in Moe’s just jotting notes on whatever shit people would say. People always have shit to say about things they don’t understand.
If Virginia was looking for cheap thrills, what could Tourmaline give her that the rumors hadn’t?
Jason put a roll on her plate.
“Eh,” she said, adding a spoonful of corn.
“What?”
“One more. Come on now.” She pushed the plate toward him, and he shook his head and added another. “So, your new conscript cooks, huh?”
Shrugging, Jason walked his fingers through the line of bottles and plucked one out. “He’s all right.” He popped the top off.
“Who sponsored him?”
“I did.” Jason gave her a smirking rolled-eyes face. “Anyway.”
She smothered her chicken in gravy.
“How’s your mom?”
She didn’t answer.
He took a long drink. “Your dad’s talking about selling the Shovelhead.”
Tourmaline glanced at him. “Okay?”
He gave her a look and walked off without another word.
Tourmaline watched him go—out the back door, disappearing into the softly lit garden, where everyone gathered underneath the strung lights. On the hazy edges of the dark garden, the woman from the kitchen stood with two others just like her. Tourmaline blinked at the ground and let out a long breath before turning for her room.
She picked a piece of chicken off the bone and stuffed it in her mouth. It was amazing—moist, with an herbed saltiness in each bite; so good she stopped right there, in the hall, and swooped up a bite of potatoes on her finger to try. Rosemary. Holy shit, the conscript was actually a good cook for once.
A tall young man in jeans and a T-shirt appeared in the hall, startling her before she remembered he was the cook. The guy who came through the kitchen. The conscript.
Tourmaline wiped her fingers on her jeans and moved so he could pass, but he moved the same way. She stepped again, but she was already half a step behind him. “Here. I’ll go—” But they nearly ran into each other again.
“This isn’t rocket science, conscript.”
“I’ll go left. You go right,” he said.
She stepped right and nearly ran into his chest. Clenching her jaw, she tipped her chin to meet his eyes. A current of something sparked and turned the marrow of her bones to liquid. When had the conscripts gotten so young? And hot?
“How’s the chicken?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said coolly. He was a conscript, after all. Her dad’s friend. Her memories of Old Hawk were a thin collection consisting of a booming laugh and a big black man always wearing a black Carhartt T-shirt—not enough to remember whether this man, his son, looked like him.
“My name’s Cash.” He smiled. “There’s an herbed butter for the rolls.”
“Oh.” She turned back toward the kitchen.
“I got it.” He put his hand on her back, gently moving her aside as he slid past.
She stopped, holding her plate. Music pulsed outside, but they were alone in the kitchen. No one to notice what had just happened, thankfully—his hand on her back, so casual. Didn’t he know the rules? He had to.
The conscript dug through extra rolls and bags of chips on the counter, turning with a bowl of butter. “Here.”
The heat of his hand still rested between her shoulder blades. She shrugged it off and grabbed a knife out of the drawer. “You know it’s not a guarantee.”
“What’s not?”
She smothered her roll in a thick layer of butter and dropped the knife in the sink before answering. “You have to follow the rules. Just because your dad was an original member, doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee.”
“I didn’t know I broke a rule,” he said, putting the butter on the counter and pulling out a stretch of plastic wrap.
It wasn’t like a rule that was spelled out—none of them were. It was a truth he had to know by this point. Thou shalt not touch or look at your brothers’ daughters. If he was here, allowed into this home, he was close to patching out. He wore the curved conscript patch in blue-green, black and white, sewn onto the bottom of his leather vest—the rest a broad expanse of empty leather waiting for confirmation. By now, he’d know: breaking those unspoken rules would get him kicked out.
“Good?” He glanced toward the roll as she chewed.
Starting, she frowned. “You made all this?”
He nodded.
Ah. Being a good cook gave him an advantage—it meant they couldn’t treat him too badly, because they’d always want something only he could give them. “It’s all right.”
He tilted his head, raising an eyebrow. “All right?”
She swallowed her bite and narrowed her eyes at him. This wasn’t normal conscript behavior. They didn’t usually argue if you said their herbed fucking butter was just all right. “Do you like cooking?”
He put his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell, they think they’re making it hard on me.”
Tourmaline’s gaze flickered over him—taking in the polished boots, crisp jeans, and black T-shirt wrinkling across his chest as he smoothed down the plastic wrap. His black hair was buzzed close. Dark taupe skin—pulled tight over thick muscle like a matte finish on a bike. A well-trimmed ducktail-shaped beard. No hint of boy left in the tall, strong-looking body. How old was he? She felt like she needed to know just to orient herself to where she was in life, as if his age were a missing coordinate. “You’re not really supposed to talk to me.” Or touch her, but she didn’t say it. It had been a meaningless, thoughtless touch, she knew—but a conscript couldn’t afford to be either of those things.
He laughed. “Oh, that’s right. The Princess.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket—Anna May texting she was outside, probably. She ignored it, forcing herself to keep her gaze locked to the conscript’s, as if she didn’t feel a thing. She lifted her chin. �
�You won’t patch out.”
“For what?”
What did he mean, For what? Hadn’t he been listening?
The conscript crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, looking wholly unapologetic.
“Do you like hanging out with your dad’s friends?” He asked it a little mockingly. A little teasingly.
Flirting?
It pulled her up short and left her unsure. How old was he? She swished her hair back like Virginia and lifted her chin. “It’s my house.”
The conscript just looked at her. Deadpan.
“Do you like hanging out with a bunch of rednecks whose only intent is to abuse you until you break?” It left her mouth before she realized what she was truly saying—that this wasn’t a regular conscript—and terrible subtext pervaded her words. The Wardens had a few black members, but that didn’t mean anything for a conscript. There was no brotherhood until he became a brother. She’d only meant to needle him back in the way he’d done with her, and instead she’d walked right into dumbass white girl territory.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know what you meant.” He heaved off the counter, grabbed a napkin, and stepped close.
Her pulse throbbed in her neck, but she refused to back down to a conscript.
He reached around her shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked, horrified that her words came out sort of breathless.
“You got gravy in your hair,” he said, the corners of his mouth tensing as if he were trying not to smile.
Her heartbeat thumped a deep, throbbing refrain in her chest, and she stared at the ends of her hair slipping through his hands.
“It’s my club,” he said.
“Not yet,” she said. And not ever, if he was going to be like this with her. Nothing was innocent when it came to the eighteen-year-old daughter of your president. Not even a conversation.
He laughed. “That’s what you think.” He winked, balled the napkin, and tossed it into the trash. Turning, he went outside.
Tourmaline stood alone, until her heartbeat dropped back to normal and the damp ends of her hair dried.
That was what she needed. A way to make Virginia feel as if she were standing alongside a tall Warden with her heartbeat in her throat and her fingers shaky. A show. That’s what Tourmaline could exchange. Not the truth, but what Virginia wanted the truth to be.
Robert M. Hazard wasn’t the big crime boss of anything, least of all Roanoke, Virginia. He dealt on the side of his law practice in pills, a little cocaine, and some prostitutes, and walked around as if he only ever saw himself on a television screen—as a complex, interesting hero in a retro-vibed, critical-darling cable series. The American work ethic lived in bankruptcies, barters, and flamboyant suits by day; powder, women, and the same suit, sans jacket, at night. In the same vein, he frequently danced on the line of inappropriate with Virginia, but after four years she felt safe enough.
Accustomed though she was to the peculiar whims of Hazard’s plotlines, when Virginia knocked at the door of the dusty law office in downtown Roanoke and a man declaring himself a bodyguard opened the door, she laughed.
Bodyguard?
He smoothed his braids and plucked at his wrinkled dress shirt. “I’m new.”
“Hazard!” Virginia hollered. “Call off the puppy.”
Radio silence.
Virginia took a step toward the back.
The man slid easily, blocking the way with an apologetic smile. He reached for the backpack on her shoulders.
Virginia handed it over.
“Thanks,” he said, unzipping and riffling through the contents. Dumbass didn’t think to look in her boots. He handed the backpack to her, gaze flitting between somewhere around her neck and the floor.
Virginia smiled and turned it up to Supreme Queen—satisfied when he blushed, fumbled with his magazine, and stumbled down into the high-backed calico-covered chair of the waiting room as the newest member of Team Virginia.
She still had it.
The front offices were dark, but Virginia followed the dim pathway of fluorescent light spilling past stacks of files, mail, warped paneling, and shelves lined with ancient law books. Her backpack slipped off her shoulder and she hoisted it up, stepping through the seventies-style mustard kitchen behind the offices to the back file room.
Hazard—Robert Hazard, Esquire—sat in a ripped red leather office chair, pawing through a file box propped on his knees. Boxes full of files were lined up on folding tables, on the linoleum floor underneath, and on mismatched aluminum shelves through the room. Out the barred window, sunset filtered through patchy woods.
He looked up and beamed. “There’s the Queen.”
“You wish.” Virginia sank into an empty rolling chair and kicked her feet up on the edge of the table. The backpack was still on her shoulder.
He leaned back. “What are the Wardens up to this fine summer night?”
Shit. “Stuff.” It’d been a week since she’d talked to Tourmaline. She’d called once but Tourmaline hadn’t called back.
The master of the dramatic pause, Hazard simply stared at her until it became too uncomfortable to keep facing him.
She dropped her eyes to the files in his lap. “Don’t worry. I’m working something.”
He looked unimpressed and went back to the box, pulling out a ragged file and paging through it with thick fingers. “Are you wearing that?”
He had been her pageant coach for the first year. In the years following, he still had a lot to say about what she wore and where she wore it. This was not how he envisioned her for the role of Pageant Queen Gone Motorcycle Club. This wasn’t even how he envisioned Shady Small-Town Lawyer’s Minion, but he didn’t have much say in her wardrobe these days, try as he might.
“Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.” She grinned, deliberately running one long finger along the frays in a hole in the thigh of her jeans.
Hazard’s gaze flickered to the patch of visible skin.
When he came back to her face, she smiled. Score two for Team Virginia.
He didn’t argue.
“What’s with the bodyguard?” Virginia asked.
“Restructuring.”
“Is there something I should know?”
“Weren’t you at the staff meeting?”
Sometimes she thought he ran his side business a little too much like a law practice, and his law practice a little too much like his side business. “When the hell did we have a staff meeting?”
He laughed. “I’m just playing.”
Virginia grimaced and looked up at the yellow water stains on the drop ceiling. “If you’re restructuring, why don’t you let me come work for you as a paralegal or something?”
“Jackie does a fine job, thank you.”
“But does she get you coffee? I’ll get you coffee. And that cornbread you like for lunch. And wear tight skirts. I’ll smile real pretty for the clients. And I—”
“Do you have a résumé?”
Wait, was he serious? She stopped rocking. “I can . . . I can make one.”
“Give me an oral.”
She put her feet down. “What?”
“An oral overview.” He smoothed over his hair and propped his chin in his hand, in a way Virginia could see framed in tight by the camera. Scene: eccentric lawyer, sitting behind the gleaming mahogany desk in his front office, finagling his way around the law with cunning and darkly comic moments. “Of your résumé. What’s on it? What kind of jobs have you had? Who are your references?”
Virginia couldn’t tell whether he was serious or simply messing with her. “Well, you’re my reference.” She pressed her lips tight. This had to be a game. “And . . . ,” she started slowly. “I’ve had several years’ experience as an independent contractor for a large company.”
He snorted. “Doing what?”
She blinked.
“Have you ever held a
job other than with me?”
Virginia tightened her jaw. He knew the answer. “No.”
“Well, then, I’m sorry to say, you have no work history.”
“What do you mean? I’ve been working for you for—”
He tossed the file on top of the file boxes. “You haven’t had a job. J-O-B, job. You haven’t had to show up on time every day. Or work eight or ten hours a day, five days a week. Have you paid payroll taxes? Social Security? You’ve damn sure never worked in an office. Do you know how to work a copier? Use Excel?”
It was a sharp zinger in his dialogue. Written for himself. Played for himself. A game meant to mortify her twice over. Once for failing for his test again. Twice for not having the wisdom to see herself realistically in the first place.
“. . . dictate a letter? Do you even know how to put things in alphabetical—?”
She leaned forward. “Fuck you,” she snarled.
A hand caught her under the chin and yanked her back into the chair.
She gulped. Shit. The bodyguard. She’d forgotten.
Hazard laughed and waved his hand. “Let her go, D.”
Virginia jerked away and the hand released her.
“Like I was saying,” Hazard continued, smirking. “You can’t mouth off to a judge. Or another lawyer. Or a client. Or me. It’s not just me. Any place you try and go for employment is going to say the same thing.” Scooting forward on the chair, he pushed the box back into its place. “Sorry about the . . .” He waved across his neck.
She glared, rubbing the spot under her chin, where she could still feel the bodyguard’s fingers. It used to be none of his guys would touch her. It unnerved her to find that that had changed. She bit her lip and didn’t say anything else, pulling the backpack off her shoulder and tossing it at him.
Hazard didn’t blink, just caught it and quietly pushed off the floor, wheeling himself deeper into the shelves of filing boxes so he was hidden from view of the door. Unzipping the bag, he started pulling out the stacks of bills she’d carefully smoothed out and tied together with hair ties—laying out stacks of twenties and fives and tens. “Any problems?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You aren’t with the Wardens tonight,” he said matter-of-factly. “What have you been doing?” He yanked a hair tie off the bills and began counting under his breath, mouth moving silently.
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