Page 49 of The Auction
“Okay, but let’s keep our eyes out for the Talley horse. And I don’t care how tough those pork chops are when we get back, we’re eating them.”
Away wasa motel parking lot an hour and a half away from Riverbend.
I leaned against the passenger door of my truck, parked across the street, and watched Creed say who knows what to Tank, who had finally regained consciousness.
He’d dumped Tank’s body into the bed of Tank’s rental truck when we left the house. I’d packed up all his clothes and bottles and tossed them in with him, then followed Creed as he drove Tank’s truck.
Now, as we were parked outside the motel, he had a fistful of Tank’s t-shirt and was pointing his finger in the drunk’s face.
After a minute, Creed dropped the shirt, hoppedout of the truck bed in a smooth motion and made his way across the street to me.
“Keys,” he said. I tossed him the keys and he walked around the hood to get into the driver’s seat.
I took that as my cue to climb into the passenger seat.
“What did you tell him?” I said, slamming the door behind me.
“To lose my address,” Creed said, turning the engine and pulling us back onto the empty road.
“Or else,” I added. “Right? You gave him theor elsepart. Otherwise, how will he know you mean business?”
Creed shot me a look like what I’d said was stupid. “Trust me. It’s implied. You need to know something about me, Jules.”
“I know you weren’t some dude in a sailor suit hanging out on a ship.”
I tried to imagine him in the blue jumpsuit with the white lapels and that image would not form.
“No, I wasn’t,” he admitted. “But that’s not it. I don’t know who Tank might have talked to about coming to see me. And folks in town would have seen us together when I took him to the bar. So I couldn’t kill him. But he comes back and that won’t matter. You understand what I’m saying?”
He was saying he could kill a man. He was saying he would kill a man if he had to. Which probably meant, he’d done it before.
I didn’t want to think about that. Or how easily he’d taken a man of Tank’s size to our kitchen floor.
So I tried to change the subject.
“I’m surprised you let him get away with calling you Chief. A little racist, no?”
Creed barked out a laugh. “He called me Chief becauseof my rank, not because I’m half Native. I was a CPO. Chief Petty Officer.”
“Ohhh. Wow. Does that make me the racist then?”
And, unbelievably, given the night we’d had, we both started laughing hysterically.
THIRTEEN
JULIETTE
“Okay, give it to me straight,”I said, as we were walking the fields a few days after Tank’s unceremonious departure.
Creed was doing his diligent inspection of the plants which were just starting to breach the soil, while I was mostly following behind. I knew what to look for and so far there were no warning signs.
I’d taken my stuff out of his room and back to my own room.
He wasn’t happy about it, but it’s not like he could say anything against the move. His navy buddy had almost raped me. I was traumatized.
Okay, I wasn’t. Not really. Or at least, that wasn’t the reason I’d moved back out of his room.
I moved out of his room because…I was starting to like it.
