Page 27 of Snake

The lumps beneath the terrycloth were obviously ice cubes. “That hand needs ice,” he told Cox. Shifting to Autumn, he held out a more neatly folded wet cloth and added, “You could use some cold, too.”

“Thank you,” she rasped and lifted the cloth to her throat. She sighed as the cool hit her abused skin.

Cox put his hand on the bar and dropped the makeshift ice pack over his knuckles.

Autumn hissed and pulled the wad off with her free hand. “Oh my god. You need actual first aid.”

Vince nodded. “Yeah, man. That’ll get infected.”

Cox snatched the ice pack and put it back on his knuckles. “I’m fine. The towel’ll soak up the blood, and the ice’ll stop it.”

Vince and Autumn shared a meaningful look. Then Vince nodded and walked off, sporting a weird grin. The fuck?

He was right back, opening the bar’s first aid kit, like an oversized metal lunch box. Autumn set aside her own compress and pulled the kit to her. Was she more hurt than bruising?

No. She opened a packet of folded gauze, lifted the ice from his hand, and began dabbing at the blood.

“I said I was fine,” he muttered, trying not to wince each time the gauze brushed a knuckle. Her aim was a little shaky, but her touch was gentle.

“Look,” she said to his hand. “You saved my life twice tonight. Literally saved my life. Twice. Within a couple of hours. The least I can do is tend to the wounds you got in the effort.”

Her speech had definitely lost some of its crispness, but the words were clear enough. She wasn’t as drunk as he’d expect, considering the quantity of whiskey floating through her veins.

He watched while she cleaned up each knuckle, swabbed antibacterial ointment on each one, then set a fold of fresh gauze across his hand and wrapped it with a length of loose-weave gaze and a piece of tape.

“That’s a lot of bandage for a few little cuts,” he observed, twisting his hand back and forth.

“Gotta keep ‘em clean,” she replied. After another slug from her glass, she leaned toward him. “I’m confused.”

“I imagine you’re more confused by the sip.”

She ignored that and poked a manicured finger into his arm. “I thought you were supposed to follow me around, and report to your ‘president’”—she both made and voiced the scare quotes—“all the terrible, town-killing things I’m doing, like making paper flowers at the town park, and eating a sandwich at the town diner, and having a drink at the town bar. But you’ve been more like a bodyguard, keeping me safe from the town, not the other way around.”

Cox considered her. Facing her straight on like this, he could see the whiskey in her metallic eyes. Their focus was a little soft, and she blinked twice as often as before. Her speech had gone soft-focus as well. It was the wrong time to ask her anything real, but her comment had set a question loose, and now it was running around in his head like a puppy checking out a new room.

He also saw a spray of freckles over her nose and cheeks, peeking out through a fading layer of makeup. He shifted his attention away from those dangerous dots at once. Nope, her pouty little mouth wasn’t a good place to land, either.

Leaning back for some distance, he made his question a challenge. “Why are you so damn determined to build in a town that doesn’t want you?”

Her next blink came with a wince, as if his words had jumped off his tongue and bit her. She stared at him, and for a second he thought she wouldn’t answer, this woman who had an answer for everything.

But of course she had an answer. “It doesn’t make any sense that everybody hates this idea. I’m trying to do something good. I want to do something good.”

“Good for who?”

She grabbed her glass and finished it. This time, when she set the empty down, she waved Vince off, but then put up a finger to indicate she was pausing, not stopping. Cox imagined the window for Autumn to make a smart choice about when to stop had closed at least one glass, and probably one trip to the bathroom, ago; at this point, even a pause was fairly impressive.

“Good for everybody. I want Heartland Homesteads, and any similar project I get to build, to make their communities better for the people they serve.”

“This is about making money for you. Don’t try to shine this up like a charity you’re doin’.”

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus on a graham cracker. That’s not what I’m doing!” When Cox made a face at her to convey the depths of his disbelief, she continued, “Yes, this project will benefit me, because yes, it will make my company a profit, but that’s good! I’m trying to get MWGP out of the cheap-construction in low-income locations business. That kind of work is a huge profit leader, but everybody in the industry knows it’s predatory. It’s just that nobody cares! I care! I’m trying to do this kind of development the right way and show my boss he can still make money—even more money—doing it better! Your stupid biker gang is the reason everybody around here hates me! You decided I was some big-city snake out to cheat you all blind, that every word out of my mouth is a lie, so of course everybody here thinks that’s who I am!”

As that tirade had progressed, her focus and voice had begun to clear. She was getting wily again. Her ’biker gang’ dig was bait, and he let it go by untaken. “Signal Bend isn’t a low-income location. Back in the day, yeah, but things are good now.”

Her eyes narrowed sharply. “Good for everybody? Or good for the Horde and the people you care about? Because, Cox, I did a lot of research to determine where to start this project, and while Signal Bend’s health has improved dramatically in the past fifteen or twenty years, the average income stats are barely above the poverty line. Average income. That means for everybody getting fat, somebody is just about starving. You’ve got a shiny Main Street district and some showpiece businesses. I’m sure those owners and your ‘club’” (more scare quotes) “are doing great—and by the way, I’ve noted how many of those showpiece businesses are owned by Horde and your family—but there’s a lot of people struggling along the edges of all that good fortune and better press. Signal Bend is a company town, and that’s why you don’t want anybody else building here.”

Cox stared at her. She hadn’t said anything inaccurate, but her perspective threatened to shift his own lens. Was Signal Bend a company town? What did that make the Horde, then?

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