Gun Shy(38)

I don’t say anything. Not when he touches the car, his fingers almost tender as they skate along her polished curves, and not when he lifts the crowbar up and smashes it down onto the metal, leaving a deep dent and taking layers of paint off.

He smashes that crowbar down, and I flinch, imagining it’s my skull. I know that’s what he’d prefer.

A few more hits and he throws the crowbar to the ground at my feet, no hint of congeniality in his expression any more.

“We’ll bring the cadaver dogs from Reno,” he says, wiping his hands on his pant legs. “If you’ve got a body in here, you can move it, but we’ll still find the trail.”

“I don’t have a body here — you don’t even know if she’s dead!”

“You got her stashed away in that shithole you call a house, then?”

“I don’t have her,” I snap. “I don’t know what happened to her, okay?”

Damon winces, looking down at his hand. It’s swathed in a thick bandage, and I can see fresh blood rising through the white gauze.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Your hand.”

He frowns, wiggling his fingers beneath the bandage. “She was a sweetheart, that dog of yours,” he says, and I notice the faint shape his blood forms under the bandage, a half-crescent between his thumb and forefinger that looks like a nasty bite. A deep one. “Somebody ran her over, so sad. Can you believe they didn’t even stop? She was on her way down to your place. Must have known you were back.”

I’m not sure whether to believe him.

“Somebody smashed their car right into her.” He pauses. “She was in such a bad way. I had to put a bullet in her to end her suffering. You ever seen a dog die? They’re survivalists. Dogs are so fuckin’ stubborn. Takes forever for them to stop fighting.”

My eyes are burning, and there’s a lump in my throat. I loved that dog. I loved her and he shot her. I killed his wife. I have no right to be pissed.

“Sad, isn’t it? Cassie was beside herself. Christ, I had to sleep next to her all night. Cried so hard she wouldn’t let go of me. You remember how she can be.”

The image of Damon sleeping beside my Cassie is a punch in the face; rage blossoms inside me, and it must show on my face, because Damon laughs, resting his hand atop his gun holster. “Hey, whoa, don’t go getting the wrong idea. She’s like a daughter to me.” His smile dries up. “She’s everything to me.”

Something in his words disturbs me, but I can’t figure out what. Maybe I’m just jealous as fuck that he got to wipe away her tears while I slept alone.

“Be seeing you, Bentley,” Damon says, walking back inside like he didn’t just bust my car up. “Let’s go check that well,” he says to Chris, who’s just standing there like a goddamn mute, his hands folded neatly behind his back. Let’s go check that well. I don’t even bother to address that statement. We live on state land, modern day squatters in our own town. Damon can search the well, hell, he can move into the well, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.

I follow him through the workshop, but before I can cut him off, he’s at my toolbox, staring down at the photo, the only thing in the world that I have left of Cassandra Carlino.

He plucks the photograph out of my toolbox and holds it up to me. “I’ll be taking this,” he says, stuffing the photograph into his pocket. “Guess you’ll have to find something else to jerk off to, huh?”

And his tone is light, but his eyes are fucking incinerating me, they’re full of so much hate. He climbs into the patrol car, only taking his eyes off me when he’s driving onto the shoulder, signaling to get back on to the highway.

I make a mental note to go home and burn the clothes I was wearing when I last saw Jennifer in the woods.



“Bentley,” a voice barks about an hour later as I’m working underneath a car in Lawrence’s garage. Jesus, what’s with all the visitors?

I almost drop my wrench on my face. I know that voice. Mayor Carter. I don’t want to see his fat ass today. I pretend like I haven’t heard him and keep tightening the nut on the bolt I’ve just affixed to the underside of old Mrs. Lassiter’s Buick.

This damn car may as well be held together with Band-Aids and honeycombed rust, but the old lady owner is practically a fossil, and she knows I’ll only charge her for the cost of the parts.

Seems wrong to charge folks for things when they don’t have any money to begin with.

“Hey, kid,” the voice shrills again, “my car’s got a dent in it. I need it fixed. Today.”

I grip the wrench tightly. It takes everything inside me not to roll out from underneath the car and punch Mayor Carter’s face until it caves in, but I hold on to my rage, letting it disperse and settle back into my veins like dirty coffee grounds in the bottom of the pot.

“Busy!” I yell, continuing with my task. Knowing my luck, the engine in this car will fall on my face and crush me if I’m under here too long. “Try Tonopah.”

The fucker kicks my boot. Kicks it! It’s like a hotshot of rage-spiked adrenalin to the heart. I squeeze the wrench in my hand so tight my fingers start to tingle and go numb.

“I let you stay in this town because you’re the only one with a fucking clue about new cars with those computerized things in them,” he says, crouching down beside the car to talk to me. “I’ve got a mind to call the Sheriff and search your property, son. We might just find us something of value.”