Page 24 of The Hard Way

Odin scowled darkly at the mounted heads. “I don’t know. It’sfucking-gunnerving the way they stare.”

“They’re staring at the whole room,” I pointed out unhelpfully.

“Seriously, man, could it be that?” Zeus said.

“It could be,” Odin said. “I can’t tell. My radar feels screwed up right now. The baby cherubs and now this.” Odin swirled his ice, watching it sail around in his glass. “In the prison, they would always be watching you.”

Zeus and I both perked up. Odin never talked about his time in prison. His breaking of that silence was either a good sign or a really bad one.

“They had cameras. Always cameras behind Plexiglas. You couldn’t get at them to break them. Those in charge would make you suffer and then watch you after.”

Zeus and I sat there, suspended. Waiting. Would he say more?

“They would whip you sometimes and leave you tied so that the bugs would come. They would keep you in a dark hole and you would lose track of time. The more you tried to track it, the more you would lose track. But the cameras were somehow worse. They would throw you back in your cell, but those cameras…”

I waited, heart breaking. Odin was so strong. It was a hard blow that would’ve broken him.

“The cameras got into your head,” he continued. “You felt like you couldn’t repair yourself…or breathe or something. Part of repairing from something painful is having the alone time—the space—to feel that pain, but with the camera you never were alone, and you couldn’t let them see you sweat. They turned you inside out, those cameras.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It made you very…” Odin swirled his ice on and on, staring into his glass. “Exterior,” he finally said. “It would make you externally referented. Not in a good way. It was harmful.” He lifted his eyes to meet the eyes of the deer head. “Very, very harmful.”

“We need to go at this Andy Miller and get the fuck out of town,” Zeus said, alarmed.

I nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.” Though deep down, we were both thinking,getOdinout of town.

We ate more saltines. My gaze drifted to the booth nearest the hearth area.

“What’s there?” Zeus asked.

“Nothing.”

“You keep looking at it.”

“That was Dad’s favorite place for our family to sit.”

“Oh,” Zeus said, hushed and reverent.

Odin touched my hair. “Do you want to move there, goddess? So that we can sit there? Or do you want to move away? So we can’t look at the booth anymore?”

“No, I like being able to look at it. Remembering when our family was together. We would come here for really special occasions—not just birthdays, but graduation. That sort of thing. We would get the surf ’n’ turf. And you know what we wouldn’t get?”

Zeus held up his hands in mock surrender.

“We stopped coming here once the bank put the squeeze on the farm,” I said.

“First National…” Odin turned his gaze to Zeus. “As long as we’re in the neighborhood, maybe we should make a cash withdrawal. What do you think?”

I spit out my wine. “Excuse me?” I knew that tone.

He wasn’t talking about the normal kind of cash withdrawal, the kind you made with IDs and withdrawal slips and a fun vacuum tube canister. He was talking about the kind you made with masks and Uzis, the kind where the cash was delivered by a tearful teller opening the drawer.

Odin gave me his most sparkling evil smile.

“Odin,” Zeus growled.

“It will be beautiful. Wefucking-gshoot out the windows. We trash the place. We take all the money. The same bank robbed twice. That jackal Hank Vernon will look like a fool.”

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