Strike Page 11

  Once the groceries are all in the car, I shut the trunk and push the cart to the cart return. The cop is watching me from just outside the doors, arms crossed. She sees me watching her and slowly shakes her head. I’m guessing the black-and-white cop car parked on the other side of the cart return is hers, which gives me an idea. I push the cart into place and whip the box out of my bag. The sticky tape has already been exposed, so I kneel and stick the damn thing under her car, where it nestles like it genuinely wants to be there.

  Take that, ma’am.

  I keep my head low as I hurry between the cars and back to the waiting hatchback.

  As soon as I’m in my seat with the door closed, the guy says, “Did you get all ten of the Wipers installed?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you pressed all the buttons to activate them?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you got everything on your list?”

  “Yep.”

  He gives me a sadistic grin. “Then let’s go home and see who else passed the test.”

  I toss the empty purse into the backseat. I never want to smell mint gum again.

  We don’t speak during the drive back. I stare out the window, and the guy fiddles with the radio and ultimately gives up. At times like this, I fiercely miss my phone, miss having the ability to check e-mails and social media and just blank out in a way that means I’m not turning down human interaction so much as choosing it on my terms. I have nothing to say to the Crane goon, and he has nothing to say to me. A funny cat video would not go amiss. Say what you will about technology, but it’s great for when you want to purposefully ignore an asshole.

  We pass through a series of strip malls, and I see further evidence of the Crane family’s influence. Crane Tires and Crane BBQ and a parking lot of vehicles just as disreputable as the one I’m in, Crane Used Cars. Crane businesses seem to be unimaginative but functional. After Thanksgiving, the dirt lot behind the cars will become Crane Christmas Trees, and when the Fourth of July rolls around, it’ll be Crane Fireworks. Maybe that’s where Leon learned to love blowing shit up.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I put the Wipers around the store and under the cop’s car, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure they’re not dangerous . . . but what if they are? What if the one Leon opened for us was a plant, and the rest do something horrible? What if they’re bombs? I didn’t like the cop, but I know that even if she was a bitch, she was just doing her job. She doesn’t deserve to die just because I was frustrated and vengeful. That little boy who hates oatmeal definitely doesn’t deserve to die. Goddammit.

  I look over at my driver. He’s not going to be any help. Even if he turned around, it’s not like I could run back into Mark’s and collect and dispose of a series of stuck-down boxes that might or might not explode. So I have no choice but to do what I’ve been doing all along: repress these feelings. Shove them down under food and kisses and knitting. Hope for the best, hope that things will be better someday.

  Wait for the sound of fireworks that aren’t fireworks.

  Filled with dread and self-loathing, I watch every store we pass until it disappears in the rearview mirror.

  Finally we turn into the Crane compound, waved ahead by a nameless good old boy with a machine gun. The sun is going down, and people are moving around the tents carrying lanterns and plates of food. The scene is utterly normal. I scan the area but don’t see anyone I know, much less Wyatt and Matty, waiting for me. My driver parks the car with all the others on the far side of the field, opens his door, and says, “Take your stuff to the kitchen and find Heather or Leon.” And then he’s gone.

  I manage to load myself up with all the bags and tromp toward the house. Another car is coming down the drive, and I slow down to see who it is. I didn’t see my friends get into their cars, but I can tell by the height of the person on the passenger side that it isn’t Wyatt. Still, I wait. Could be Gabriela or Chance.

  The car stops and Rex gets out, laughing with his driver, a chubby kid who looks more nerd than Crane. They share the burden of the groceries, and Rex gives me a relieved smile.

  “Did that suck as much as I think it did?” he asks.

  He keeps walking, and I join him. A girl can stand around a field like an idiot for only so long before someone notices.

  “Yeah. Did you almost get caught?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I was at Jim’s Club, and everyone was too busy buying huge boxes of prepper shit to notice some kid with a backpack loading up his cart. Where’d they take you?”

  “Mark’s. A cop tried to pick me up for shoplifting because I had to carry this big-ass bag.”

  Rex looks me up and down, fighting a grin. “And they gave you a dumb costume, too. Leon must really hate you. It’s almost like they want you to fail.”

  I had forgotten that I’m wearing a wig and glasses, and I rip them off and shove them into the bag with the oatmeal. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but . . .

  “They didn’t make you . . . dress up or anything?”

  He shakes his head. “Nope. Just me with a backpack. Totally normal.”

  We tromp up the porch steps, and I feel like more of a fool than ever. Maybe talking back to the Cranes isn’t my best move. Maybe I’m forgetting the value of self-preservation. Maybe they really do want me to fail.

  Chance is in the kitchen, drinking a beer and laughing by a stack of pizza boxes, but I can tell he’s worried as hell by the way he glances at the door every few seconds, probably waiting for Gabriela. A fleet of Crane women are putting up the groceries, silent and grim. I drop my bags on the cracked linoleum and rub feeling back into my hands where the plastic handles bit in.

  “Do you know where my dog is?” I ask the nearest woman, who is graying and built like a mountain behind her apron. She shrugs and picks up a bag.

  Rex nudges me. “Hey, come on.” I give him a suspicious glare, and he leans close. “I’m gay, and you’re taken, so just come on. Get your buddy, too.”

  I catch Chance’s eye, toss my chin toward the door, and pull the box of dog biscuits from what’s left of my groceries. Rex grabs a box of pizza from the counter and hurries out into the hall, then to the front porch. When he sits down on the steps, Chance and I sit down too. The pizza box opens, and I salivate and grab a slice of pepperoni.

  “How did yours go?” Rex asks Chance.

  Chance holds up a finger and chugs the last of his beer, then burps loud enough to startle a nearby chicken. “Easy-peasy livin’ greasy. Much better than working for Valor. You?”

  “Mine was fine. But she almost got caught.”

  I shake my head and swallow back down the pizza that’s trying to fight its way out. “Correction: I did get caught. But I guess since there was nothing in my bag, the cop couldn’t legally pick me up. It sucked.”

  “Ed went in with me and stood watch.”

  I stare at Rex like he’s grown a second head. “Seriously? Ed? You’re on a first-name basis with your goon?”

  Chance shrugs. “My dude offered to help, but I didn’t want to look suspicious, so he stayed in the car.”

  I toss my pizza at a chicken, which is sick of our shit and flaps onto the roof in a huff. “Why does every goddamn person in this city want me dead?”

  “Because you don’t take anyone’s shit, and that makes you a liability,” Rex says.

  I knock my head against the porch column. “It’s just such a cliché. Girl speaks her mind; guys in power try to punish her.”

  Rex raises a sharp eyebrow. “Uh, you’re talking to a gay half-Asian kid who likes guyliner and lives in rural Georgia. Don’t get me started on the dumbass clichés that have chased us all into the apocalypse. At least America gave us some rights.”

  “Whiners,” Chance grumbles.

  “So you’re from around here?” I ask Rex. Because he’s insinuating himself into our little family, and even though my gut instinct says he’s cool, I don’t trust anyone anymore.

  He nods.
“Yeah. I went to private school, though.”

  “Bullied?” Chance asks.

  Rex chuckles. “No. You saw what I did to that prep kid earlier. Twelve years of jiu-jitsu and three of Wing Chun means bullying isn’t a problem. My parents wanted the best for me, and none of the local public schools were up to snuff. Hence, debt. Twenty thousand a year in exchange for flawless test scores and a future doctor seemed like a good deal.”

  “So Valor tapped you?”

  He nods. “I take my truck and list, or they shoot my parents and little sister. Didn’t even have to think about it. You learn to be pretty cutthroat at Bridgeton Academy.”

  The silence slips on, punctuated by the clucking of sleepy chickens. Finally, Chance asks, softly, “Did you go back?”

  With a sigh, Rex flops onto his back and stares up at the porch ceiling. “Nope. Right now, it’s Schrödinger’s family. They could be alive, or they could be dead. I don’t want them to know about what I’ve done. And I don’t want to know what was done to them, either.” He cocks his head like he’s trying not to cry. “Uh, why is the ceiling painted blue?”

  I look up and have to smile. As broken-down as the house is, the porch ceiling is freshly painted and swept free of cobwebs. “It’s called haint blue. My mom says it’s a traditional thing, that it keeps spirits and spiders away.”

  “That’s stupid. You can’t keep ghosts away,” Chance says.

  “You can try.”

  The boys don’t have anything to say to that, so they each go for more pizza. I pick up another slice and try to chew. We all look up as two cars rumble down the drive. Gabriela is in the passenger seat of the first one, but the second one just has a driver. No passenger. Beside me, Chance exhales and stands. But I can’t swallow, and I stay seated, too tense to move.

  Why is no one in that car?

  They park, and Chance grabs my shoulder and shoots Rex a glare. “Come on. Better to know than not.”

  I let the boys pull me up, and we head for the line of parked cars. Gabriela gets out and stalks toward us with bags up and down her arms. Her driver is young and skinny and skulks behind her.

  “This is bullshit,” she says, handing some of her bags off to Chance.

  The other driver gets out of the empty car with a black backpack over his shoulder. He looks pissed.

  “Hey, man. What happened?” Rex asks, walking in time with him.

  “Kid messed up. Got shot. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Which kid?”

  The driver spits in the dust. “Tall one. Blond.”

  My heart falls, and I hurry to keep up. “What was his name? Was it Wyatt? I mean, Hank?”

  He glances back at me like I’m an annoying bug. “I don’t know. Jesus.”

  I hurry behind him, not sure what else to ask, but he darts up the stairs. Tuck stops me by letting his gun fall across my chest.

  “You know the rules.”

  I try to peer past him, but the dude’s a megalith. “Leon said we could go upstairs and see Kevin if we did a good job. And where’s my dog?”

  He grins, showing a silver tooth. “Hartness took her for a walk. That’s a damn good dog. But you can’t go upstairs until Leon says so.”

  I can’t see up the narrow stairs, but a door opens and slams closed, and raised voices explode. There’s a heavy thump, and Leon’s voice yells, “Goddammit, Steve!”

  I strain to hear words, names. The room goes silent, as if they know I’m listening and are trying to piss me off even more.

  Tuck puts a heavy, gentle hand on my shoulder. “Just go eat dinner, okay? You don’t want to mess with the big guys when they’re angry.”

  I nod, a huge lump in my throat, and go back out to sit on the front porch steps, where Rex, Chance, and Gabriela are eating pizza and watching the driveway. A car door slams, and I look across the field to where the kid in camo is getting out of a jacked-up pickup. Bea is walking across the field with her hands in her pockets as her driver trails in her wake, carrying her bags like a butler. We’re still missing another girl, Wyatt, the prep kids, and the other kids that I never bothered to notice. Somebody in the tent city is playing a guitar, and I want to smash it to pieces.

  Boots land beside me on the porch, and I turn. Leon Crane crouches, staring at me with fury in his dark, deep-set eyes.

  “I’ve got some bad news about your boy,” he says. “Come with me. Now.”

  10.

  I stand up and drop the piece of pizza I was holding and not eating. Chance, Gabriela, and Rex stand up too.

  “We’re coming with her,” Chance says.

  Leon chuckles. “Like hell you are, son.” He inclines his head toward Gabriela. “She can, though. You boys stay out here and eat. We’ll be down soon, unless something else goes wrong tonight.”

  “I’m not letting you take two girls upstairs alone.” Chance moves his shirt aside, revealing his gun.

  Leon moves his jacket aside to show a larger gun. “Don’t try me. Do you even know how many Cranes would put holes in you before you could draw? I don’t have lascivious intentions, and if I did, I wouldn’t be bird-dogging for underage sniff on my own front porch with my aunt Kitty watching out the kitchen window.”

  “It’s fine,” Gabriela says.

  Leon bows with a smirk. “After you, then, ladies.”

  Gabriela hurries to the steps, and I follow her. Tuck moves aside to let us pass.

  “Take a right at the top of the stairs. The door is open. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I’m surprised as hell when we end up in a bedroom with only one person in it: Kevin. He’s propped up on flowered pillows in a twin bed, looking pathetic and pale. There are three more twin beds in here, and the dresser is covered in medical stuff—boxes of bandages and gauze, tubes of ointment, a big brown bottle of peroxide. This must be the clinic.

  “Where’s Wyatt?” I blurt.

  Kevin shakes his head. “I don’t know. Did you bring me any pizza? I can smell it, but they won’t give me any.”

  Kevin is great, and I’m glad he’s okay, if a little pale, but I’d rather be outside watching for Wyatt. Gabriela moves to his side and fusses with his pillow.

  “Hot, ain’t he?” I turn around to leave and find Leon Crane leaning in the doorway. “Your boy here’s going septic. Needs antibiotics. Which we don’t have.”

  “So this isn’t about Wy—Hank?”

  Leon shakes his head, walks to Kevin’s bed, and pulls back the covers to show us that Kevin’s skinny leg is going red and veiny. “This is about how the boy you shot is going to die unless you go buy him some medicine.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I’ve got, like, ten bucks left. Where do I go?”

  “Well, it’s not that simple, is it? You can’t buy antibiotics without a doctor’s prescription, and it so happens that while we have many capable nurses, our prescription pad just ran out. So unless you’ve got a better idea, I recommend you go to a pet store and buy as many bottles of fish antibiotics as you can carry.”

  “Fish antibiotics,” I say. “You’re serious?”

  Leon nods slowly, but Gabriela grabs my arm. “No, it’s legit. I read about it in a comic book. It’s the same stuff as human antibiotics, but you don’t need a prescription. And I’ve still got plenty of money on my card.”

  Headlights flash against the window glass, and I feel a painful pull to return to the front porch. But Gabriela’s still got my arm, and Kevin groans and shifts against the bed, and I’m just so very sick of feeling guilty and persecuted.

  “Fine. When Hank gets back, we’ll go. He has his keys. The kid can live another hour, right?”

  Kevin clears his throat as if he finally understands what we’re talking about and is now terrified. “Uh, what?”

  Gabriela smiles and puts a hand to his forehead. The smile dies. “We’re going to get you some medicine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I like the pink kind that goes in the fridge.” He shakes her hand off and reaches fo
r a stack of old magazines, but he seems listless and unfocused, and the magazine just flops on his belly.

  “I think you should go now. And you’ll need these.” Leon tosses something at me, and I catch a key ring, my hands stinging. There’s a Lexus key, a few house keys, and a Nirvana key chain. Goddammit.

  “Where’d you get these keys?” I say, cold and hard. “Where’s Hank? Was he the one who got shot tonight?”

  “We don’t have a full count yet.” Leon puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “But we’ll be down one more if you don’t hurry. Gangrene sets in pretty fast, and the kid’s burning up.”

  And he’s gone.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Gabriela says, but Kevin is half asleep and sweating, his head turning back and forth like he’s having a nightmare.

  I’m pretty sure I’ve been having the same nightmare for a week now. It’s not going to end anytime soon.

  “Everything okay?” Tuck asks as we tromp down the stairs and past him. In just a few short days, I’ve grown entirely accustomed to dangerous men carrying machine guns in their arms, cradled like babies.

  “Not really,” I say, and then we’re back outside.

  The crew on the porch steps has swelled: Rex and Chance, the kid in camo, a girl in a hat, Bea, although she’s sitting by herself, over to the side, eating a Granny Smith apple.

  No Wyatt.

  “Has anybody seen Hank?”

  Chance shakes his head.

  “Have they said anything else about . . . um, more kids who failed?”

  Another head shake.

  “Crap.”

  “That’s my new motto,” Chance says. He’s got another beer sweating in his hand, and his voice is slurred. Where the hell is he getting beer? “How’s the kid?”

  “Septic,” Gabriela says, flat and tight. “So we’re going to get meds. Come on.”

  She starts walking for the cars, and I drag Chance up by the arm. He wobbles and yanks away from me but follows her.

  “Should I come?” Rex asks.

  I shake my head. “Probably not. But will you watch out for my dog?”