Page 29 of Fiona and the Fixer

“Didn’t their parents teach them not to wave and smile at strangers?” I wondered aloud.

At the outskirts of town, there was a “Leaving Coal Springs” sign with “Come Again!” written in big, cheerful letters beneath. I remembered Dax’s gruff voice ordering me to do just that, all around his dick.

My pussy clenched, remembering. Aching with how big he’d been.

“AHHHHHHH!” I shouted within my car. How dare he take over my thoughts! Was I so mad at him because he made my vagina fall in love with him?

That had to be it.

The two-lane road between Coal Springs and the highway was twisty and turny through the mountains. Guardrails hugged the edge, the only thing keeping cars from driving over a steep drop. It was impossible to go fast, and I came up behind a camper going well below the marked speed limit.

As we went around a bend, there was a van parked in a little pull-out. I recognized the phallic pickle cartoon character on the side of it. The rear doors were open, and a man was standing between them in front of a number of white five-gallon drums loaded in the back. A second man was at the guardrail with a drum, and he was… was he dumping pickles over the edge?

I passed them and I glanced back in my rearview mirror. Yes, they were definitely dumping pickles off a cliff.

“What the hell?” I muttered.

I thought back to my run this morning. Seeing the same van in front of the Pickle Hole this morning, unloading the drums and carrying them into the store. Now they were dumping the contents off a cliff? It made me remember some voices I heard when I’d been in the bookstore with Dax. Between the car noises and toilets and women buying baby clothes, I’d heardshipmentandtoss the pickles.

Individually, someone throwing out food wasn’t all that strange. Maybe the pickles were bad, and they had to be chucked because of health codes and wanted to feed the mountain goats and bobcats that lived on the steep hillside.Maybe they tipped in the back of the van around a curve and had to be chucked.

It also wasn’t strange that a pickle van was delivering pickles to a pickle store early in the morning.

Nor were the wordsshipmentortoss the pickles.At the time, the words had meant nothing, besides the fact that I’d been very distracted.

But I could now see the big picture. Or abiggerpicture. What kind of company brought in stock, then dumped the stock intentionally? Obviously, pickles were a popular food item worldwide. I’d never, not once though, seen a pickle store. Sure, a pickle shelf at the supermarket or barbecue specialty shop. But in Coal Springs, where it was socked in with snow eight months out of the year making outdoor picnics pretty much impossible?

A mile down the road, I pulled off the road and stopped at a small trailhead parking lot.

I tapped my fingers on my steering wheel, thinking. Something was up with these pickle people. Something… not right. Maybe even against the law.

“Fuck,” I muttered. Could I drive back to Denver and just let this mystery go? It was pickle littering, not human trafficking. “Now I know how Scooby Doo and the gang felt.”

I should let it go. Who cared? But what was I going back to? My apartment that I was rarely in, that had one picture hanging on the living room wall because it had been left by the previous tenants… three years ago? No way was I headed back to work after only two days. I’d gone to Coal Springs for Hannah. I had the vacation rental for the month.

I could snoop around and figure out what was up with the Pickle Hole until Hannah returned. It would give me something to do.

“As long as I stay away from Dax, it should all be fine.”

15

DAX

Instead of openingthe store back up, I spent a half an hour in Hannah’s office erasing the interior security feeds. I’d never made a sex tape before, but I had to admit, watching it back was hot as hell. The longer I watched, the more possessive I became. No one else should see Fiona this way. Uninhibited. Wild.Mine.

Because every bit of pleasure I saw flit across her face was from me.

After downloading a still shot of Fiona entering the store, I hit Delete and made the past two hours of feed disappear. If Jack had a problem with a gap, he needed to tell his woman to find workers who didn’t have exploding appendixes.

I called Nitro. “I just emailed you a photo.”

“Okay, hang on.” I heard a roll of wheels then fingers clacking on a keyboard. He was in his office, tucked away like a bat cave. Even when he wasn’t in there, I’d never known him not to have a computer or a laptop or tablet nearby.

“Her name is Fiona,” I offered.

“You’re just raking in the ladies up there in Coal Springs. Maybe I need to check the place out.”

“This is the woman from the convenience store. She came into Hannah’s shop.” I alsocamein Hannah’s shop, but I left that out. “I’m guessing you’re still waiting for the report on the robbery. Start with the photo and see if you get any facial matches, then move on to her name and–”

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