Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(38)
“Dylan says this is bigger than them.”
“So he mentioned them specifically?”
“No, but since neither of those agencies has a drug that provides superhuman strength, I’m going to assume it is.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“Get what?”
“You’re trying to figure out how to use this drug so you can fight off law enforcement if they come for you?”
“I’m done with this conversation, Kayla. I’m sorry I brought you into this. You’re free to leave. I won’t hold it against you. I promise. But seriously. Enough.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. Then knock it off! I’m glad that you feel you have a frame of reference when grade-A sci-fi crazy is thrust into the middle of your life. But I don’t, OK? And I’ve had one of the craziest lives of anyone I know.
“I’m doing the best I can with this. But you’re going to have to forgive me for thinking we’re in uncharted waters here and that a lot of the old rules don’t apply anymore. This drug, wherever it came from, it was given to me by a man with crazy black ops skills who assumed a cover identity for three months so he could earn my trust. If you think I’m going to try to fight off a man like that with the FBI, who didn’t capture the Bannings for over a decade, by the way, you’re the one who’s not thinking clearly. I want to know how this pill works, and I can’t exactly walk into a CVS and ask the pharmacist, OK? But if me trying to get some knowledge here freaks you out, fine. I’ll clear out of here and figure out my next move, and you can forget we ever met up today.”
Kayla swallows, but Charley can tell what she’d really like to do is roll her eyes and groan. But she doesn’t do either. Instead she turns to Marty and says, “Why aren’t you helping me here?”
“I don’t know you that well, to be frank,” he says. “It’s Charley I’m here to help. And seems to me if this Dylan guy was such a threat to her, he wouldn’t have given her a bunch of pills that make it easy for her to rip his face off.”
“People can do a lot of harm from a distance,” Kayla whispers. “Especially powerful people. We need to find out how powerful this particular guy is.”
“Sure. But if he were all that powerful, what the hell does he need Charley for?” Marty asks. “I mean, no offense, darling. I’m crazy about you, but you’re not exactly the leader of the free world.”
It’s a damn good point, she thinks for the first time. Things have moved so fast these past few hours she hasn’t stopped to ask the most important question. Why me?
“Look,” Marty says. “Charley’s right. There’s no frame of reference for this stuff. I’d rather see her do something than worry herself into crazy by speculating about who this asshole is when she could be figuring out what he gave her. If she wants to try to make the most of a colossally shitty situation, I’m in. I’ve got a gun in my truck, and I know my way around some really sketchy places.”
Kayla’s chest rises and falls.
“Fine,” she finally says. “I’ve got a gun, too.”
16
The bar looks like the dirt beside the irrigation canal burped up an old trailer it couldn’t swallow.
There’s no sign, just a smattering of decrepit cars and pickup trucks that suggests most of the clientele inside is more meth than man.
According to Marty, it’s the kind of dive where the regulars find their favorite stool by noon, are singing along to every song on the jukebox by three, and then by dinnertime are lecturing anyone who’ll listen about how the world’s done them wrong their whole miserable lives. By eleven they’re ready for a fight. Or something worse, if they’ve managed to score a pick-me-up from one of the resident dealers, who may or may not also be the bartender.
It’s ten to eleven now. She’s showered and brushed her hair out, and she’s wearing a fresh outfit Kayla picked up for her at the nearest Walmart. Jeans and a baggy powder-blue T-shirt. She looks like a lot of women do when they go grocery shopping, but in this hellhole she’s bound to draw attention just because her clothes don’t stink of spilled beer.
Attention is exactly what she gets when she pushes the door open.
A blast of stale beer along with something more acrid and unidentifiable hits her with enough force to make her eyes water.
There’s a pool table off to her left. At first she thinks the men gathered around it are in the midst of some verbal altercation that’s about to turn physical. Two of them are nose to nose; one’s shouting into the face of the other in a high-pitched, barking voice. And he’s using lots of hand gestures while he does it. It takes her a second to realize the man’s aggression is reserved for the asshole supervisor he’s describing in his shrill tale of workplace woe. His volume and his movements are probably the result of whatever’s got him hopped-up, and the guy he’s talking to doesn’t put distance between them because he’s too drunk to be bothered. The most unnerving thing about this little scene is that no one, not his friends and not the bartender, is asking him to quiet the hell down.
Heads turn as she passes. She feels the men’s stares like pinpricks on her skin. Each look almost slides past her, then catches on the sight of her bare arms and braless chest and youthful features, and locks in like motion-activated security cameras finding an intruder.