Page 19 of Price of Angels

Mercy glanced up to see two men entering the bar, their mouths set in firm lines, their eyes sweeping back and forth like they were searching for someone.

Had to be them.

Mercy leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Have at it,” he told Ratchet, and resolved to look terrifying.

Holly saw them as she was leaving the kitchen, Mercy and Ratchet’s food balanced on the tray perched on her shoulder. Her eyes went to the table where the two Dogs sat, searching for a clear path through the crowd to get to them, and she spotted the two men who’d joined them.

Her heart came to a full stop, slamming up against her ribs. Nerveless, her hand opened, and the tray began to tilt.

Abraham looked older than when last she’d seen him: more flecks of gray in his hair, deeper lines pressed into the sunburned skin around his eyes and mouth. He looked like a military man, the way he was built and the way he carried himself, but he wasn’t. He was just a man who put on airs, and who had one of those raging metabolisms, that kept all the alcohol from turning into a beer gut.

At his side, Dewey looked the same: his colorless hair clipped short in a crew cut, his Adam’s apple sticking too far out of his throat, like his neck was bent at a wrong angle. Too skinny and awkward in his own skin. The top button of his red plaid shirt buttoned tight at the throat. His mouth damp and pink enough to make it look like he wore lipstick.

Holly felt the tray tipping off her shoulder, but was powerless to catch it. It fell, crashing down onto the hardwood, the china breaking with an awful sound, soup bursting across the boards like spattering blood, hitting the baseboards, the walls, her sneakers and bare legs. She felt every eye in the place dart toward her, and the explosion of noise. She dropped to her knees with a gasp, ducking down low over the mess, where the bar would conceal her from the men at the table.

“Shit!” Vanessa said behind her.

“You okay?” Matt asked, hurrying from his place beside the taps to stand beside her.

“I’m fine. Sorry. I’m so sorry,” Holly said, but she was anything but fine. She was close to cardiac arrest.

She reached for the broken dishes with trembling hands, picked up a shard of the soup bowl, and was burned by the heat it retained. She fumbled it, and the sharp edge sliced across her palm, bright blood welling up in its path.

“Oh no,” Matt said, crouching down. “Here, did you cut yourself? Damn, it’s bleeding. Doesn’t look deep, though.”

On her knees, poised above the terrible mess she’d made, Holly stared transfixed at the blood. Her hand burned. Matt was right; the cut was deep. And all she could think about was the time she’d been threatened with a knife, the cool tip of it scratching lightly across her stomach, while the ropes cut into her wrists, and her ankles. That cut, if it had been made, would have been deeper than this one. It might have killed her, and then she wouldn’t have been here now, to spill food and make a big commotion that no one needed.

Some of the other girls were rushing from the kitchen, asking what the noise was about, already jumpy because of Carly and wondering if it had been a gunshot.

Matt was scooping up fragments of plate and handfuls of spilled lettuce, assuring them that everything was okay, as he glanced worriedly at Holly.

She hadn’t moved. She wasn’t sure she could, because when she stood, there would be people looking over this way, out of normal curiosity. And two of those people might be Abraham and Dewey, and then what would she do?

She would run. If they laid eyes on her, she would run as fast and as far as she could, and hope it was fast and far enough.

Mercy instantly disliked the look of these two. But then, when did he ever like drug dealers?

The older one had introduced himself as Abraham, a wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, medium-sized man with a solid handshake. He wore a white t-shirt tucked into old Wranglers, no belt, a thick Carhartt jacket to fight off the winter chill, and boots that had seen better days. Typical working class guy, by all standards, but there was something in his face that set off the alarms in Mercy’s head. A strange, unnatural light in his colorless eyes, an insincerity to his smile.

The younger one, Abraham’s son-in-law Dewey, was just weird as hell. He’d shed his jacket and folded it carefully before laying it over the back of his chair. He was very thin, plaid shirt sinking into the concave cavity of his chest, his throat looking like a bent knee between his narrow shoulders and his awkward bobble head. His movements were slow and deliberate, like he was thinking hard about how to make each one of them just right.

Crazy redneck drug dealing hill people, both of them. They were in good company with the rest of their dealers.

Both had given Mercy measuring glances, their eyes getting big as they traveled up from the table to the top of his head. Mercy was glad he’d been there, for Ratchet’s sake. If the secretary was getting bad vibes off these two, he wasn’t showing it.

“We want to get outside our area,” Abraham said. “Where there’s more buyers.”

“And we heard we needed to ask you first,” Dewey said. He spoke slowly, carefully. Stupidly.

“That’s right,” Ratchet said. “The Dogs control the trade around Knoxville.” Not an ounce of threat or spin behind his words, just a friendly relaying of facts. “Where are you located now?”

“Pinewood.”

“Wow. Why’d you wanna come this far?”

“I heard good things. Thought it’d be nice to get outta the country for a little while.”

“You wouldn’t exactly be peddling shit downtown,” Mercy broke in, unable to keep quiet. He just didn’t like these guys. “You’d be outside the city.” He offered a wide, insincere grin. “Just saying. This ain’t exactly Vegas, boys. If you country mice are looking to hit the big time, Knoxville’s not the place to do it.”

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