Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

“All they had.”

I glanced at the foil package of peanuts in Jill’s hand. “Thanks,” I said. “I can’t believe a random rest stop in Iowa doesn’t have gourmet vending machines.”

She nodded, sitting down on the picnic table next to me and unwrapping the first of three candy bars. “I am already composing a fucking fierce letter of complaint.”

I looked past her to where Trim leaned down into the guts of the Nova’s engine. We’d pulled over a few miles down the road and cut the tracker off Mats’ ankle, tossing it into the trees. Shortly after that, the car had started belching black smoke, and then the shaking had begun. I could see Trim’s weird, pale face illuminated by the light of his phone’s flashlight. Beyond him, like sleeping mountains, a trio of big rigs were in for a few hours of sleep, one cab lit up with the blue flash of a screen, the others completely dark.

“They won’t do anything as long as they think Mats is alive,” Jill said, taking a bite of the first candy bar and leaning back on her elbows. “Ellie, I mean. She’s okay.”

I nodded. She meant to be kind. “Sure. Thanks.” I glanced at the candy bar. “You should eat actual food.”

“Actual food just makes me sick,” she said. “Don’t try to be my big brother, Maddie. That ship sailed a long time ago.”

I nodded, staring off into the gloom and shivering in the cold. “I think I’m divorced. No matter what happens here. Either way, I can’t see Carrie sticking around. And she’ll take Elspeth. And I can’t say she’d be wrong. My mother’s still out there, and who knows what other delightful prizes my father has left as my inheritance.”

She digested this for a moment.

“You hear from her?”

“No. Don’t expect to.” I laughed, a sudden bark. “I get a text from Lisa every time Marcus calls 9-1-1 again or when Ivan gets into it with the Bekvalacs over noise at night, but nothing from Carrie.”

Jill chewed silently. I swallowed and fell silent, thinking about the ruin of my life. I’d been so proud of my progress—a job, a family, my GED. No more hangovers, no more angry nights brawling. Now it all looked so small, so fragile. So easy for my father to just blow away like dust. I’d never really had anything.

“You hear from them a lot, huh? Your neighbors.”

I nodded. “We’re kind of close. Fuck that, we are close. We’re in this weird building all by itself. Nothing in sight for two blocks. They keep shutting off the power, the water, because they forget we’re still there. The cops won’t come any more because the kid keeps calling them. And we all know the letter’s coming any day now, where they tell you they’ve finally sold the building and the project’s back on and we have like a week to get the fuck out, and fuck all we can do about it.” I sighed. “Sometimes it feels like a family. Sometimes I stop and I think, we’re all just neighbors.” I swallowed hard. “Sometimes I think, you’re all I’ve got.”

There were several excruciating beats of silence.

“That’s a fucking shame,” Jill said. She balled up the candy wrapper. “I’m sorry for it, Maddie—I am. And I’m here, right now. But just because your wife is gonna leave you doesn’t mean you get to call me in like a goddamn relief pitcher to make you feel less lonely.”

I nodded again, sliding off the table and pacing, the gravel crunching under my boots. “I know that.” I looked over at Trim. “He any good with cars? Every minute here is a fucking nightmare.”

She shrugged. “That heap is still running, isn’t it?” She turned to study him. “Damien is a custom model, sure, but he knows some shit. He’s gotten us this far.”

I said nothing. I thought of my daughter and clenched my fists.

“Come on,” Jill said, sliding off the table. “Might as well get some sleep while he works on the car.”

I nodded and followed her back to the car, nodding at Trim as we approached. Jill took the back and I took the front, each of us stretching out on the wide, unbroken surface of the old-school seats, like two cheap sofas in a car.

I stared up at the tattered cloth roof and couldn’t imagine falling asleep.

####

“Maddie.”

I blinked, opening my eyes. The darkness had a different tone to it, a deeper, more solid. It was quiet.

“Someone’s here,” Jill whispered from the backseat.

I glanced at the driver’s side door and saw it was unlocked.

“Trim?”

“No idea.”

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with oxygen. The best thing to do was take the initiative. It happened, sometimes, when I was working the floor or the door—some asshole thought he’d been disrespected and decided to follow me to the bathroom, and I’d find himself trapped in a vulnerable position. So I’d learned, the hard way, that when I heard someone come into the bathroom at Queenies, quiet and stealthy, it was best to be first through the stall door.

I reached up over my shoulder and found the door handle. I pulled until it clicked and the door sagged open behind me. I slowly raised my leg and braced one foot against the steering column, pushing myself into the door. It creaked open an inch, then another. I slid down onto my back and rolled under the car, reaching up to gently close the door with one hand.

I rolled onto my belly and scanned around. By the rear passenger door, I saw a pair of black pants and steel-tipped boots. A second later I heard a ring tapping against the window.

And then, a gunshot.

The rear windshield shattered, and the boots skittered back from the car, disappearing from his view.

“Jesus, kid!”

The boots returned, joined by two other pairs. I backed out from under the car just as someone grabbed onto my ankles and dragged me free, scraping me raw on the rocky dirt.

I rolled himself over and launched myself upward, crashing into what felt like three hundred pounds of someone. I landed a solid punch on the big guy’s crotch. He was short and barrel-shaped, wearing a motorcycle cut and leathers. I was rewarded with a soft, wheezing exclamation. He staggered back and sat down on the ground, hard.

I whirled and found a gun in my face.

“Settle down, Renik,” Chewing Gum said, holding up his hands. He looked like a bookie—rings on his fingers and that thick-skinned look you got from sitting under fluorescent lights all the time. He snapped a thick wad of pink gum with a horrifying open-mouthed technique that would have seen him denied entry at Queenies on principle alone. He leaned over and looked past me to where the big guy was still sitting, doing breathing exercises with a wide-eyed enthusiasm. “Jesus, Milky, have some fucking pride.”

Four of them. Chewing Gum just stood there with casual authority, relaxed and unconcerned. Two other men I might have recognized from Paradise. One had a gun pointed at Jill, on her knees between them. Our eyes met, and then she glanced at Chewing Gum.

“How’d you find us?”

He smiled. It was an easy smile, an automatic and meaningless expression. I’d seen tons of guys like him, Smilers. They were always happy, always laughing. But it didn’t mean anything. There was no joy there. It was just for show.

He gestured, and I looked past him at the trio of trucks slumbering away. The black truck, busted up and dented, sat next to them. “The Outfit and the Teamsters are cozy, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said jovially. “Our brothers on the roads been bird-dogging y’all the whole way. Now, come on. Where’s your Da, kid?” He turned to glance at Jill and winked. “Good to see you again, sweetheart.”

Jill looked like she was contemplating the thought process of a man who would flirt while a woman was on her knees with a gun to her head. I thought it pretty likely that Chewing Gum hadn’t had a voluntary date in a loooong time.

He looked back at me like he could hear my thoughts. “Come on, kid. You can’t pay the toll and we can’t just him walk out on his arrangement, okay? We’ll let you and sugartits here skate.” He spread his hands and grinned, the immense wad of gum appearing in flashes behind his too-white teeth. After a moment he sighed and grimaced, cocking his head. “You should know, if I gotta put more effort into this, it’s … not gonna go well for you.”

I was impressed. I’d met a lot of criminal middle managers, and few of them had this guy’s slick cheer. Most of them went straight to beating the shit out of you. I got the impression that this guy didn’t like wasted effort. Or breaking a sweat.

I took stock. The fat one, Milky, was still on his knees cupping his balls, breathing steadily and staring straight ahead as if he could see Death on the horizon, coming for him, as if he’d just now considered his mortality and didn’t like the general concept. The skinny guy with the hardware in his hand was focused on Jill, staring at her in an intent way I didn’t much care for.

There was a window. There was always a window. Guys like Chewing Gum controlled situations by simply asserting they were in charge. And there was a window between that assertion and any sort of action, a moment when someone like Chewing Gum would wait to see what happened and hold his fire.

I reared back and kicked Chewing Gum in the stomach.

He sailed backwards into the Blue Ruin. I used my moment of surprise and spun, charging at Leathers, grabbing onto the gun with both hands and shoving it upwards as I crashed into him. We both went down to the ground, the gun dropping and skittering away. I grabbed blindly at the cut and took hold with both hands, shoving the man down and straddling him. Letting go with one hand, I brought my fist down twice, pain lancing up my arm as I made contact with bone.

I rolled away and scrambled to my feet. A moment later, the skinny guy slammed into me, cursing. I clipped the Blue Ruin as I went down, pain exploding in my side. I reached up and got my hands on the guy’s face, pushing my thumbs into his eyes. One thing I’d learned working the door: If you gave an inch, they would swamp you. You had to push and shove and never let up. You had to overwhelm them and never let up.

The skinny guy screamed. A moment later, a gunshot ripped the air, and everything stopped. I stared down at Skinny, then slowly pushed myself up. Skinny rolled up into a ball and cupped his hands over his face.

Chewing Gum had a shiny chrome automatic in his hand. He stood over us with a deeply bored expression on his face, then winced a little, one hand going to his belly. I sincerely hoped I’d caused some kind of internal bleeding. “Now, you don’t want to do any of that,” he said. He sounded kind of amused, as if getting kicked in the stomach was just part of his usual day, and winked at Jill, whose superpower had always been the ability to charm leathery old men. “I got what the grown-ups call latitude when it comes to delivering you alive or dead, so the next time one of you moves without my permission I’m just gonna shoot you. Okay? Just gonna shoot you and see what happens. Okay?” He nodded, grimacing. “Now, where’s Mats Renik?”

I swallowed. Over at the other end of the rest area, one of the big rigs roared into life, the engine settling immediately into a loud chugging as the driver prepped to get back on the road.

I thought furiously. They wouldn’t think of the trunk right away, because they didn’t know Mats was dead. They’d think of it eventually, though.

“Let me help clarify things,” Chewing Gum said, regaining some of his weird, dark cheer. “No one gives a shit about you two. No one cares if you live or die. But there’s a profit and loss on Mats Renik, and the more effort I have to put into retrieving that piece of shit, the less profit there is for me. So I’m looking to be efficient rather than elegant. Bottom line, if I don’t hear some good news in the next few seconds, I’m going to pick one of you randomly to shoot in the head. If that doesn’t inspire the other person to help me out, then fuck you both.”

He said this with a blank lack of emotion. I believed, in that moment, that he truly didn’t care about us beyond how much trouble we were going to be for him. We both stared at him. Chewing Gum’s face flowed into a deformed smirk and he shrugged as if to say that’s all I got.

I closed my eyes. I had no good choices. If I handed over Mats’ body, word got back to the Spillaines and that put Carrie and Ellie in danger. If I stayed mute, they killed me and eventually searched the Ruin and Carrie and Ellie paid the price anyway. So that meant I had to make a move, which was probably going to end terribly, which brought us right back to the start again.

Still, nothing to lose. Miguel used to preach the higher power stuff. You weren’t always in charge. You had to accept your powerlessness. When all your choices were bad, he’d say, just pick one.

Chewing Gum sighed. “Fine. Let’s take a walk.”

Hands slipped under my armpits, and I was pulled to my feet. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead as we were marched back towards the black truck. It was in sad shape from the accident, the passenger door caved in, the finish scraped. The noise of the rig got louder but everything else seemed to recede from me. The moment was approaching. I was curiously impressed with Chewing Gum.

Why walk us to the truck?

Because Chewing Gum was smart. And experienced. And lazy.

Because he didn’t want to have to carry us there after putting a bullet in our heads.

I didn’t look at Jill. I didn’t have to. After all these years, after all the bitter voicemails and angry moments, I felt her. I felt my connection to her, a thin spider line that had survived all the years. When we reached the truck, they turned us around and Chewing Gum mimed at us, pushing the palms of his hands down towards the ground. Kneel.

With the roar of the rig’s motor around us, we knelt. I stared at the Ruin a few hundred feet away and waited for the moment. I would have one chance. I knew Jill would move when I did, I didn’t even have to wonder about that. But if we were going to rush them, we needed the—

Behind Chewing Gum, the Blue Ruin’s trunk noiselessly opened.

It lifted up slowly, like in a dream, and a silhouette crept out. A skinny silhouette shaped just like Trim. As Chewing Gum made a little speech about how little he cared what we did, I watched Trim creep around to the driver’s side door and climb into the Ruin.

“Last chance,” Chewing Gum said, ostentatiously checking the gun over.

I watched the Ruin begin to creep, the brake lights flashing. It turned towards us and began to move. Under cover of the big rig’s rumble, the car moved in disorienting silence, a shadow growing larger while Chewing Gum counted to some random number in his head before shooting one of us.

The rig’s horn blasted. The driver leaned out of his cab and shouted something. Chewing Gum tried to ignore him, but after a few seconds he turned and threw his hands up in the air. “What, for fuck’s sake?” he shouted.

The Ruin plowed into him.

It wasn’t going faster than twenty, twenty five, but it knocked him over with some prejudice. I dove to my left and rolled on the rocky ground. The Ruin smacked into the black pickup with a hollow bang that briefly cut through the noise, bouncing back with the familiar sound of the engine stalling. I wondered if the Blue Ruin had somehow been designed to stall at the slightest discomfort, if that had somehow been a selling point for the engineers.

When I got to my feet, Jill was already pulling open the rear passenger door. I sprinted for the car as Trim hunched over the wheel, the starter once again grinding like it was made of glass and pebbles. The big guy called Milky surged up, gun in hand, and I swerved, throwing myself at him. I knocked him down as he squeezed the trigger, the sound of the gun cutting through the noise. I landed on top of the fat bastard and pushed my knee into his arm, pinning it to the ground.

Milky howled. Behind us, the big rig slapped into gear and began to rumble towards the exit.

I brought my fist down into Milky’s jowly face, feeling a thrill, an old, familiar sense of exultation. As a kid, orphaned and alone, I’d surveyed the ruin of my life—my shitty room at Uncle Pal’s, my public school debut—and I’d taken comfort in trying to destroy it further. A furious orgy of destruction. Punching a hole in the wall gave me five seconds of this peaceful, suspended sensation, like my own internal gravity had been turned off. The worse things I did to myself, to others, to anything, the better I felt.

It never lasted.

I’d spent a long time trying to turn that part of myself off, but after all these years and all those meetings and all the work it came roaring back like a sponge dipped into water, expanding to fill me and take control of my limbs. I smashed my fist into Milky’s face and felt everything click into place for a second. A puzzle piece fitting perfectly.

A footstep behind me made me whirl around. Chewing Gum crashed into me like a linebacker, driving me backwards into the pickup. My head bounced on the metal, adding a dent to it and filling me up with a screeching ringing noise that resolved into the mating call of Jill Pilowsky as she leaped onto Chewing Gum and slapped at him with her bare hands, a rain of blows that confused the shit out out of him, making him curl up with his arms over his head for protection.

The sound of the starter grinding sent me crawling back to Milky. He’d been the one driving on the highway, and sure enough I found the keys to the black truck in his front pocket. I tore them free and hurled them as far as I could throw.

Skinny was on his feet them, with Chewing Gum right behind him. They both charged from different angles—and then two shots rang out, splitting the darkness.

We all froze. For a moment it was just breathing and the grind of the Ruin.

“Fuck me I need cardio,” Jill said, breathing hard. She gestured with the gun. “Assholes to the left, Mads to the right.”

Behind her, the Ruin’s engine caught with a belch of black smoke. I decided to found a cargo cult centered on that car, which was apparently unkillable.

We backed towards it. Chewing Gum and the skinny guy watched us with their arms half-raised. Chewing Gum didn’t look particularly scared. Or amused. He stared at me like he intended to make me regret the last twenty-four hours.

I climbed into the back seat of the car. Trim leaned over and pushed the passenger door open, and Jill backed gracefully into the seat, keeping the gun on our new friends.

“Hit it,” she said.

Trim hit the gas. The Ruin sounded like a thunderstorm on the horizon and shook like a nervous kid at a school dance, but we moved. Jill lowered the gun and leaned over to pull the door shut, some fragments of glass raining down her from the shattered window. She swiveled and pointed the Glock backwards, aiming through the absent rear windshield as Chewing Gum and his two minions shrank.

“Jesus Christ,” Trim said, his voice shaky. “I thought this was going to be a fun bring-a-corpse-back-to-Jersey jaunt. I need to renegotiate my rates.”

“Sure,” Jill said, staring into the wind. “Doesn’t matter. The fucking Outfit knows who we are. We’re all fucking dead anyway.” She turned her head to look at me. “What now? Where to?”

I nodded. “Home.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

18

Trim said nothing when we climbed out of the Ruin. As I helped Trim carry Mats back to the old car’s trunk, I pictured Liùsaidh’s note. A final fuck you to the old man. He’d hidden funds from her, and she’d cleaned him out, and he hadn’t known. He’d died thinking he’d gotten one over on her. And she was out there laughing at him.

No one said anything as we loaded Mats up and get in the car. Trim took his keys back with a minimum of attitude, which saved his life.

We moved down the road, dust swirling around us. I turned and looked back; the stolen truck was hidden from view. When Trim took the first left and the car waddled up onto pavement again, I sat forward and scanned the horizon, looking for signs of other vehicles.

“They’re looking for a guy and a girl in a stolen truck,” Jill sneered. “Not three assholes in a off-brand Skylark.”

Trim’s eyes widened. “Off-brand—? First of all, woman, this car is forty-seven percent Buick Skylark thanks to the junk yards of New Jersey and their generous donations after a series of accidents that were all in no way my fault. Second of all—”

I reached an arm around the head rest and pinched Trim’s ear between my thumb and forefinger as hard as I could. Trim stiffened and went silent for a moment.

“If you’re going to kill me,” he said in a choked voice, “I am duty bound to remind you that I’m driving the car you’re in.”

I nodded. “Shhhh,” I mumured. “Okay?”

“Friendo,” Trim said with a sigh, “people have been threatening me because of my excess charm and toxic levels of charisma since grade school.”

I released him and leaned back.

“You’re the same guy,” Jill said, staring out the side window and chewing her thumbnail. “You can tell yourself you’ve changed, but you’re still the angry guy who wants to smash everything. You’re still him, baby and sober chip and whatever else.”

“Of course I am,” I snapped. “That’s the fucking point. I’ll always be that guy. I’ll always want to smash people in the face. I’ll always want to get high and break some shit. I’ll always have my father in my head. That’s the point, Jill, for fuck’s sake.”

We drove for a few minutes in silence. As Trim navigated onto the highway and the traffic picked up, I felt my phone vibrate and found a new text from Lisa.

You alive?

I hesitated a moment, looking up at Jill, then looked down and tapped out, yeah. Heading home.

A smiley face appeared on the screen along with the animated ellipses indicating she was typing. Your Old Uncle Mick was here looking for you.

I frowned. Mick has my number knows where I am.

Said to tell you there’s a construction on Kennedy Avenue, come up Stuy when you get in.

I blinked. This was Mick telling me that Bergen City was being watched—the outfit had figured out who’d come to break old Mats out of his gilded cage and were waiting on us. I pictured Chewing Gum, the guy in the leather jacket—Andy, they’d called him. He seemed sharp. Management. Someone with some experience. If they knew who I was, I needed to sneak in the back way. Old Stuyvesant Avenue was a crumbling old access road that had been left to ruin after the new freeway access roads had been built.

We were going to have to sneak our way in. There was nothing protecting Elspeth the moment The Broker and his ancient father discovered that Mats was already dead, and my inheritance was a sour note in my mother’s handwriting.

I pocketed the phone. I studied the back of Jill’s head, her hair pulled into two tails held by rubber bands. She would help if he asked, I knew. No matter how angry she was, no matter how I’d disappointed her, she would always help if I asked. Which made it a heavy ask.

I looked away. Who else? Mick, maybe, I thought. The old man didn’t have much in the way of influence or muscle, but he still had some pull in some places in the neighborhood. And he’d always been kind to me. But Mick had always deferred to Abban Spillaine and doubted there was anything more than the occasional head’s up delivered via Lisa Lisa’s texts.

And Mick had lied to him. Not they’re dead, but they’re gone.

I thought of Carolina. She was the toughest woman I knew and I hadn’t heard from her since they’d taken her and Ellie. I suspected I didn’t really have a wife any more, and acid spread outward into my limbs, my chest. The Spillaines had taken everything from me overnight and given me a corpse in return, and I was going to find a way to make them pay for that.

Jill turned to look past me, then resettled herself. “How much gas you got?” she asked Trim.

“Half a tank,” he said. “Why?”

“We’re being followed.”

“How do you know?”

I didn’t doubt her. In all my time with Jill Pilowsky, every house we’d robbed as kids, every scrape we’d gotten into—every bar bill we’d run out on, every fight we’d picked against overwhelming odds just because we didn’t like some guy’s smug happiness in the dark light of our own misery—she’d never once been wrong about something important, something tactical.

“Black truck nightmare back there? Seen it in Paradise.”

I thought of Chewing Gum, his leathery confidence. The way everything he did made it clear he considered himself the only real person in the room, the rest of us cattle to be herded, eaten, or ridden.

I twisted around and stared out the back window. An enormous black truck loomed two cars behind them. It’s windows were tinted to an illegal level. I remembered it, too, now that it had been pointed out to me.

“If I have to jump a drawbridge or drive the Blue Ruin into the back of an 18-wheeler,” Trim said, adjusting his mirror, “there will be a surcharge, and it will be significant.”

Jill shook her head. “This guy’s good. I am impressed. I just wonder how they found us. It’s been eighteen, nineteen hours. We could be anywhere.”

“They knew the general direction you were headed,” Trim offered. “Spotters, maybe. You said they had law enforcement on their side.”

I closed my eyes. Stupid, I thought. You’re so fucking stupid. “The ankle bracelet. The invisible gate.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Jill snarled. “We never took it off.”

I nodded. “We never took it off. More than just an invisible gate, then. A tracker.”

“Why’d it take so long to find us?”

I opened my eyes and scrubbed my face. “I didn’t get a signal in that field, did you?”

She shook her head, chewing one nail.

“Dead zone,” I said. “Once we got back to civilization, some tower picked up the signal. Bam.”

Jill turned and stared past me. “They don’t know he’s dead.”

I nodded. My father would apparently continue to fuck me over from beyond the grave. I wondered at the malignancy of my parents, their selfishness. My father assuming I’d come to Paradise to save him after letting his son believe him dead for fifteen years, after abandoning me to the system and Uncle Pal and a bottomless vein of angry bitterness, seemed like the final insult. Now I knew better. I would never escape the long shadow of Mats and Liùsaidh Renik.

I thought of Carolina. I’d worked hard to convince her I was a changed man. Sober. Steady. But I wasn’t any of those things, not really. I was a Renik.

It was time to start acting like it.

“Hang on,” Trim said, slamming on the bakes and steering the Nova into the breakdown lane as horns dopplered past us. I sailed forward and smacked into the back of the front seat, grunting and pushing myself back. The Nova rocked to a stop and stalled.

“Fuck,” Trim said, cranking the ignition. “Come on, Rue, come on Rue,” he muttered as the started coughed and wheezed.

I watched the black truck shoot past us, brake lights popping. I tracked it as it cut over to the breakdown lane up ahead. As I watched, the brakelights flickered, and the reverse lights came on.

“Oh, shit,” Jill muttered. “Trim, baby, get this shitheap into gear.”

“Calling Rue a shitheap will only slow things down,” he hissed, pumping the gas pedal as he turned the key again.

“You’ll flood it,” I snapped.

“Hey! I’ve been massaging this shitheap into life for two decades. Go fuck yourself!”

“Gotta move!” Jill shouted. The black truck was picking up speed, hurtling backwards towards us.

Trim turned the key, lifted his foot off the gas, and the car roared into sputtering life, a burst of black smoke erupting from under the hood. He slammed the gearshift into drive and jerked the wheel, barely avoiding an oncoming car as he swerved into the lane and floored the gas. As we accelerated past the black truck, it swerved towards us, slamming into the side of the car and sending us careening into the middle lane.

Jill leaned over and came up with the Glock. I leaned forward and put my hand on her arm. Our eyes met, and I just shook my head. The last thing we needed was more attention, more police, more problems.

She made a face and nodded. “No fun, Renik. No fuckin’ fun.”

I turned and tapped Trim on the shoulder. “Big rig up ahead,” I said.

Trim nodded. “Don’t touch me literally anywhere, and yeah, I see it.”

The Nova picked up speed, making a grinding noise and shaking slightly.

“Fucker has ruined the alignment,” Trim seethed.

“Just get ahead of the truck,” I said quietly. My eyes flashed to the sign as it sped by: EXIT 1/4 MILE. I turned and looked back, picking the black truck out of the crowd of cars behind us. The Nova accelerated until it was shaking violently, passing two other cars before creeping past the truck. It veered into the left lane, earning an irritated blast from the truck’s horn.

“The exit’s coming up in a few seconds,” I said, gripping the sides of the headrest with both hands. “Take it. Take it fast. If you can clear the bend before the truck rolls past, they might miss us.”

Trim nodded. “If we fuck it up, we’re off this nice busy road with all these witnesses.”

“Gotta keep them off us,” I said. “Right now, the Spillaines think Mats is still alive, that we’re bringing him in. That protects my daughter, my wife. Word gets back to Bergen that my father’s dead—”

“I get it!” Trim snapped, all traces of snark gone, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Hang on!”

The exit raced towards us. Trim turned the Nova and we hit the deceleration ramp without decelerating, forcing him to jerk the wheel as the curve came up almost immediately. The tires squealed and two hubcaps went flying off. I was thrown against the opposite side of the car while Jill clung to the handholds on the door with a grimace.

A moment later we were around the bend. The road straightened out and the highway vanished behind a copse of trees and a sound barrier.

Trim let up off the gas a little and the car stopped shaking. I twisted around in the back seat and stared out the back window. I counted, one, two, three, four.

The black truck appeared, sun flashing off the chrome.

I turned around and found Trim’s eyes in the rear view. Trim nodded and the Blue Ruin accelerated. It felt familiar, this sudden camaraderie. I’d experienced it sometimes at Queenies with a new hire—things got tense, and you found yourself relying on someone you didn’t know or necessarily trust—or like—and just fell into a natural rhythm. I didn’t think I’d ever like Damien, but I suddenly understood why Jill trusted him.

“Take me home, country roads,” Trim sang out. “Hang on!”

He steered the groaning, protesting car into a sharp, illegal left, bumping up and over a meridian to pop onto the highway on-ramp heading back towards the road. Jill and I bounced on the wide seats.

Behind us, the black truck followed, appearing to swallow the curb under its wheels. I stared at it as Trim tried to coax more speed out of the Blue Ruin. It was the story of my life, trying to get back to zero. The depths had a peculiar gravity to them that kept sucking at my heels. My parents had used me as a stepping stone, pushing me down into the shit so they could escape, and I’d been trying to get back to baseline ever since.

Jesus. I’d almost made it. Almost.

I watched the truck slowly creep up on us like doom.

“Don’t get pulled over,” Jill said. “Don’t forget we’ve got a surprise in the trunk.”

Trim nodded. “Pray for Mojo, kids, because this next bit is fucking-A dangerous.”

“What are you thinking?” I shouted over the roar of the engine as Trim accelerated and slotted the car into traffic.

“Seatbelts,” Trim shouted back. “I am thinking about the seatbelts and how I’ve been buying inspection stickers from a guy down on Baldwin Avenue for thirteen years so who knows if they still work!”

I looked at Jill. She shrugged, looking bored. I turned and spotted the truck behind us. With no other cars in-between, it began to make rapid progress.

The car slowed down.

“What are you doing, Damien?” I asked without taking his eyes off the truck. “What are you doing, man?”

“Hang on!” Trim shouted. I thought he sounded happy.

The truck surged towards us. When it was still three or four car lengths behind, Trim slammed on the brakes.

With a noise that sounded like metal tearing in half, the Blue Ruin shuddered and shimmied to a stop, a trail of black rubber on the pavement behind it. It stalled, again, with a sound that resembled a sigh, an exhalation.

The truck swerved to the left, almost dancing on its tires for a few feet as it fishtailed sideways. A moment later a rusted green van smacked into it, spinning it back into the lane behind us.

Trim turned the key, and the starter made a distinctly unhealthy whining noise.

“Stay calm,” Trim said, voice shaking. “Everyone just stay calm.”

“Don’t flood it,” I said again, my voice a whispered rasp. I watched through the rear window as someone tried to open the passenger-side door on the truck, which had been warped by the impact.

“Stay calm!” Trim repeated. “Come on, come on!”

The starter whined, and the driver-side door on the truck opened as three people emerged from the green van. I watched as a burly guy in a leather jacket—of course a leather jacket, I thought, of fucking course—climbed out of the truck. He was bald, but sported an epic set of muttonchops that frizzled out from his face like electricity in hair form. He was wearing enormous mirrored sunglasses that made him look like a cartoon character, something with a round, barrel-shaped body and enormous, blank eyes.

He glanced back at the truck and began advancing on us. As I watched, he reached into his jacket and left his hand there.

“Must go faster,” I whispered. “Must go.” I cleared my throat. “Pills, you might want to have that cannon handy.”

Jill twisted around in the seat and brought the gun up in one hand. “Got it. Trim?”

Trim had leaned forward to press his forehead against the wheel. “Come on, honey,” he whispered. “Come on, you’re making me look bad in front of my friends.”

He turned the ignition off and waited two heartbeats with his eyes closed.

I watched Muttonchops get closer, his hand still buried in his shoulder.

Trim turned the key, and the Blue Ruin coughed back into life. I turned in time to see him sit up and look at Jill, grinning. My eyes went over her to the passenger side window, where Muttonchops appeared, leaning down to peer in. Jill glanced at me, then spun around, bringing the Glock up.

“Oh, shit!” she gasped, and squeezed the trigger.

The window shattered, and Muttonchops dropped away. Trim slammed the car into gear and hit the gas, and I was thrown back by some angry physics.

“Hot damn,” Trim shouted over the rush of wind pouring in through the shattered window. “I am good at this!”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

17.

We parked in the trash-strewn lot. The drive back had underscored just how far we’d gone in the darkness, and how far from any sort of civilization. It was about half an hour of steady driving before our phones woke up, hitting a signal and chirping with updates. I ignored them all while Jill got the maps up on her phone and began to navigate.

We walked down the Mine Road to the same spot where we’d stood just a few hours before. My whole body was thrumming with combined exhaustion and anxiety. Every snap of a twig or rustle of wings in the darkness made me jump. We had no idea what the place was going to be like. Crawling with an army of goons? The Outfit setting up a mobile command center run by Chewing Gum, smiling as he snapped into a cell phone and took tips from a universe of snitches and assets?

When we got to the overlook, Paradise looked about the same. Our blanket and ladder remained on the fence, surprisingly, and the front gate now had a truck parked in front of it to restrict access. Based on my jumbled, hazy memories of the night before, I expected more damage, but I couldn’t see much of anything in the fading afternoon light.

“Wait for dark?” Jill said. “We got like an hour of sunlight left.”

I checked the sky and did some probability calculations involving how long I thought we could rely on Trim to stay with the body before he wandered off, chasing butterflies or something. Then I scanned Paradise again.

“No movement,” I said.

She nodded. “Maybe the army of shitkickers are all out on the road, looking for us.”

I studied the place. It was possible. We’d made a lot of noise and scraped a lot of shit on our way out, we’d made them look bad, and as far as they knew we had Mats and were motoring back to Jersey. There wasn’t any hint of movement, no sign of life. The tenants of Paradise weren’t eager to leave—being inside those gates was the only thing keeping the wolves at bay—and it was the treaties between the families and the syndicates and the gangs that kept it that way, not any number of local hicks with long guns. And if they were behind on their rent, they were wearing an ankle bracelet. My guess was there weren’t a lot of staff on hand.

And I didn’t have a choice. Going back to Bergen City empty-handed wasn’t an option. If my shitbag father had money hidden in his shitbag house, I was going to get it and try to buy back my family.

I nodded. “Wait for dark.”

We settled ourselves, taking turns watching the town. We didn’t talk. I was in no rush to pick up our last conversation, because there was only one way for it to go. Paradise was a still life. As the minutes ticked by absolutely nothing happened. No guards patrolled the area, no one left their house, no cars approached. When it was still twilight, I turned to Jill.

“Let’s go.”

We went in the same way, since they’d left our gear in place. Getting up over the fence took more effort this time, because every muscle in my body ached. I landed on the other side and twisted my ankle a little, falling on my ass.

“Mediocre.” Jill hissed merrily.

We jogged to the nearest house and hugged the walls, making our way through the yards—familiar now—to the rear of number 83. The back sliders were still sagging open as we’d left them. The blue light of the television still flickered and glowed. I hesitated just a moment. In the distance, a car horn, making me freeze.

Jill made a noise of disgust and stomped forward, slipping into the house. She was swallowed by gloom.

I jogged after her, hitching my stride a little, pain shooting up my leg. I pushed through the narrow opening in the slider and found myself back in Mats’ filthy kitchen. The silence and stillness of the place crowded in and suffocated me.

The smell was worse.

“You really think your pops had money hidden in here?” Jill said doubtfully, poking at a paper takeout bag dissolving under a greasy leak from whatever it contained.

I nodded. “My father would have had a backup plan. He could have a million dollars and he’d still be begging you for a loan. In Mats’ mind, money always flows to him, not the other way around.”

She shrugged. “Okay. If I’m stuck in the world’s worst retirement home, maybe I have an insurance sum, a go bag. Where should we look?”

I shook my head. “Fucked if I know.”

Jill reached up and gathered her hair into a bun, a casual display of niche expertise I found momentarily fascinating. Her eyes roamed the kitchen, and she began walking slowly, stomping one foot on the tile every few feet. When she’d made a complete circuit, she looked around again.

“Not under the floor on ground level,” she said. “Cement slab, no basement. He would’ve needed a jackhammer to carve out a bolthole. Walls, maybe,” she said, looking around. “Fuck, could be in the goddamn freezer. Sometimes the best hiding places are the stupidest.”

This I knew to be true. I was a man who’d spent two years stuffing wads of cash into a jar under the sink.

Outside, a truck roared past, engine as loud as an airliner. Probably souped up to roll coal and make as much noise as possible. The headlights swept the place and we stood very still, listening to it fade away.

Jill sighed, then wrinkled her nose. “Fuck. Only thing for it is to start looking.”

We looked. I started in the kitchen, she hit the living room. The cabinets were mostly empty. I found a salt shaker, some peanut butter, and a box of saltines, some roaches, some spider webs, and a collection of ant traps, some soy sauce packets, some plastic cups, and an empty plastic pitcher. In the fridge, some beers. In the freezer, some ice. Under the sink, nothing but dry rot and a trap that had been leaking since approximately ten years before.

I moved on. In the living room, Jill was pulling up carpet. I took the stairs up to the second floor, which had two bedrooms and a bathroom. The hallway was filled with trash—empty boxes, swollen black plastic bags, clothes tossed into damp piles. One bedroom had been used as storage, filled with more and more boxes. I stepped in, finding a narrow lane between the towering canyons of cardboard.

I remembered, suddenly, when the Quinones family had moved into The 293. The previous occupant of their apartment, Mr. Ludlow, had lived there for forty-seven years. By the time I’d arrived, Ludlow hadn’t left his apartment in five, and it was considered kind of lucky that he’d died on the first floor, collecting the mail. Otherwise he might have ripened in his big easy chair for days, weeks.

The day of the move-in, I encountered Luis on the stairs, and we’d smiled and made vague gestures at each other. My Spanish was restricted to insults, and his English was restricted to sitcom catch-phrases. He managed to make me understand that he wanted some help, so I followed him to Ludlow’s old apartment. I stood in the doorway for a moment, stunned.

The place was filled with crap. Boxes. Bags. Piles of magazines. Newspapers. Figurines and bric-a-brac, palettes of canned goods and 12-packs of paper towels. There was a narrow lane from the bathroom to the bedroom, with branches heading to the sink, the stove, the sofa, and the bed. Everything else was the hoarded wealth of Mr. Peter M. Ludlow, deceased. I generally had a good opinion of our landlord, Carmine, because he’d been good to me. But in that moment I cursed the motherfucker’s name, because standing there I knew I was going to have to help Luis clear it all out or not be able to sleep that night.

It took all day to shift everything out to the sidewalk. During the long trips up and down the stairs, Luis and I worked out a passable vocabulary of words and expressions that proved to be quite useful. I had dinner with the raucous Quinones family that evening, understanding nothing but enjoying myself immensely.

Now, I looked at all the boxes piled to the ceiling and the idea of searching through them was impossible.

And unnecessary, I thought, because there was no way Mats would hide anything someplace he’d have to work to get at. It was his emergency fund, his Go Money. He’d have it ready, at hand, someplace he could grab in a moment’s notice. Someplace a snooping guard wouldn’t think to look.

I paused, blinking. I thought of the old apartment, desolate and empty in the wake of my parents’ non-death.

The Master was dense with cheap furniture and a thick carpet the unfortunate color of urine that was stiff and crunchy under my feet. My parents had always been disinterested in housecleaning. As a kid, I’d been the one to take out the garbage and do the dishes, wash my own clothes. Mats never seemed curious about how his dishes were cleaned; he just placed them carefully wherever he happened to be and accepted as a minor miracle that they would later be found neatly stacked in the cabinets again.

I walked through the room to the windows, where heavy gold drapes hung, making the room dark and forbidding. Using the flashlight on the phone, I examined the hems. The sight of the thick, amateurish thread made my heart rate skip up a few beats. I picked at it with my thick fingers and bitten-down nails, slowly working it free and opening up the hem.

After a few minutes of work, I extracted a thin yellow envelope, folded in half, from the hem. I stood for a moment, staring at it. Behind me, I heard Jill walk into the room just as another pair of trucks rocketed past outside.

“Whoa,” she whispered. “Your dad was a straight up hoarder, Maddie.”

I nodded, turning. Her eyes dropped to the envelope in my hand.

“Okay,” she said. She sighed, pushing her hands into the pockets of her black jeans. “He was more broke than you thought.”

I nodded. I unfolded the envelope and slid my finger under the seal, opening it up. It wasn’t empty, I realized. There were two pieces of paper inside. I fished them out. One was a money band, gold and white, reading $10,000.

The other was a piece of torn-off notepaper. On it, written in my mother’s huge, showy handwriting, was

THE CELEBRATED GENIUS ?

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

16.

“We really can’t think of anyone else?”

Jill tapped her vape against the truck window. “Think away, mon frere. Let me know if there’s a category on TaskRabbit or something for handling unexpected corpses and being hunted by the Outfit.”

I frowned. “How’s he gonna find us?”

“Trim has some unexpected talents. I know, you look at him and you think he gets lured into vans with candy. But he’s actually useful.”

I considered this possibility as a way to distract myself, to stop myself from pacing and shaking and harming myself to expend worry and fear and terror. Point in favor: Trim was old. Middle-aged, at least. And he was still alive, independent, and had all his limbs. Point against: He insisted on being called Trim.

She placed the vape between her lips and inhaled, the LED on the side lighting up green for a moment.

“When was the last time you were sober?” I asked, hands on the steering wheel as if the truck might magically roar back into life.

“Sixth grade,” Jill said immediately. “I remember because I was so fucking miserable.”

My hands tightened on the wheel and the knuckles popped. Then I lifted them off and rubbed them together, then wiped the sweat from my eyes. We’d pushed the truck into the corn, a few feet from the road. Even though there was a chill in the air, the sun was heating up the cab like an oven.

Sitting had been hell. Every minute dragged by, just thinking about the fucking mess. Ellie and Carrie still being held. My father, the only currency I had, was gone. We had a few precious hours before that story spread, a few hours to make some moves, figure out some way to salvage this. And so far I’d spent them sitting in a truck in the middle of a corn field, sweating.

Nothing for it. We hadn’t seen or heard any traffic on the road, but I knew there had to be search parties out in force looking for us. We’d skipped out on my father’s back rent, and I didn’t think you maintained teams of armed guards like that unless you meant to use them. But the road was a narrow dirt lane cutting through fields, so it might not be on their radar. We might be safe enough if we stayed put. Out and about, we’d be taking a chance. And then we’d have to figure out what to do with Mats.

I sat and tried not to think about him. But I’d spent most of my life thinking about Mats Renik, the Celebrated Genius of Queenies, and the ruin the man had bequeathed me. Now the old man was stretched out on the seat behind me, breaking down and swelling, slowly transforming from a living human being to a corpse, a hunk of rotting offal. I’d imagined my father dead many times, usually with a healthy dose of dark joy, usually with a satisfyingly grisly image of him burning up in the back of a stolen Cadillac. None of it had come with this flavor of awful grubby ordinariness. My father wasn’t an outlaw asshole, dodging bullets with clever plans. He was a striver and a thief who’d paid for a shitty retirement in a shitty townhouse and then ran out of money, like everyone else.

I paused. I remembered him saying we gotta go back. And I thought, would Mats Renik really wait until he was busted to make a run?

I turned and looked at Jill as she sucked on her vape again. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know her, not really, not anymore. I’d once spent almost every waking moment with her, but now this angry woman with the smartass response to everything was a stranger.

“Stop fucking looking at me,” she said suddenly without turning her head. “Why do you give so many shits about my mental state?”

I grimaced, looking down at my hands and unclenching them with effort. I felt a violence brewing inside me I hadn’t felt since sobriety, since meeting Carolina and getting married.

“Last week I got ditched by this guy at a bar out on the highway and I pulled out my phone and the only fucking person I could think to call was you,” she said suddenly, “but I didn’t, because if I hear that fucking voicemail greeting one more time I’m going to jump off a roof. I got that voicemail greeting memorized.”

I swallowed. “I know. I’m an asshole.”

She turned and punched me in the arm, then kept punching me, surprisingly fierce and strong. She twisted around in the seat and slapped and punched at me over and over, breathing hard. I just put my arms over my head and took it, letting her vent her fury.

Just as suddenly, she hurled herself back against the door. “No,” she said between breaths. “No, you don’t get to just call yourself an asshole and be absolved.” She moved her hand in front of her in a cross motion. “You treat me like I work for you.”

I settled myself and stared straight ahead. The anger had solidified, making it hard to breathe. “You abandoned me,” I said, surprised at the heat in my voice. “How dare I fucking get sober, how dare I—”

I paused, spotting a plume of dust approaching as a vehicle tore down the dirt road. Jill leaned down and picked up the gun from the floor, holding it in her lap as we watched the dust cloud get near, then stop.

“That’s him.”

We climbed out of the truck. I felt stiff, dehydrated. I moved slowly, like my joints were made of glass, pushing the stalks aside gingerly.

“You know when they say ?middle of fucking nowhere?’” Trim said as we emerged from the corn. He was standing beside the ancient and rusting Blue Ruin. “It’s not here, because this isn’t even a place. This is a place between the places.” He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “I haven’t had a cell signal in an hour.”

“Thanks,” Jill said, stretching. “For coming.”

Trim sketched a little bow. “Thanks,” he said, “for your surprisingly detailed and coherent directions. As we discussed, it will be expensive.” He nodded. “Mads. You’re looking well.” He clapped his hands together. “So! I understand we have a dead body! Exciting!”

“Is he your only contact?” I asked.

Jill turned and spat onto the road. “Not a lot of people you can call when you need to transport a corpse over state lines, Maddie.”

Trim was wearing a pair of denim overalls. His bare arms and shoulders made me uncomfortably certain he had nothing on underneath. “Point of order, kids, can I ask why we’re transporting the body? Seeing as it’s the single most difficult thing to do with a body, being my point.”

I sighed. “We need it.” I said. “The body.”

Trim accepted this and followed us into the corn. When we stopped at the truck, he leaned down and peered in through the windows.

“I take it back. The single most difficult thing to do with a body is to sleep overnight in a truck with one in the back seat,” he said, straightening up and leaning against the door. “You two are my new favorite people.”

I felt the urge to hit Trim in the face rising. “What’s the plan?” And I thought of my father saying, we gotta go back. I thought about touring the old apartment, that last apartment, after they were gone.

Trim smiled. “Well, if you would consult your Crimes Handbook, Mister Renik, you’d see that the standard way to deal with a dead body transportation challenge is to first avoid having a dead body in the first place.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Since you have failed this first—crucial!—step, the next move is to put the body in the trunk of a car and drive it where you need to go.”

My hands bunched into fists. Jokers. Always thought they could bluff their way past you, always thought they could cut you down with a withering remark, put you in your place. The trick with them was a poker face. Never once admit they’d made you wince or laugh. “Just … drive it. Across state lines. A 20-hour ride.”

Trim nodded. “I am afraid my corpse teleportation machine is out of order.”

I turned and looked over his shoulder. “In a … 1978 Chevy Nova?”

“Don’t you mock the Blue Ruin. Don’t you do it.” Trim pushed off from the truck and turned to open the door. “Come on, give me a hand.” He paused, blinking. “Shit. No resell value on a truck that smells like dead guy,” he said, leaning in.

We carried him to the Ruin. I stared down at my father’s face as we walked, the deep lines in his skin, the jowliness of his jawline. I tried to reconcile the man I’d found in Paradise with the towering, loud rooster I remembered. And I saw myself, reduced, sucked dry, worn down. This was what I would look like when I was old. When I was dead. I had so little of Liùsaidh in me, only a hint around the eyes, in the endless exhausting energy that was always fidgeting inside me.

We put him in the trunk. I imagined the old man swelling and cooking in there.

“All right,” Trim said. “Rules of the road: The Blue Ruin does not smoke, has legit plates and inspection stickers, and all the lights work. We’re not speeding. We do the speed limit, stay in the right lane except to pass, and if I miss an exit we go on to the next and calmly make a U-turn. This,” he added, “in case you haven’t memorized your Crimes Handbook, is to avoid interactions with the local Smokies as we smuggle Long Pork back there back to incredible Bergen City.”

“Jesus, Damien,” Jill said, crossing her legs under herself in the passenger seat.

Trim glanced at her. “You look awful, Pillgirl. When was the last time you slept?”

“Sixth grade,” she said with a glance back at me. “Right before I got boobs. After that it was a real sleep-with-one-eye open situation at my house.”

“And now I’m uncomfortable,” Trim said. “The radio is jammed with a mix tape I made in seventh grade,” he announced. “So I encourage you both to either simulate a podcast or start singing.”

Jill pulled open the passenger-side door, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “Wait.”

Trim pushed his hands into his overalls in a way that suggested he was not not fondling himself. Jill just stared at me, red eyes, the white streak in her hair dancing in the breeze.

“I gotta go back.”

Jill turned to face me. “The shit you do.”

Trim nodded. “For more bodies. I understand everything.”

I looked at him. The anger was gone. I had something to do, some way to channel it. “Give me the keys.”

Trim shook his head. “I say this with the knowledge that you are probably going to hurt me if I say no, but I would rather not.”

I glanced at Jill. “We’ve got to go back. We put Mats back in the truck. Trim, you wait here, keep an eye on him. Two, three hours, max. I’ll pay you a bonus.”

Jill stepped over to me and crowded in close. She smelled bad. I could feel her body heat pushing against me. “Dude, are you fucking insane?” she whispered, even though I could see Trim leaning over and blatantly listening in. “I know this has gone wrong in every possible way—”

“Mats is dead,” I said. “He’s all the leverage we had. We go back to Bergen City without him, I got nothing, and who knows what that psychopath does to my wife, my daughter.”

She flinched. I looked past her at Trim. “Wait here. Few hours. Like I said. I’ll pay you.”

“With what?” he asked.

“What’s back there?” Jill asked.

I answered them both. “Money.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

“Keys!” Jill hissed.

I blinked stupidly for one second, and she rattled the handcuffs against the bench. I turned and rolled Batten over, searching through her pockets until I found the ring of keys. I tossed them to her and she snatched them out of the air with her free hand.

“Keys to the truck!” she said as she unlocked herself and launched into motion.

I spun and dug through Aggrieved’s pockets, coming up with a set of keys. I climbed to my feet and scanned the room, looking for the Glock, but couldn’t see it anywhere. With a muttered curse I knelt again and took Batten’s gun from her holster, checking the safety and stuffing it into my waistband. I paused to listen to the silence, searching for any sign of alarm. There was nothing. I figured they’d sent Jill in to be tortured, so some scuffling was to be expected. Chewing Gum or whoever might be listening in the main house wouldn’t think twice about a few shouts, a couple of thuds.

I turned to find Jill returning from the darkness with my father literally in hand—two fingers pinched his ear, the old man stooped low and wincing as he struggled to keep up. He was sweating; the tape hung from one end of his open mouth as he breathed rapidly. I had no more anger for the old man. I’d believed him dead for fifteen years. The man I’d known was dead. The huge, loud presence I remembered was just a shrunken thing, and I couldn’t be mad at this small, sad man.

Aggrieved’s truck was the beat to shit Ford with an extended cab, but it started up with a slick hum that whispered of oil changes and frequent tuneups.

“Just drive,” Jill said from the rear seat, where she sat with Mats. “There’re trucks all over the road.”

I nodded. “You don’t know guys. They know each other’s trucks. It’s like fingerprints,” I said. “This thing’s thirty years old. These guys make small talk about spark plugs, trust me, and they know every inch of each other’s vehicles.”

“Go slow,” she insisted. “You burn rubber, they’ll be on us immediately. And put on the lights. A fucking truck creeping along dark is gonna be suspicious.”

I grimaced, but flicked on the lights and put the truck into gear. “Yes, boss.”

“Dude, if you’d followed the plan and just let me run your life, you wouldn’t be out in Bumfuck, North Dakota kidnapping your own father.” She leaned forward. “Fucking slow down!”

I shook my head. “These assholes are out tearing it up. They’re hunting, excited. Most fun they’ve had in ages. We crawl around we’re gonna be noticed.”

Pills couldn’t be objective about shitkickers, because she was a shitkicker, still. I’d pulled back, I’d had the chance to observe our kind from a distance. Got some objectivity. She was still buried in it.

She chewed her lip and glanced at the old man. I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He wasn’t doing well. He sat with his mouth open, staring ahead, breathing hard. “You know where you’re going?”

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. I was disoriented; I couldn’t make the road sync with my mental map of Paradise.

“Lights,” Jill whispered.

We were coming up to an intersection, a pair of too-bright headlights approaching from the opposite way. Before I could react, the other truck blasted past us, honking its horn.

The night closed in around us.

“Take a left,” Jill said.

“You sure?”

“Nope.”

I turned left. The houses were all identical. There were no street signs.

“Maddie,” my father croaked from the back seat. “Hey, Maddie. We gotta go back. I gotta get—”

“Shut up,” I muttered, leaning forward.

“Lights,” Jill said.

Another set of headlights—two sets—crept over the rise in the road. I could see at a glance there wasn’t enough room for all three trucks to pass. I gripped the steering wheel and kept my foot on the gas.

“Maddie,” Mats slurred from the backseat. “It was your mother, you know. Your mother wanted a kid. A daughter. You know how she gets.”

I blinked, heart pounding. You know how she gets. I wanted to steer the truck into a pole and turn around to punch him in the face, but I forced myself to watch the road.

As the trucks approached, they flashed their lights. I glanced down, but couldn’t locate the highbeam lever. My eyes raced over the dash and the truck swerved just slightly. I snapped my eyes back to the road as the two trucks roared past us.

Jill whipped her head around, peering out the back window.

“Maddie,” Mats said, his voice thick.

“Shut the fuck up,” I hissed, eyes on the rearview watching the brake lights. I started counting in my head. One, two, three—

One set of brake lights glowed brighter, and then the truck swung around, its headlights coming into view behind us.

Fuck.

“You missed the secret handshake,” Jill said.

The lights settled in behind us and matched our speed. We rolled up to a T-junction, the community wall looming up in front of us. I turned left, figuring I could follow the perimeter road until I found the gate.

The truck behind us followed.

“You see radios?” Jill asked, turning to study Mats, who sat loose-limbed and open-mouthed, looking gray.

“No,” I said. “But they have them, right?”

Jill nodded. “Of course.” She frowned at my father. “Mr. Renik, you okay?”

The older man shook his head. “Maddie,” he said, “Maddie, listen to me.”

“Shut up,” I hissed again. The lights remained precisely three car lengths behind us, and I could imagine the conversation being held, the radio calls going out, trucks maneuvering along the streets of Paradise to block our way.

I pressed my foot down further on the gas and the truck jumped forward smoothly. Our only chance was to get to the gate first. The truck lights behind us faded for a moment, then raced up behind us.

“Maddie, you gotta get me out of here,” Mats said in a shaky voice, breathing hard. “You don’t understand. They’re fucking vampires. I had to get out of town, I had to get away from a … a lot of things. You don’t know what it took to support you and your mother. You don’t know. I did what I had to, and I pissed off a lot of people. I needed a place. I needed someplace to hide out. And these bastards, they held out their hands and said, come on in! Just pay us rent! But they don’t tell you you gotta pay and pay and pay, until you’re bled white, and when you’re whited out they just turn you out and all the fuckin’ sharks who’ve been waitin’ on you are right there. You gotta get me outta here. So we gotta go back.”

He was breathing hard by the time he finished. Behind us, a second set of headlights had appeared.

“Lights!”

I dragged my eyes back to the road ahead, where a pair of bright white lights had appeared. “Fuck,” I muttered. “They’re gonna pin us up. Hang on!”

I jerked the wheel and hit the brakes, taking the truck on a sharp left onto an intersecting road. Jill and Mats were slammed against the side of the cab, then rocketed back as I hit the gas again, tires squealing.

“You know where you’re going?” Jill shouted, shoving Mats away from her. The old man slumped against the narrow rear door.

“No time to be smart! Gotta come at the gate on a straightaway! Brute force it!” I shouted back, watching as two sets of headlights swerved into place behind them. We were out of time. Any moment now they’d find a way to block the exit, and then we were fucked.

I pushed the gas pedal down and the truck began to shake.

“There’s no seatbelts back here!” Jill shouted, sounding delighted at the discovery. “What kind of fucking deathtrap do Midwest shitkickers buy?!”

“Fix or repair daily!” I shouted, feeling crazy, a strange, shaky mania sweeping through me. I leaned forward and scanned the road ahead for a right turn that would take me parallel to the perimeter again. The houses, shrouded in darkness, flashed by like shadows.

“Lights!”

Two more pairs of headlights appeared up ahead. I glanced back at Jill and saw that expression again, that smile, calm in the eye of any storm because the storm was so fucking entertaining.

Do it, Maddie!

“Hang on!”

I turned around, scanned the row of houses to my right, and put the gas pedal to the floor.

“Old man!” Jill shouted, grabbing hold of the fold-down handle on the roof of the car, “might want to hang onto something!”

I killed the headlights and took a deep breath. The trucks raced towards us. I stared into their lights and counted, silently, to myself. When my vision was completely filled with the cold white light, I jerked the wheel to the right and let up on the gas. The truck hit the incline of dead grass and took to the air for a moment, a sudden calm as gravity twisted around itself. When we landed all three of us slammed up and down violently, and the truck fishtailed, sending a plume of dirt and dead grass into the air.

Then it stabilized, and we shot past the two trucks.

I hit the gas again and steered back onto the road, bottoming out with a spray of sparks. The truck handled like a rock, like it was requiring physical effort from me to keep it moving. A moment later I saw a break in the line of houses, a narrow alley. I didn’t think. I knew if we stayed on the roads, eventually enough of the guards arrived to box us in. We had to break out, and it had to be now.

I spun the wheel and the truck bounced as it hit the incline of the front yards. Dirt flying, we sped towards the gap.

“It’s too tight!” Jill shouted.

“No,” I said. I didn’t sound too convinced.

We had inches to spare, sparks flying on each side as we threaded the needle. We smashed through a row of garbage cans, trash shooting into the air and splattering the windshield, and then we were in the backyard, the sudden openness unnerving.

“Holy fuck,” Jill said, leaning forward between the seats. “Are you a fucking wizard?”

I floored it, the truck fishtailed, and then we were bouncing across the yard. The wooden stockade fence separating it from the next block loomed up. We crashed through it with an explosion of noise, a chunk of wood smashing into the windshield and starring it, breaking my view into a million tiny universes. We raced across the second yard towards the opposite alley, scraping along stucco walls until we burst onto the next street, fishtailing again as I swung the truck around.

The entry gate was two blocks away, directly in front of us.

I hit the gas as two guards stepped out of the little guardhouse, pulling handguns from holsters and leveling them at us. As we neared the gate, the sound of gunfire was comically distant and tiny, like little pops. I sensed more than saw headlights approaching, fast, from my left and right, trying to cut us off.

As we smashed through the chain link gate, Jill let out a screech that sounded like pure joy.

I hit the brakes and jerked the wheel, but the gate was trapped under the truck and we went skidding into the tree line trailed by the pop-pop-pop of small arms fire. We hit a tree going sideways, just hard enough to feel a shudder go through the chassis, but the truck’s engine didn’t die. I turned the wheel again and hit the gas, and we jerked forward, fishtailing back up the shoulder and then bouncing onto the blacktop.

Jill twisted around to look behind us. My eyes flashed to the rearview. Two sets of headlights immediately appeared.

“I see them,” I growled. At the intersection I jerked the truck o the left, heading up to the old mine road. I put the gas pedal to the floor and the truck began to shake again, every pothole in the old road sending us into the air and then down again with a bone-rattling impact. When the turn loomed up on our right, I took it at speed, coming within inches of flipping over or smashing into one of the trees. I hit the gas again, a half dozen lights blooming on the dash as the engine began making a curious grinding noise.

When we reached the parking area, I swung the truck to the left and slammed on the brakes. We spun into the dark, empty space, and the engine finally stalled.

We sat in the darkness, listening to the engine tick.

“How long do we wait?” Jill whispered. Then she eased the Glock out of her pocket and held it against her belly.

“If they’re on our ass, we’ll know in a minute,” I whispered back.

We waited.

“Well, if we’re about to die, I guess it’s time for truth talking,” Jill said quietly. “So here goes: Mads Renik, you’re a fucking terrible driver.”

There was a moment of tight silence, and then we burst out laughing. In the back seat, Jill collapsed onto herself, swallowing the laughter with effort. I punched the seat next to me, mouth clamped shut in an effort to control the outburst. Slowly, silence crowded in again. I took a deep breath.

“I guess we lost them.”

Jill nodded. “They assumed we made for the highway,” she said. “Now what?”

I turned the key in the ignition. The starter screeched, and after a few seconds the engine roared back into life, running choppy, the whole truck vibrating. I put it into gear and crept back out onto the road, gingerly adding speed. The old mine road led us back to the narrow local roads, and I made my way to the highway by instinct. The road turned into a winding two-laner framed by towering stalks of corn on either side.

After a few minutes, the engine began to knock and wheeze. The lights on the dash were joined by others. When the truck gave up, it coasted to a stop in almost perfect darkness.

“Shit,” I said.

Jill didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally she said in a small voice, “Maddie.”

I twisted around and looked back at her. We stared at each other in silence, the quiet deep and insulated, the only sound the wind moving through the corn. We might have been the only people in the world, stranded on some far off planet of wind and corn and darkness.

After a moment, I sighed and looked down, then turned to look at Mats. The old man lolled in his seat in a loose, unnatural way, his mouth open, his eyes staring up at the roof of the truck.

He was dead.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

In the distance, shouts and horns. Only two trucks were left parked outside, the enormous black monster and a beat-to-hell Ford. I took the short drop onto the garage roof and crossed to a dormer with a window that rose up like a mistake. Peering into the window I found a small, empty room set up as a mother-in-law suite with a tiny kitchenette and a small three piece bathroom. It looked dusty and unused.

I tried the window and it lifted with a groaning protest. I climbed into the tiny apartment and paused, listening.

Then I allowed myself to get angry.

I’d spent most of my life tamping that anger down, controlling it, employing every trick I could to pretend it wasn’t always there like a molten core. Now I dived into it. I let my hands clench up into fists and imagined my father a few feet away, behind a few walls, miserable but still alive. For the first time in years I allowed myself to consider how my father—and my mother—had fucked up my life. Purposefully fucked up my life. I’d always known, on some level, that my parents regarded me as an inconvenience, an afterthought. That any tokens of parental concern or responsibility they’d ever offered had been compulsory, performative—to avoid CPS scrutiny, to avoid neighborly concerns, to appear normal.

And when they needed to save their asses, they fled without even leaving me a note. They let me think I was an orphan for 15 years. And when I replayed the moment I’d walked into Mats’ house a few hours ago, I could tell that that it was the first time my father had thought of me in … 15 years.

And the worst of it was that I’d been a great fucking kid. A dream. I went to school. Got good grades. Excelled at sports. Stayed mostly out of trouble. Just sort of moved through my life on autopilot. I made it easy for them. Until they’d ruined my life.

I shook myself. I had to focus. Batten was in the garage. I couldn’t be certain there was no one else in there with her, but I had to take the chance. The longer I left Jill in there the more danger she was in. The longer I was delayed in bringing Mats back, the more danger Elspeth was in. I was the guy who was supposed to keep all the bad stuff outside.

I crossed to the door and opened it, slowly. A narrow staircase led down to the garage. It was mercifully carpeted. Pulling the gun from my pants, I crept down, finger along the barrel. As I neared the bottom where the wall opened up, I crouched down and peered through the balusters.

The garage was largely empty. Plastic sheets had been spread on the floor, and what looked like a weight bench sat in the middle of the space, two pairs of handcuffs hanging from the back. Framed against the open door, Sheriff Batten squatted over a rusted, red metal tool chest, rummaging through the implements within.

I swallowed bile. I’d spent enough time around the hard cases and wannabes at Queenies to know what plastic sheets on the floor usually meant.

I scanned the rest of the garage. The big door was closed. There was a door leading into the main house. I had Batten cold—but I waited.

Take a breath, take your time, Uncle Pal had said in the backyard. You miss every shot you rush.

It was the same at the bar. The assholes, they always rushed. Tried to talk fast to get past me, tried to move fast to get past me. Like it was a game they could win. It was my job to show them there were only degrees of losing. Here, I wanted to move just because moving felt better—felt like I was doing something. But I was outnumbered and in unfamiliar territory. Better to have as many of my enemies in sight before I tipped my hand.

I settled myself, gun ready but finger anywhere but on the trigger. Batten began laying out tools, and I watched in mounting horror as pliers, knives, and what looked like surgical instruments appeared one by one, placed in a precise pattern near the weight bench. You think, after two encounters that ended in threats and violence, that you know someone, and then they turn out to be capable torturers.

Take a breath, I thought. Take your time.

The door opened and Jill and Mats appeared, shoved along by two guards. One I immediately dubbed Clown Hair was tall and painfully skinny, his red hair like a cloud of cotton candy rising off his head. The other was dark-skinned and serious, a natural-born frowner. I’d seen his type before at Queenies: The Perpetually Aggrieved. The Perpetually Aggrieved were always full of complaints, always convinced they were being disrespected.

They shoved Mats, making the old man stumble. Aggrieved took Jill by the shoulders and pushed her roughly to the bench. “Andy says he needs a name.”

“Honey,” Batten said, picking up one end of the handcuffs. “I ever fail to get a name?”

“No ma’am.” Aggrieved said as Batten cuffed one of Jill’s wrists to the bench.

I watched Jill, because I knew she would move.

I felt a familiar excitement, because Jill always moved. She was the one person I knew who’d never frozen up. She believed pretty strongly that when in doubt, the best ting to do was move, to do something, anything. That the element of surprise was the most powerful thing in the world, and the moment your enemies thought you were stuck was exactly the right moment to just do anything. I loved her for it, and as I watched her silently coil up, ready to spring, I wondered how in the world I’d let her drift so much. She was a goddamned force of nature.

As I watched, Jill studied Aggrieved, who had his attention on Batten.

Sensing motion, Aggrieved turned just in time to meet Jill’s fist as she surged forward, knocking Batten backwards and launching herself at the guard. They fell to the floor, the cuffs jangling as the bench followed her, falling down on top of them as she grappled with Aggrieved, both their hands on his handgun.

Clown Hair spun, hand going for his own weapon. I shook off the shock with a surge of electric adrenaline and moved, leaping down the last few stairs. I charged at Clown Hair and hit him with the gun, swinging my arm in a wide arc. The shock of the impact sent a lightning bolt up my arm, the Glock flying. I spun and threw myself at Batten, wrapping my arms around her as she tried to pull her sidearm.

The Sheriff was surprisingly strong. I locked wrists, trapping her arms at her sides. She snapped her head back and tried to tip me over, but I was too heavy.

I thought of Elspeth and closed my eyes. I squeezed tighter until I heard something crack.

Batten tried to howl. She stiffened and thrashed, but all she managed were strangled, choking noises. This was when a lot of amateurs relaxed, gave up. But I knew better. My early days at Queenies, I’d fucked up and gone soft on assholes when they seemed sedated, only to see them spring up with a sudden surge of Asshole Energy, the most destructive force in the universe.

I held on and turned my head. Jill had straddled Aggrieved and was punching him methodically in the face. The bench was still attached to her left arm, so she just pounded at him with her right, her hair hanging down, her breathing heavy and phlegmy. She paused, staring down at him. He was no longer so much aggrieved as unconscious. She turned and looked at me and Batten, who was still struggling and trying to free her arms. With a shake of her head, Jill climbed to her feet and dragged the bench over to us, punching Batten once in the face. The sheriff went limp and I relaxed, breathing hard as she slid to the floor.

The silence was eerie.

“You okay?” Jill asked, sitting on the overturned bench, sweat streaming down her face.

I shrugged. How do you answer that? “You?”

She nodded. “I gotta start some cardio, though.”

I laughed. For a few seconds, it seized me and I couldn’t stop it. I struggled to contain it, to stop the braying, insane giggling my body wanted to do. I looked at Jill and she smiled and looked away.

“Jesus, man, not now,” she said, choking on her own laughter. She glanced back at me and we stared at each other. I wondered at the gulf that had sprung up between us, how huge and insurmountable it had appeared just a few moments ago. Now it was gone and we might have been sixteen again, getting high in the parking lot and plotting to rob some house where we knew the family was on vacation.

Then my father shuffled past us at what I belatedly realized was a run, his hands flopping uselessly behind him as he grunted through the tape on his mouth.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

13.

“What’s this?”

Uncle Pal holding up the shitty revolver. Standing in my room, holding it like it might explode at any moment. I remembered offering him the blank expression I’d learned from Pills. When in doubt, she always said, act like you’re congenitally retarded and simple concepts confuse and enrage you.

“Come on, then.”

I was shocked that Uncle Pal knew how to handle a gun, but then I remembered that Uncle Pal for all his fancy manners and diplomas on the walls was my father’s brother. Sometimes it seemed like the two men couldn’t be any more different, but there would be these flashes—a turn of phrase, an expression, the way they salted their ice cream or put butter and brown sugar in their coffee—that confirmed their connection. Their similarity.

He’d set up a firing range in the backyard, a bunch of cans on stumps.

“All right,” he’d said, breaking open the revolver and shaking out the bullets. “I’m not going to ask you where you got it, or why. And I’m not going to waste my time telling you not to get another one. I know you’re the son of Mats Renik. So, first things first. This? This piece of shit? This piece of shit is worse than having no gun at all.”

When Uncle Pal produced a gleaming 1911 from his coat pocket, I couldn’t maintain the blank look. I was genuinely amazed, and felt that my uncle had earned it.

“You’re eighteen,” Pal said. “So you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. But you’re going to learn the right way to handle a weapon, got it?”

Looking back, I wished I’d given Uncle Pal a break a little bit sooner.

####

It had been easy to follow the shitkickers and Jill; they were loud, joking around with each other, proud of their catch as they leered at her and joked about assaulting her. I recognized the type; you ran into them all the time at Queenies. Performers. Everything was a pose, everything was done at maximum volume. Confrontation only made them louder. The best thing to do with the Performers was to egg them on, keep turning up the volume for them until they were shouting themselves hoarse.

I could see Jill folding in on herself, becoming denser, the pressure building. I thought the first asshole to touch her was going to get a big surprise.

They pushed her and Mats into a house four doors down. Dozens of trucks were parked haphazardly out in the yard, as if this was the world’s worst house party. Most of them were rusting old behemoths, but a few were newer. One was enormous, a brand new commercial pickup, jet black with tinted windows. It loomed like a tank over the rest of them.

I followed, crouch-walking on the roofs, the wind pushing through me and making me shiver. I couldn’t see any difference between this particular house and the others. I squatted for a moment. I could hear voices. Turning around, I saw a square of light in the middle of the roof—a skylight, cranked open. I walked over to it and lay down on my belly. I could see down into the living room.

Jill walked in, proud. I knew she could feel them leering at her, and I knew she wanted to hug herself, make herself small, less of a target. But she wouldn’t. That wasn’t the Pilowsky Way. Instead, she kept her head up and walked easy, as if a pleasant ramble with the surprisingly not dead Mr. Reniks and a dozen armed shitkickers was exactly what she’d had planned this evening.

The house reminded me of every shared house I’d ever lived in. It smelled like old Chinese food, body odor, and piss in equal parts, and looked like it had the vaguely sticky, greasy surfaces of a place where a lot of people touched everything and never cleaned or washed their hands.

The living room was already crowded when they arrived, the shitkicking guard staff all wild-eyed and excited, grinning and making jokes, carrying their rifles and shotguns like their dicks. I had the impression Paradise was usually a pretty sleepy job. A lot of aging crooks paying to retire in peace, their many sins and legions of enemies held at bay outside the walls.

Sheriff Batten was there, looking tired and angry, her uniform sloppy, her eyes red. She looked at Jill and shook her head, then turned back to a tall guy with slicked-back hair and a leather jacket, chewing a wad of pink gum with an enthusiasm that was kind of terrifying. He was middle-aged, the sort who’d once been pretty fresh-looking but was now kind of pickled. He’d been handsome—was still handsome, really—but there was a deep-lined roughness to him now.

I immediately knew the enormous black truck outside was his. He was exactly the type to feel the need for an enormous black truck.

He kept snapping his gum. It was weird—the gum made him. Him chewing away like a little kid did more to sell him as a tough guy than all the fucking posturing going on around him. When Chewing Gum turned to look at Jill, following Batten’s gesture, he smiled and winked, mouth working. I knew Jill Pilowsky better than anyone. The expression on her face told me that Chewing Gum could probably get it. And pretty easily.

Him, I worried about. Batten, too, I thought. The rest of them looked like the same old assholes who hung around Queenies, who ran with the crews out East. Wannabes. Tough guys. Shitkickers living in trailers and spending all their money on beer and meth and telling themselves they were connected because they had jobs as glorified security guards.

For a few seconds the room buzzed with excited conversation. Then Chewing Gum turned away from Batten with a friendly nod and looked around, snapping his gum.

“Y’all happy?”

He didn’t shout, but his voice carried, and there was something in its tone. The room fell quiet in about two seconds, and Chewing Gum looked around, his expression bemused.

“Y’all proud? Of the job you’ve done?” He inquired. It was a challenge, and I could see at a glance that no one was going to step up and take it. Chewing Gun nodded, holding up three fingers on his right hand. “Three.”

The shitkickers waited a beat, then began looking around in confusion.

“The good Sheriff says there were three,” Chewing Gum said, smiling as he chewed. “Y’all are in here giving out handjob participation trophies, and your job is two-thirds done. So what the fuck are you doing in here?”

There was a perceptible reduction in the levels of testosterone and exuberance in the room. I watched Chewing Gum work. He wasn’t a big guy. Not scrawny, but not big. You could tell he had a gun in a holster under his jacket, but I got the vibe that it hadn’t come out of that holster except to be cleaned and maintained in a long time. His hair and the jacket indicated a man who cared about what he looked like, about his brand, but he wore both with such comfort and confidence I wasn’t mad about it. This guy, I decided, was connected. This was management.

After a second, Chewing Gum pursed his lips and looked down at his boots, which were sturdy biker boots that were also, I thought, a choice, but one that he somehow managed to pull off. “I’m gonna look up in five seconds,” he said. “Anyone still standing here with their dick in their hands is gonna have their card pulled. There’s one more out there, or on the run. Get out there and drag their ass back.”

The room exploded into activity as the guards hustled out, all of them wearing expressions I was comfortable interpreting as fucking terrified. When the crowd was gone, Six people remained. Chewing Gum and Batten, Mats Renik and Jill, and two other guards who looked like they’d recently checked their pay grade and were unhappy with the results of their investigation. Very fe wpeople enjoyed being reminded of their true position in life.

“Shoulda taken my advice,” Batten said to Jill. She looked tired and disheveled, her uniform shirt unbuttoned, her face puffy. “Could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Chewing Gum turned to her. “Bats, do me a favor and get the garage in order in case we need to kick this into a higher gear.”

Batten nodded, staring at Jill. “Sure,” she said. She turned and walked towards what would be the kitchen if the house had the same layout as my father’s.

Chewing Gum looked up at Jill, then gestured at the broken-down old couch. “You two, have a seat. Let’s have a chat.”

They sat. Good girl, I thought. Know your audience. Read the room. Chewing Gum seemed cheerful again, smiling as he sat down in the overstuffed chair across from them, leaning forward and steepling his hands.

“Now what,” he said cheerfully, “am I gonna do about you?”

Mats leaned forward, trying to speak through the tape. Chewing Gum held up a hand.

“Not you, for fuck’s sake. You we got squared away. You’re three months back on your rent and you were gonna get the eviction notice soon anyway. This just accelerates that a little.” He glanced at Jill. “No, I mean you. What’s the story? Why are you here helping Old Man Winter here scam out? Daughter?”

She made a face. “The fuck.”

I suppressed a sudden, deranged laugh.

Chewing Gum smiled. “Well, I know it ain’t money, ?cause Old Man Winter ain’t got none. So why are you risking life and limb to spring him?” He leaned back and pointed at her. “Unless he’s got money?”

A chill went through me. The last thing we needed was for an actual professional to start thinking there was fucking dollars involved. That kind of energy could scale up fast, and we needed to keep this local. But then, it would be just like Mats to have something stashed away. An emergency fund, something he could run with. Something he would deny until the moment came.

Jill sneered. “I look like someone does shit for money?”

Chewing Gum’s smile was bright and charming. He was a guy who never doubted himself. He might admit fault later, but he never doubted in the moment. “Lady, you look like your whole life is doing shit for money.” He snapped his gum. “Let me tell you something. Me, I’m an accountant. I count things, and I tell people higher up the food chain how many there are, if there’s too many, not enough. That’s what I do, because this is a business. That’s all it is. Old Man Winter here, he made a deal. Maybe it was a bad deal.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He made the deal. I’m just here to hold him to it. That’s fair.”

Jill nodded. “You and two dozen shitkickers.”

Chewing Gum laughed. He pointed at himself. “Like I said, a business, an accountant.” He smirked. “These guys, they think they’re tough because they carry a rifle, get to swing a dick around here.” He shrugged. “But they jump when I say jump. That’s because tough is a tactic. Power is a strategy. Trust me when I say this: I’m the person you need to worry about, okay sis?” He looked away, rubbing his chin, then looked back at her sideways. “I got just one question. You here on behalf of Abban Spillaine?”

Jill kept her face blank. She reached down and toyed with a piece of duct tape repairing a tear in the couch.

He nodded, shifting his weight. “Yeah, you see, I’m thinking maybe you are. Because, first of all, Abban and that dopey kid of his are just the right kind of old-school stupid to do it this way. And just the right kind of timeless greedy to do this the wrong way. So: You wanna buy him out?”

Jill blinked. “What?”

What? I echoed in my head.

Chewing Gum shrugged. “Like I said—an accountant, a business. Old Man Winter is in arrears, which means we take the hold off the buttons that have been out on him for the last fifteen years. He’s out, and we don’t owe him any protection any more. Normally, we’d just dump his ass outside, let the fates take him by the hand. But, shit, you’re here. If you’re bein’ staked by the Spillaines, take this back to them. Make a call. Get me a number. I’ll see if it’s enough to get you premium access to his bony old ass. I’ll hand him over to you and you do whatever you want with him.” He clapped his hands together softly. “What do you say? A fuckin’ bargain. Everybody wins.”

I admired Chewing Gum’s good cheer. He seemed like good company. I marveled at Merlin Spillaine’s incompetence. It sounded like one phone call would have spared us all the fucking trouble.

“Bonus,” he said, lifting his eyebrows as if this was a sudden, startling thought. “You buy out Old Man Winter’s rent, we stop looking for your third wheel. You walk away. I guarantee it.”

I wondered if he was being serious, or if he was just probing, seeing what her reaction was. If we had the money to buy him out, we would have. But then I didn’t understand all the rules of this place.

Jill shook her head. “No deal,” she said. “I came here to rob the place. I’ve never met this old bastard before in my life. I’m in his place, picking through the trash and shit everywhere, and this disgusting asshole comes tottering out and starts chasing me.” She shrugged. “I figure he wanted to fuck me, right? Seeing as any guy over the age of fifty always seems to think he’s just my type—and the older they are, the fucking worse it gets—so I’m busy checking to see if his pants are on—because pants off is kind of their signature move, these assholes, right?”

Chewing Gum smiled, eyes shining like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

She shrugged. “As if the sight of their shriveled little weiner is going to just drive me mad with lust—and so I don’t even notice he’s tied up and gagged until he’s following me out the door and across the goddamn yard.”

I smiled. Jill was a fucking gem.

Chewing Gum seemed to agree with me. His smile kept widening as she spoke. When she finished he blew a big pink bubble and then collapsed it with his teeth, chuckling. He looked at his hands, studying his cuticles. “All right.” He looked up over her shoulder. “Take ?em both to the garage, tell Batts to find out who we need to blame for this little clusterfuck.” He winked at Jill. “And tell her to be thorough.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF