Page 25 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
The kiss had been incredible. Lips and tongues and burning heat. He’d known what he was doing, whereas she’d felt like a total amateur. And right in the middle of it, Floyd had appeared, like a jump scare in a horror movie.
She shuddered. Even the mere memory of that night in the trailer could kick-start a panic attack.
Daniel sighed. It was almost imperceptible, just a slight rise and fall of his chest. He reached over and took her hand in his. “Julia. None of this is your fault.”
She looked down, studying his hand on top of hers. He wore a silver ring with a cross on it on his pinkie, and a chunky platinum watch on his wrist. Veins snaked under his skin from the back of his hand all the way up his forearm.
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, tightly enough to feel his bones and muscles and the tic of his pulse under his skin. It made her wonder what the rest of him felt like.
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “I should go get your hoodie.”
“I don’t want it back.”
“Why not?”
He looked up and met her eyes, steady and unblinking. “Because I like knowing you still have it.”
The air caught in her chest. Something flipped in her stomach, like a trapdoor opening. She let go of his wrist as if it burned and turned abruptly toward the door, fingers fumbling for the handle.
She had to get out. Now. Everything was moving too fast, her thoughts tangling with the heat in her skin.
She ducked out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Head down, arms clutched across her chest, she crossed the lawn in quick, uneven strides.
Behind her, the ’Cuda rumbled to life. She heard it pull away from the curb, the engine’s low growl cutting through the still night air before it finally faded into silence.
Or maybe that echo wasn’t the car at all. Maybe it was just the roar in her head.
EIGHT
Daniel watchedthe claw of the grappler pick up his old Camry and crush it between its huge steel talons. Then it swung the car’s carcass onto a pile of other scrap with a metallic crunch that vibrated the dirt beneath his work boots.
He stared at the twisted body, with its concave roof and popped windshield. Two years ago, that car had taken him and Sebastián from L.A. to Chicago. To what should have been a new life, but what had soon felt a fuck of a lot like his old one. Doing the same thing. Hoping for a different result.
Now, looking at the car, he only remembered that night a week ago in his trailer. He’d never got the stink of that guy’s blood out of the upholstery. So, it had to go. Soon it would be buried under a shimmering mountain of scrap metal, being warped and bent and broken down by the elements. Rust to rust.
He wouldn’t miss it.
Tequila was sitting at his feet. He bent down to scratch her ears. She grinned up at him, tongue lolling out.
A familiar voice came from behind him. “Daniel! Been looking everywhere for you, man.”
He suppressed a sign, then turned to see Terry making his way up the dirt track towards him. His gait was slow and rolling, like his hips ached.
Everything Terry did was slow. Right until it wasn’t. The waddling gait, the huffing and puffing, the constant fumbling and fidgeting—it was all an act. Daniel had seen Terry switch from ambling buffoon to prize fighter at the drop of a hat. Seen him pound a man with his ham hock fists until the man didn’t have a face no more.
Terry stopped a yard away, put his hands on his hips and sucked in air like he’d just sprinted here. “Where you been at? Paq said you didn’t show up at work today.”
Daniel looked up at the crumpled wreck that had been his Camry.
Terry followed his gaze. He grunted, then plucked a cigarette out from behind his ear. “Car trouble?”
Daniel said nothing.
Terry grunted again, then lit his smoke and took a long pull. He squinted at Daniel with one eye. “You been distracted lately, Danny. And I’ve been wondering if maybe it might be girl trouble instead.”
Daniel felt a chill from his tone. Terry had only one rule for the guys that worked for him. Relationships were off the cards. In his mind, girlfriends and wives made you weak and unfocused. They fucked up your priorities and skewed your sense of loyalty, which was to him and the gang, andonlyhim and the gang.
Apparently, it was something he’d seen in the military. Men getting married and having kids and losing their edge on the battlefield. “It happened all the time,” he’d once told Daniel. “These guys would go from ruthless killers to total pussies overnight. One minute they’re attaching battery probes to some poor Iraqi’s nutsack, the next all they can talk about is strollers and school zones and fucking minivans. It was a goddamn tragedy, man.”
