Tourmaline nodded. “I want to go home,” she said, wiping the tears off her cheeks and trying not to smell—to taste—the inside of the cabin.
“Do you think?”
Tourmaline froze. She hadn’t thought. Hadn’t. Until that very second with the question hanging in Virginia’s voice. Did she think one of the Wardens did this? Who else would have? It had just happened—Wayne hadn’t begun to bloat, or decay. Her heart pounded and she blinked unseeing at the ground. “I was with Cash.”
“I was with Jason.” Virginia turned. “And terribly unrelated, inappropriate side note—I want to hear about all that later.”
Tourmaline glared at her. How could she even care right now?
Virginia met her gaze, eyes clear. “I could have done it. I could do it now. We should have planned for me to do it all along.”
A chill ran up Tourmaline’s arms.
“He died like my old man.”
“Ray,” Tourmaline breathed.
Virginia nodded. “It’s a mercy. To all he touched. To his own soul. And I see what they carry for those lives they take. Someone has to pay a price, and they do.” She spoke almost reverently. With a firmness that took Tourmaline by surprise. Always, Virginia surprised her.
The truth slithered deep down in her bones. She’d been holding the space left vacant by her mother, waiting. And now she could give it up. “Could it have been someone else?” she pleaded to Virginia.
“You tell me.” Virginia glanced back inside and then leaned on her knees. “Do you really think it could be someone else? Where was your dad last night?” She asked the questions gently, prodding Tourmaline toward a truth she already knew.
Won’t be home as long as you’ll be okay by yourself. Dad’s text. She hadn’t thought. She’d seen it and thought only of the open night, calling her name. And now.
Tourmaline dropped her chin to her chest.
Her worst fears had come true.
After a day that involved a dead body and a lot of mowing, Virginia figured she deserved waffles for dinner. Jason hadn’t kicked her out. Wayne’s body would be found. They’d pull the thread back to Hazard, and Virginia would be free. And maybe, if she kept on living, she’d become an accountant, and somehow Jason would always be there. Without Aubrey.
She sank her fork into the waffles, thinking of all those things and feeling that shuddering thrum of hope inside her chest, when a middle-aged man in a shirt and tie slid into the empty side of the booth.
“Ms. Campbell.” He smiled.
She lifted her head and froze. The cop from Hazard’s driveway. The cop who went golfing with Hazard. Whose Impala had caught her and Jason. Who had been parked at the Wardens’ open house. “State Detective Alvarez,” he said with a friendly smile. “Pleased to meet you.” His sunglasses were the wraparound kind, placed on top of his head. His tie had recently been tightened. His shirtsleeves were wrinkled and rolled up. He looked like he’d been in a car for a while. He lifted his finger for the waitress.
“What do you want?” Virginia said through clenched teeth.
“How’s your mother?”
“Is she in trouble?”
He shrugged. “Just making conversation.”
“I’d rather you get to the point,” Virginia said.
The waitress stopped.
“Coffee, please,” he said.
Virginia met his eyes and refused to look away.
His jaw tightened. “What do you know about the Wardens?”
“Jack shit,” Virginia said, pushing a bite of her waffle into a pool of syrup. “Why?”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with them.”
“I went to school with one of their daughters. I hang out with her. I’d hardly call that ‘spending a lot of time’ with the Wardens. Do you hang out with your friends’ parents?” She shoved the bite in her mouth and chewed, still staring. “That’s a little weird.”
He didn’t look bothered. Yet.
“You seem like a straight shooter. I know you’ve got your mom to take care of.”
“And?”
“Did the pageant thing for a while. But not much going on anymore.” He nodded to the waitress as she set down his coffee. “So it would make sense you’re trying to get in with some biker to support you and your mom now.”
Years of pageant training enabled her to keep her face perfectly still. “This all sounds like gossip.”
He smiled. “Maybe so. Maybe so. I think you have some things you want to tell me,” he said.
She snorted. “Yeah? Do people fall for that, much?”
He smiled again and pulled over the container of sugar. “Only people who have something to tell.” He ripped open a packet. “We found a body today in the woods and we’re certain it’s the work of the Wardens. Now, I know you’ve been hanging around them this summer. And I think you seem like the kind of girl that has something to say. And this isn’t anything official right now, you understand. But we can make it official.”
Virginia wanted to grab his ears and shove his face into that little coffee cup, but she just raised an eyebrow. “No, thanks.”
He ripped another sugar packet. “You’re what? Eighteen?” He dumped the sugar and shook his head. “This isn’t the kind of life you want to start for yourself. You know that. You can see exactly where you’re going, can’t you?”
Virginia couldn’t think of anything quick enough to say back, so she just kept staring and chewing. It had always seemed to work on Hazard.
“I’ve seen you so many times y’all look like one girl. Same story. Same look about you.” Alvarez dragged his gaze over her as if he might be looking for something different but didn’t find anything. “Busted up a little young. Some kind of tragedy hanging over you like a cloud. You attract the same kinds of things. Broken and busted and tragedy. At eighteen, you’ll still look alive, you’ll still have some youth, something that seems like it could be called potential.” He looked out over the diner and picked up the mug as if he weren’t even talking to her anymore, but to himself. “By twenty-three you’ll be nothing but more busted and more tragic. A few babies and some stretch marks will rub off anything that seems like potential. The only way you can get anywhere is to get out of here. Out of these hills and into some nice city where you can get a nice job. College, even. This is your chance, Virginia. We can figure out a situation that’s better than the one you have here.”
Virginia dragged in a deep breath through her nose, looking down at her plate. He was a cop. A cop. She couldn’t lunge across the table and choke a cop. She couldn’t stab him with a fork. A cop. Everything inside her wanted to scream how wrong he was, but she had nothing to say. Closing her eyes, she heard Hazard talk about moving on to better things and realized how similar Alvarez sounded to Hazard—you’re worth nothing until I can help you. She spoke calmly. “You want to help me, huh? How much?”
“It’s not about the price. It’s about what you want.” He slurped his coffee and set it down. “I’m not asking you to do anything official. I’m not asking you to testify against the Wardens. I just want to hear what you have to say. About the Wardens. About what you know about their criminal activity. Or their version of heroic activity.” He seemed to roll his eyes without actually doing it.
Unbidden, all the things she knew about the death of her father jumped into Virginia’s mind. She looked down and stabbed her waffles.
“And then we’ll get you out of here. What now, Virginia Campbell?”
Her chin jerked up.
He took another sip of coffee. “Of course, you could always come with me and we can talk about your years of drug dealing instead.”
Swallowing the waffles, she looked out the window, at the lights of the mall across the highway. What now, Virginia Campbell?
But the thing about knowing you weren’t worth anything to anyone: That knowledge made it easy to tell when someone was giving you bullshit. She put her chin in her hand and snarled, “Fuck you.”
>
He shrugged, as if he’d expected as much. Ripping open another sugar packet he dumped it in and glanced at her. “You know they found a weapon.”
She gave him a flat look, hoping he didn’t have a sixth sense for when someone’s heart rate went up.
“The .38.” Alvarez said, eyebrow lifting. “You know the one, don’t you, Virginia?”
Virginia tried not to panic. Tried and failed.
“That .38 was reported stolen five years ago. It’s Calvin Harris’s gun.” He took another drink of coffee. “I guess they found it, though.”
Tourmaline stared down at the Shovelhead, fluorescent lights humming above her and a YouTube video pulled up in her hand. She watched it even though she’d already watched it a hundred times. She just needed to change the oil. Simple. If she could put gas in the Shovelhead, she could change the oil.
She took a deep breath, set everything down, and began looking through her father’s tools for a wrench.
The oil was in the middle of draining when the garage door opened; she jumped, kicking the oil pan. Oil sloshed onto her toes, but she grabbed her phone and pretended to be using it as Jason walked in.
He frowned. “What’s up, T?”
“Oh.” She waved her phone. “Nothing.”
“Mm-hm.”
Suddenly she realized the phone looked more suspicious than the oil pan. “I needed to call school.”
He laughed.
She remembered it was nine at night.
“I’m not . . .” She exhaled and looked around. How much did he know about her and Cash, anyway?
“You changing the oil?”
She nodded, too afraid to say it out loud.
“It probably needs it.” He poked through the tool chest. “You see a locknut wrench in here? I can’t remember who I lent it to.”
What the hell was a locknut wrench? “No.” She grabbed a shop towel and wiped off her toes and the little bit of oil that had landed on the floor. “How did you learn to do stuff on bikes?”
“By doing it. And asking for help when I didn’t know what I was doing.” He met her gaze. “Even when it made me feel like a dipshit.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Listen, T.” He cleared his throat and went back to searching through the tool chest. “I, um . . .”
She froze and waited, heart beating hard. Was this about Cash? Or Virginia?
“I’m not interested in getting involved between you and anyone else, okay? That’s not my realm. But I’m not blind. Your dad is going to find out. And it’s not going to go well. I’m supporting Cash, but you both need to be careful and think through all that you’re doing, okay? That’s my weird speech about that.” He shut a drawer, still not looking at her. “God, I’d kill myself if I ever had a daughter.”
She thought about that and then laughed. “Karma would probably kill you first.”
He looked mortified.
It was strange. Stranger to think she was in a place where she could see Jason looking mortified at something she said.
“It’s okay, you know.” She waited until his gaze flickered to hers and repeated. “I know. It’s fine.”
“It’s not . . . ,” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“If it was any other person, maybe it’d be weirder. But . . .” It was Virginia. And Virginia’s eighteen was not Tourmaline’s eighteen and it would be silly to believe something different. “She needs someone with power, who won’t use it against her. Anything less wouldn’t ever hold her respect.”
He nodded, back to avoiding looking at her. “I promise I won’t . . . I won’t use that. I don’t want . . .” His mouth tightened and he looked at his feet. “Thanks, T. Let me know if you need any help, all right?”
“Will do.”
The oil had finished draining. Pulling out the drain tube, she screwed the cap back on and then began the hunt for the oil filter. Somewhere underneath. By the back tire. On her hands and knees, she carefully eased under the bike and looked around.
Someone came in and slammed the door.
Tourmaline jerked up. God, when had the garage gotten so popular?
But it was just Virginia.
“Hey you,” Tourmaline said, half frowning, half smiling. Not sure why Virginia was back at this time of night. “Long time no see.”
Virginia fumbled with the pack of smokes. “We’re fucked.”
Tourmaline sank back on her heels. “What?”
The lights hummed above and cast a sickening glow on Virginia’s face. Her fingers shook as she lit the smoke and sucked a deep breath in.
Tourmaline knew without asking. Knew without knowing. Something was about to go wrong. Again. Always. She hung her head. Stared at the wrench in her hands. “What is it?”
“Me. I fucked up.” Virginia stabbed her fingers into her chest, and then took another long drag on the smoke and passed it to Tourmaline.
Tourmaline shook her head.
Virginia paused, staring at the outstretched cigarette. Suddenly, her expression faltered and collapsed in on itself and she lifted eyes full of tears. “I didn’t know the gun was already stolen. He stole it from your dad years ago. That cop—”
The garage did a slow spin.
The smoke twisted with intent.
And Virginia was crying.
We planted Dad’s own gun. At the scene Dad—or some Warden—had made.
Tourmaline’s stomach dove and all the air left her chest. She sank against the bike and stared.
“I didn’t know,” Virginia whispered. “I’m sorry. We should have left it. We shouldn’t have tried to get it pinned on Hazard. It’s my fault. I’m such a fuckup. I am so sorry. You trusted me. And I let you down.”
“It’s not your fault, V.” It was all hers. Only hers. It was her family.
The cigarette drooped in Virginia’s fingers; tears left black streaks of makeup on her cheeks. “I just don’t understand why I can’t keep anything right. It’s hopeless.”
“It can’t be. I won’t allow it,” Tourmaline said, the words echoing in her hollowed-out chest.
What was there left to do? What could they possibly use? Tourmaline found her own eyes burning and she rubbed them hard. She closed her eyes behind her hands and almost wished she hadn’t tried, had just lain on the road and let Wayne run over her that night. But then she remembered Cash’s bike in the dark and Virginia in the woods and the sizzle of the sunshine above her as she told Jason why she was friends with Virginia. When girls stick together in this world, they’re harder to pick off. Tourmaline lifted her chin and waited for Virginia to look at her. “We’ve got one thing left. But I can’t ask you to do this. You have to decide for yourself.”
Virginia sniffed. “What is it?”
“It” was the business card with the raised edges of a seal. The man who’d come looking for her in the rain. Tourmaline swallowed. “The FBI.”
There was a long pause.
The lights hummed. The bugs droned.
“Yes or no. It’s your call. I can’t do it without you.” Tourmaline’s voice cracked. “Without what you know.”
Virginia took another long pull on the smoke and exhaled it in a long, hard rush of smoke. She didn’t look at Tourmaline.
The crickets sang louder. The quiet itself seemed to move.
Virginia’s chin trembled and she glanced to Tourmaline. “Ride or die, bitch.”
Tourmaline snorted.
Virginia chuckled over her cigarette, fingers still shaking.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that their throats were too tight and their chests cinched, because they were laughing and crying all at once.
Tourmaline waited at the clubhouse steps with her phone in hand. She had to scroll way down the messages to find Anna May, sadness hitting the back of her throat when she saw how long it’d been since they’d talked. Her Fourth of July text was still unanswered. She flexed her thumbs, took a deep breath, and sighed.
It’s been a wild summer. Wan
t to make a plan for brunch the day before I leave for school? I’ll buy!
She and Anna May wouldn’t be best friends. They might not even be friends. But their friendship wasn’t going to end the way it was trying to. It would go quietly and peacefully, with good feelings and great memories and goddamn brunch, if Tourmaline had anything to do with it.
Her dad’s bike roared into the clearing. “Tourmaline?” he asked, completely confused. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
She tilted her head and frowned. Was he joking? The only vehicle in the lot was the Shovelhead, and she had a helmet between her feet. Had he missed it or ignored it? She gestured to the bike. “Changed the oil.”
He looked between her and the bike. “So you’ve been riding it still?” he asked in a strangled voice. “I was thinking of selling it.”
“I’ll buy it.”
“You don’t want—”
“I know what I want,” Tourmaline interrupted. “I’ll buy it from you.”
He didn’t respond, sighing and rubbing his face. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
The control was taking over his tone. The assurance. Strange to realize now that it was defensive.
She lifted her chin and forced herself to meet his eyes. “Where were you the other night?”
“What other night?”
“Two nights ago. The storms.”
“I told you. I went out. Did something happen?” He looked worried. “Did you see Wayne?”
It stabbed deeply inside Tourmaline’s chest to see that flicker of concern cross his expression. That concern not for her, but for maintaining his lies. The breeze stirred the pines, whispering in the space between them.
Her father stood with his shoulders squared and his chin high, the sun behind his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
“Tell you what?”
She closed her eyes and just sat there, the aching and weakness heavy in her bones. How could he have let her keep the burden of her mother’s imprisonment for so long? When all along, the law had only been after him. She dragged in a deep breath and forced her head up. “I thought people who lied to me would look different. I didn’t know you could love someone and hurt them as much at the same time. I know the truth. I know all of it.”
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