Page 94 of Fearless

She turned – flash of dark blue, a jacket sleeve, a shape, taller than her –

Pain exploded in her skull. The blast of it so sharp and acute, so brilliant – her vision went white, then black.

Then nothing.

Carter had grown so accustomed to the sight of her – her back to him, bent over a book, wind playing with her hair – at the picnic table in front of the Dogs’ clubhouse, that her absence was a shock to his eyes. She was always here before him, always had her books spread out and was ready with a list of questions for him.

He searched for her black truck, and couldn’t find it. Sitting in his car, he dialed her cell. It rang out and finally went to voicemail.

Hi, this is Ava, leave a message.

“Um…where are you? We have tutoring tonight.” He waited, like he expected to find an answer in her voicemail box. “Call me, I guess, if you get this.”

Going inside was a risk, but one he took. As he crossed the pavement to the clubhouse, an uneasiness settled over him. Something was off. Ava had been all spaced out in calculus today. Her not being here now – that meant something. He knew her well enough at this point to know that something heavy weighed on her mind.

He opened the door on the sound of pool balls clacking together. The German shepherd, Ares, greeted him with a tail-wag; they were friends at this point. The common room was at its usual weekday capacity: couple guys at the bar, couple guys playing pool. At the pool table, he spotted Ava’s brother, the punk rock friend, and Mercy.

Carter frowned automatically. If there was ever a pamphlet passed around to girls’ parents warning what kinds of men to steer them away from, Mercy’s photo was on it.

As if reading his thoughts, the big biker lifted his head, and his gaze came laser-guided straight to Carter.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked, and the other two guys turned around, curious.

Aidan, without any of Mercy’s hostility, said, “Ava’s not here.”

Duh. “I know, but she’s supposed to be. We had tutoring tonight.”

“Did you not hear him?” Mercy said. “She ain’t fucking here.”

The friend – spiky hair, earrings – glanced over at Mercy. “Bro.”

“This is a clubhouse, do you get that?” Mercy said, his dark eyes boring into Carter, cold and furious. “Not an after school program. Get lost.”

Carter held eye contact, just a moment, to prove he wasn’t afraid. Inwardly, he quaked at the idea of that big monster coming around the table to get to him. But he hated the idea of someone like that winning. He’d been slapped around too much growing up to be afraid of another asshole, no matter what kind of patches he wore on his back.

“Yeah. Sure,” he said, and made a slow show of turning. He would leave, but because he wanted to, because he was beginning to worry about Ava, but not because of that bastard. When he finally got hold of her tonight, he’d tell her she had sucky taste in men.

The sun was sliding behind the tree line when Carter got home, fat fingers of gold and orange streaking upward, toward the purpling high point of the sky. Carter spotted Ava’s truck parked at the street, and his first reaction was complete embarrassment. He’d hoped she’d never see his house. He never had friends over, never posted any photos to Facebook. And here was Ava, little miss biker princess Ava, seeing his hidden truth up close and personal.

He could envision the confusion in her:But, your car…

Yes, it was red and shiny and new. Because he’d worked four summers to pay for it, and because his grandmother had left him a chunk of change in her will that his father hadn’t been able to drink and piss away.

He walked up to her driver door, head already ducked in shame. But when he looked through the window, he saw the truck was empty.

He walked up to the house, found the front door locked. No Ava.

He called her, and heard a phone ringing beside him, down low.

It was almost dark at this point, just the faintest blush of color along the horizon. When he turned, he saw the lit face of a cellphone, down in the black grass beside the stoop. When he hung up his outgoing call, the screen blackened over on the one in the grass. When knelt to retrieve it, his heart turned over.

Ava’s phone, the bright orange case and the Harley sticker pressed onto the back. He pushed the screen, lit it up, and started opening apps, searching for some clue.

In her inbox, he found a text from him, one he hadn’t sent. One asking her to meet him here for tutoring tonight.

His mind went spinning back to breakfast that morning, the faux angst, the undisguised hatred of Ava.“She’s just the kind of whore cops find dead on the floors of abandoned houses.”

“Mason,” he said like a curse, and took off sprinting for his car.

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