Page 39 of Smoke Season

“Knew I never should’ve given a chick a man’s job,” Fallows threw at her.

“At leastIanticipated the river road closing in the smoke, genius.”

Fallows stepped forward, bringing them chest to chest, his breath hot on her face. “I don’t have to do a goddamned thing but sit on my ass and wait for my fucking will to be done. You should know by now: my operation doesnothave a cleanup crew. There is no Plan B. Ever. So I’m only going to ask this one more time. Where? Is it? Exactly.”

True forced herself to stand her ground. If she acquiesced to every dude who wanted to claim her personal space in this world, where would she be?

Fallows gripped her arm. Hard. “Spill, sister.”

True bit down a cry of surprise as her eyes smarted. The fucker was shockingly strong for a man in his late sixties. All that weed trimming, she supposed. It toned the biceps. Through clenched teeth she described the spruce tree in the Temple Bar parking lot. “No one can see it; no one will go looking there.”

“You better hope you’re right,” Fallows told her, bumping her shoulder roughly as he strode toward his truck. “Because the way I see it? Your job’s only half finished.”

Sam never thought he’d live to see the day when Kristina Truitt possessed the look of a cornered animal. But by the time he caught up with her on the Eddy deck, she was braced against the railing, staring out across the darkened parking lot and rubbing her left bicep.

“What the hell did he want with you tonight, True?”

True lifted her head and shrugged in what she was clearly trying to pass off as a lack of concern. She didn’t have to feign the fatigue that radiated from her, though. “I’m a grown woman, Sam,” she said tiredly.In other words, my business is my business.

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Yes, True demanded respect and positively radiated badassery, and no, she didn’t need him to sweep in and save the day. But this was his damned bar, was it not? And for a moment there, Sam had felt sure there was something more going on here than just a scuffle between very opposite-minded people on a bad day. Something thatdidconcern him. Fallows never could resist reminding Sam when he was not in on the joke.

He tried a different tack. “You know I don’t associate with that man,” he said, just as Mel rejoined them on the deck. Because maybeTrue needed the reminder. Fallows hadn’t darkened the door of the Eddy in ages before this week.

Neither woman argued with him, and maybe he’d imagined it, but had he just caught a quick glance between them? Despite the sticky heat that still clung after the sun had disappeared over the horizon in a fiery show of crimson, something icy slid under his skin. A prickle of foreboding.

He hadn’t imagined it. A sheen of fear hung in the air between the two women he cared about most in this world. Was it just the fire? Their worry about Annie? Doubt sluiced through him. PTSD could make him paranoid, he knew this. His childhood could cause him to second-guess the motives of others. He’d spent the better part of his boyhood fighting this feeling, the one that had him cowering in the dark of his bedroom closet as his dad and John hit the lights to duck from the cops, that had him evading teachers’ inquisitiveness when he’d shown up at school without sleep, circles of fatigue under his eyes. From the time of his earliest memories, Sam had been the only one, it seemed, waiting perpetually for the other shoe to drop, anxiously listening for the knock on the door, or the phone call that would give bad news, for CPS or the sheriff or the principal. And he was beyond done with all that.

“You’d tell me,” he said to them both, hating the weakness he heard in his voice and the vulnerability he felt, “if something was truly wrong here? With ... him?” Feeling impotent like this always caused shame to burn through him like oil slicking the streets of Kabul.

True shook her head, but didn’t glance at Mel again. It felt like a deliberate choice. The sense of foreboding positively ballooned in Sam, prickling every nerve ending. And to think that Mel had just been second-guessinghisdecisions.

“Mel?” Was she protecting True? If so, from what?

He wouldn’t be cast back into that place he hated, playing the victim, too weak and small to stand up and walk out of the dark closet that was his childhood. After a decade of trying to make a new namefor himself in Carbon, he was finally making some headway. No way was he going to let anyone—even Truitt—drag the Bishop name back into the dirt.

He told himself it couldn’t even be a possibility, but that didn’t stop the invasive feelings of disloyalty from coming. He was still wrestling with them when Mel’s radio on her hip squawked to life.

“Hernandez,” she said after glancing at the receiver. A second later, her phone was at her ear. When she lowered it, she looked between True and Sam, anguish written all over her face. “Briefing ASAP at the station. I need to go directly.”

Which meant she’d run out of time to see Annie, all because of this mess with Fallows. More confusion wound its way around an echoing regret in Sam. How had she allowed that to happen? How couldhehave? As always, it was hard to know who had dropped the ball, him or Mel. “I’ll lock up right now,” he told her. “Grab the Goal Zero, and Astor and I will head back.”

The lack of smoke shocked his senses as they reentered the now empty Eddy, the tightness in his lungs giving way to an almost painful sense of release.

True cleared her throat loudly. “Listen, you should know, I hate that creep every bit as much as you do.” She looked like she meant it. She looked outright miserable, now that Sam really took notice.

“That may not be possible,” Mel said quietly.

Sam turned to study her, too. Maybe they were right and it wasn’t his place, maybe he was just overreacting again, but something still nagged at him about tonight, and protectiveness prevailed. “You know that old saying ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’?” he asked True earnestly.

She nodded.

“Well, Fallows has no friends.”

“I havenointerest in being his friend.”

The solemn promise in her tone settled some of the turmoil in Sam’s belly. Still. “The only way to keep your hands clean is to stay faraway from that man, True. Mel.” Another idiom surfaced.Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

Before he could recite it, Hernandez interrupted again on the walkie, his voice cutting back through the bar against a background of heavy static. Mel reached quickly to turn down the volume on her radio. She depressed her speak button, requesting a reconfirmation of the latest order.

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