Just One Kiss (Fool's Gold #10)(80)

They were so young, Justice thought, watching the kids move in formation. Innocent. They were worried about things like grades and prom. He respected that, and envied them their ordinary lives. He’d known Bart Hanson wasn’t like other fathers by the time he’d turned seven. By his tenth birthday, he knew that unlike criminals on TV, criminals in real life often walked or were never caught at all.

Behind the band came a group of men pulling little kids in wagons. The wagons were decorated with flowers and ribbons, the children dressed in their Sunday best. All around them women sighed and called out, waving to their families.

Angel raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I haven’t decided.” Angel tilted his head, as if studying a difficult problem.

The first group of bike riders appeared. Justice spotted Lillie right away. Like her friends, she was dressed in a pink shirt and white jeans. Tiny flowers had been woven in her hair and matched the ribbons and flowers on her bike. The six girls rode around each other in slow circles and figure eights. Across the street Patience snapped pictures.

Lillie saw Justice and waved. He waved back, then pulled a small camera out of his pocket and started taking pictures himself. Beside him, Angel snorted.

“Yours?” the man on the other side of him asked.

Justice didn’t recognize him, so he assumed he was a tourist.

“I have three boys,” the man continued with a sigh. “Great kids. Always wanted a little girl.” He lowered his voice. “My wife says no way. She’s done.” He gave a shrug. “It would have been nice.”

The man drifted back to his wife and kids. Angel stared at Justice. “We’re opening the business here?”

“Why not?”

The two men walked away from the parade. They headed toward the lake where it was quiet.

“Consuelo has agreed to be an instructor,” Justice said. “She’ll be teaching our students and offering classes for people in town. Self-defense, general conditioning.”

Angel shook his head. “Okay, now you’re screwing with me for sport. Consuelo working with the community? Teaching little old ladies how to fend off attackers?”

“From what I hear, the women in town already know how to do that. Having a change of heart?”

“I don’t know. I’m more worried none of this is real and I’m in a hospital somewhere hooked up to the good drugs.”

“We want you to handle the corporate work. Act as our liaison. Sell the company.”

Angel stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

Justice grinned. “Yes, I am. Ford is more the type. We were thinking you could design the curriculum. Come up with the various exercises for the retreats.”

Angel swore under his breath. “You had me going.”

“I could tell.”

“I could kill you, you know.”

“You could try,” Justice said, not worried.

“You’re injured. That gives me an edge. Not that I need it.”

Justice doubted anyone else would have guessed he was still recovering from getting shot. But Angel would have noticed the slight hesitation in the way he moved, the way he favored one side.

“I can’t wait to see how this all plays out,” Justice said. “You in Fool’s Gold.”

Angel shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I grew up in West Virginia. Coal-mining town. I know what it’s like to live where everybody knows your business. Where you take care of your neighbors and pull together in hard times.”

Something Justice would never have guessed. “Looking to get back to that?”

“Maybe. If it’s not too late.”

Justice turned to his friend. He recognized the combination of longing and resignation on the other man’s face. Angel wanted to be something other than he was, but wasn’t sure it was possible. Did the training run too deep? Could he fit in with people who had never seen such horrors, never had to commit them in the first place?

That Harry Potter author had it right. Her villain had ripped apart his soul through the act of murder. Taking another life did tear at a man’s being, leaving him less than what he had been before. The question for men like Angel and himself was whether there was enough left to feel like a person.

“They don’t let you live on the fringes in this place,” Justice told him. “They’ll hunt you down and force you to belong, whether you want to or not.”

Angel turned to him. “Are you selling or warning?”

“Both. You in?”

* * *

“I REMEMBER this place,” Patience said, following Justice from the car. “We used to camp up here when I was a kid.” She looked at him and grinned. “The older kids came up here to park and make out.”

“Did you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “No. I wasn’t that wild in high school. I mean I dated, of course. There was kissing. But not full-on making out.”

The air temperature was cooler up here than in town. The sky was blue and the air seemed fresher, somehow. Justice had asked Patience to help him navigate a few back roads as he searched for the right tract of land for the advanced obstacle course. The one they would build by the warehouse would work for corporate retreats and casual training, but for their more serious work, they would need something more challenging.