She knew. She was paying attention. Wayne was looking for her. Alvarez was back. But she found herself scanning the hillside with the wind biting the back of her neck in warning. You have to start paying attention.
What wasn’t she seeing?
They clung to the ridge, high above the washed-out cut, and deep in what Tourmaline was certain would prove to be poison ivy. When a wash with a slope gentle enough to slide down opened up, she paused.
Virginia stopped at her side, breathing heavily. “What’s your dad going to do about a state detective, anyway? Politely ask him to leave?”
“He’ll . . .” But Tourmaline couldn’t finish. What would he do?
“Mm-hm.” Virginia seemed smug.
“It’s not that,” Tourmaline bit out in a whisper. “Everyone wants to fight the bikers. Even the cops. So it doesn’t matter what he does, the story will always be he started a fight. He needs to know.”
“Right this second?”
“I mean . . .”
“Why not wait until the morning, and then he has time to plan instead of just react?”
Tourmaline clenched her jaw and turned from the wash. They’d lost Wayne. Alvarez didn’t know she’d seen him. There was no telling what kind of state her dad was in right that second. Virginia had a point. “Ugh, fine. I’ll deal with it.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Virginia said.
“Go back to the truck. I’ll figure a way out.” Tourmaline pushed onward, scanning the edges for a car. It was a little spot Alvarez liked to hide in—a hollowed-out place in the hill where he could scan license plates and note bikes or run radar. If that car was there again, it was Alvarez. If the spot sat empty, it might have just been the same model, but not his car.
“I think this is also an ill-conceived idea,” Virginia muttered, trampling in the brush behind her.
Tourmaline nearly smiled. Who would have thought the ever notorious beauty queen Virginia Campbell was the kind to stick it out? The idea made a tiny knot in her chest, like she had been feeling lonely and hadn’t noticed until someone showed up.
A little farther ahead, the ridge pulled away, and there, overlooking the hollowed-out spot where the base of the ridge met the road, a dark car sat in the shadows.
Tourmaline crouched and chewed her lip, stomach sinking. This didn’t need to be pretty. Pulling her cell phone out of the pocket of her dress, she turned on the screen. “Find some big rocks.”
Virginia dug in her back pocket for her phone, matching Tourmaline’s whisper. “We’re low-tech tonight, I see.”
Tourmaline flipped her off and picked through the dark by the light of their phones, amassing a pile of heavy sticks and rocks at the edge of the ridge. “Head back to the truck,” she whispered, tucking the phone away. “It should be straight up that way.”
“You have twenty minutes to get rid of him; then I’m picking you up down here,” Virginia said. Her footsteps faded quickly, sucked into the summer-growth forest.
Tourmaline crept close to the edge of the ridge. The car sat neatly parked between two tall, shady spruces. Picking up a heavy rock, she tightened her jaw, eyed a spot on the roof, and threw.
The rock landed just where she’d hoped: dead center in the roof, with a terrific crunch.
Rushing, she picked up a stick and heaved it over. A second rock. Pelting the car with debris. Her last rock bounced off the trunk and she dashed behind a tree, watching. Waiting.
A floodlight hit the trees just to the right of her shoulder. As if he’d been waiting for her, not anyone on the road.
The tree she stood behind was not wide enough to cover her if the spotlight moved. Tourmaline bolted. The spotlight followed.
The ridgeline dipped toward the road and she fought to clutch at the deepest threads of night. Her boots slipped in the leaves. A pain stabbed into her bottom ribs. Fuck her life, and fuck Virginia, too—she should have just gone straight to Dad the way she’d planned. Or even asked Virginia if she had a better plan. Surely anyone had a better plan than this.
Tourmaline ducked behind a large shadow, discovering it was a lichen-covered boulder as it slapped into her back. Her heartbeat throbbed in her eyes—the moon and the dark sweep of the ridge mixing strangely. She pinched her lips shut tight to keep from panting.
The car passed slowly on the road. Gravel crunching under the tires. Spotlight sweeping the ridge above her.
Then it all fell dark again.
Something tickled her knee and she closed her eyes and forced herself to keep still. Sweat trickled into her eyes. The dress she’d picked out that night, imagining its cool, soft layers brushing against Allen’s warm skin, felt dingy and wilted and just as ruined as she did. It was hard to remember she’d even been in that life—at youth group, worrying her top was too low, watching Allen under the lights, ordering teaberry ice cream and talking about college.
The night stayed silent. The tree frogs outpaced her breathing. Her phone buzzed.
Tourmaline stood and watched the road carefully, but Alvarez was gone.
Her phone buzzed again. Yanking up her boots, she walked out to the road, keeping to the edge as she waited for Virginia to pick her up.
Wisps of hair stuck to her forehead, but she didn’t bother brushing them back anymore. The adrenaline ebbed. Her phone slapped her thigh as she walked. She was going to go home, shower, and, after a good night’s sleep, tell Dad everything that had happened. He would know what to do, and they would do it. End of story. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Yes, that was it.
A noise sounded in the distance and Tourmaline turned. A low thrumming. The wind? A growling. No. She closed her eyes.
The roar of a Harley.
It wasn’t Jason. Or Sauls. Or Big Mac. Or any of the other guys whose bikes she knew and whose shadows she recognized instantly. She could tell by the tip of the night, the rush of her heart, off racing again, but in an entirely different pitch. She could tell by the bike. By the way he stopped in an easy, controlled near slide when she moved into the road. No one she knew stopped like that.
The engine cut. He sat on the road, silent. The soft metallic pricks of the cooling engine filled in the silence like popping sparks. Waiting.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, blood rushing to her cheeks as the words left her mouth. Between this and having just watched Jason threaten to call her daddy on her, he probably thought she was still in middle school.
But for the first time all night, she felt sure of her safety, and uncertain of everything else. With him, she did not have to face anyone’s curiosity or fear. She did not have to worry about what he might know or what he didn’t know. He was her father’s man, a Warden, and whether he knew it or not, he was already tangled inside her history. In the dark, it was easier to have courage she did not have by day. Though she knew she shouldn’t, she threw her shoulders back and stepped over the front fender of the Fat Boy, pulling up her dress to straddle his front tire so he couldn’t leave.
“I’m on my way to let Muir’s dog out,” he said. His voice was deeper than she remembered. “What are you doing out there?”
She crossed her arms over the handlebars, thanking God for low-cut dresses. “Haunting the woods. Didn’t realize how close I was.”
“Hm. Suspicious.”
She shrugged. He was still a conscript. She was still his president’s daughter. She didn’t need to defend herself.
The conscript straightened and nodded his chin behind him. “Want a ride home?”
Yes. Her longing was instantaneous and emphatic, but she gulped it down. Boys alone were problematic; adding motorcycles to them would be disastrous. “No?” She could tell she didn’t sound very convincing.
He put his hand on his knee, leaning his weight to one side as they listened to the wind roar above them.
A wind she could feel in her blood.
“It’s going to storm,” he said mildly. As if they had run into each other at the grocery store parking lo
t.
How old was he? She didn’t need to ask. She was eighteen, but he was a grown man. Devoid of any gangliness that would hint at boyhood. He could have been twenty-something. He could have been thirty-something. He wouldn’t care if she asked his age, but deep down she wanted him to care. She wanted eighteen to be able to reach that far. She licked her lips and forced herself to ask, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” he said immediately, like he’d been patiently waiting for her to ask.
Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one . . . Five years. Five years between where she stood, in a battered dress, and where he sat, big body edged in shadows. “Is conscript your full-time job?”
“I’m a chemical engineer. I work for a land remediation firm.”
She blinked. He was a grown man. With a job. And part of her dad’s club. This was hopeless. Her granny was shaking her head in her grave, saying to the cemetery, “That girl’s problem is she’s way too big for her britches.”
“You in school?” he asked.
“UVA in the fall.”
“Exciting.”
The wind gusted, drowning out their voices with a sudden clattering of branches and upturned leaves.
“You need to be careful,” she said softly, dismantling herself from his front tire. “Conscripts aren’t supposed to be . . . stopping on the way to take care of Muir’s dog.”
“That old bastard’s just fine.”
Tourmaline frowned. “Muir or Peanut?”
The conscript laughed. “Peanut.”
“He’s mean. Bit me three times, and Muir of course made it all my fault.”
“Who can blame him?”
“For making it my fault or biting me?” she almost asked, and then realized that was a bad idea because what she really wanted to know was Do you mean you want to bite me? and she couldn’t even think in that general direction without blushing. “You’re really not getting the very obvious and explicit hints I’m trying to get across, are you?”
“I need to go take care of the dog, got it.”
Ugh, he wasn’t dumb. He knew exactly what she meant. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
She crossed her arms and glared, confident it was communicated well even in the dark.
“Am I not supposed to talk to you because you’re going to take advantage of me once you get me alone and in the dark?”
He was teasing, but she was deadly serious.
“If so—”
“You’re not respecting the rules,” she interrupted him with a snap. As if it hadn’t been clear the first time they spoke.
The dark figure stayed still. Silent.
Her words came fast. “I’m not the club’s. I’m my father’s daughter. Not a party girl. Not available for . . . conversations,” she explained, mortified suddenly to say these things out loud. Her fingers trembled at her sides. “It’s disrespectful.”
“Am I disrespecting you?” He sounded alarmed.
“Not me. The way things . . . ,” she trailed off.
“Do you think I’m interested in the way things are done?”
She opened her mouth and then realized she wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Your dad . . .”
“Was an Original Member.”
“Bill—” she started.
“OM,” he said curtly. “All the people in this club who look like me are original members. I’m a conscript. The first black conscript. I’m the definition of ‘not the way things are done.’ And yet . . . here we are. Doing them.”
She clenched her fists. This wasn’t the conversation she meant to be having. “I don’t mean because you’re black, idiot. I mean because I’m your president’s daughter.”
“Are we fighting?” he asked, teasing still.
“We aren’t doing anything. Stop pretending you have no idea what I’m talking about.” He needed to comprehend that he couldn’t play this game without risking everything he most wanted, even though she desperately wanted him to play.
Shifting the bike between his legs, he looked up and down the road and put the kickstand down. He got off the bike—the outline of his long body clearly visible in the dark as he took off the helmet and came toward her.
She wasn’t breathing. Hadn’t moved. That liquid heat spilled hot and furious through her body again, as if she’d put her hips snug to the front forks and it’d melted all her insides.
He stopped right in front of her. Legs spread wide. Close enough to see his eyes in the moonlight as he looked down at her. “You don’t have to tell me how the Wardens work, all right? I’m not running off and telling anyone I found you on some dark road and we talked about Peanut’s feeding schedule.” He looked away. “But I feel like, all this reminding me of it, might be because you’re trying to remind yourself?”
The blood throbbed in her head and she couldn’t make heads or tails of the right thing to say. “I don’t . . . I don’t know.” It came out breathless and she didn’t even care.
He tilted his head, as if to kiss her, but he only looked at her mouth. “I like your dress . . .” His lips parted in a tiny smile.
Her body hung right on the edge, waiting. Her pulse shot through her skull.
“What if you asked me . . .” He said it softly. Not hesitant, but light, like the wind roaring high above her, but barely brushing the ends of her hair. “To respect you. Not the club.”
And she did so want to ask. To demand. To just see what he was, other than her father’s man. But she couldn’t do that.
“We could say hi when we passed each other without you worrying about my patch,” he said.
She pulled up. Blinked. What a little shit. “I see why you get along with Jason.”
But he still had that small smile on his face that made her hope he was thinking about her dress, or biting her, or kissing, or something.
The road shifted and the stars drew closer and she was nothing but the wind roaring in her ears, roaring in her fingers. And she felt, maybe only wished, that it moved the same way for him.
He turned away, cracked asphalt grinding underneath his boots. “Get home safe, will you? I’ve got a dog to feed.” He slung over the bike, started it up, and roared off.
Tourmaline stood in the dark. Alone. With the conscript’s taillights disappearing into the shadows. The winds high and threatening. The trees watching. Her frozen at fourteen.
There was no chance she could find her way into that. Not while she wandered in the no-man’s-land between the past and the future. Between childhood and the life she’d thought she’d have by now. It was only two and a half months until she left for UVA. Until she left all this behind and became the person she’d intended to be all along.
Her phone buzzed again and she pulled it out.
Another text from Allen. Someone was asking for you. I told him I didn’t know you just to be safe. It seemed kinda weird. Is this something with your dad? I’m freaked out now. I can’t get hurt. Haha. But really tho.
Her heart stuttered out its beat.
It was impossible to tell from the text who the man was, and she wasn’t about to grill Allen for details to determine whether it was Wayne or Alvarez or a suspicious-uncle Warden who’d seen them together. But it didn’t matter. She suddenly understood what Hayes had been trying to tell her all along. You need to start paying attention to what’s around you.
She heard her father again, sitting across the desk talking.
We’ll keep you safe.
She could not, eventually, evade Wayne. Not without intervention. He wouldn’t grow tired of the game, no matter how far from this town she moved. It didn’t work like that. There would be an end. Someone was going to pay for her actions. Again. So she’d tell her father—but how was Dad going to take care of Wayne? Really? Just talk to him? Command him? Would Wayne obey? Whatever he did, he would do with Alvarez waiting in secret spots, and Tourmaline had the sudden and sickening feeling that the law could be twisted into traps no matter what.
; She stuffed the phone back and lifted her chin to the trees and the stars beyond.
The hairs on her arms crawled straight and rigid. The wind was high with warning as it knocked the branches together. Her eyes snapped to the rustling canopy, and she exhaled. Where the hell was Virginia?
She was going to need Virginia if she wanted to stop Wayne. Without her father.
A bunch of roses sat on the steps of the yellow rural Gothic house turned run-down duplex.
Virginia stopped in her tracks, in one abrupt scratch of her sneakers on the concrete sidewalk. The roses were wrapped in pink paper—full, a thick two dozen with their petals just beginning to open. They were of a red so deep they almost seemed black in the shadows of the porch light. She frowned and stepped over them, heading to the seventies plaid couch beside the door.
Her mother cradled a beer between her knees and a cigarette in her fingers. It was early and she smiled dopily as Virginia sank into the damp cushions.
“How was the pageant?”
“I wasn’t at a pageant.”
“Oh. Where were you?”
Virginia shrugged and stretched her legs onto the sagging porch rail. “Doing shit.” She should have felt hopeful, after the night with Tourmaline. But she mostly only felt just as bone-tired as she had in the parking lot behind the bar. That was usually how she felt around her mother. How else were you supposed to feel about a woman who couldn’t take care of herself, let alone you? It was a waste of time to have feelings about it at all.
“Pete brought me roses.”
“That was nice of him.” Virginia lit a cigarette, her stomach twisting. Where had Pete gotten such beautiful roses?
“He’s a really good guy.”
“Mm-hm,” Virginia said absently, dropping her head to the back of the couch. She stared at the bugs circling the porch light. A cop car gunned past, lights circling. No siren. Another followed.
Done Dirt Cheap Page 7