Page 17

He then watched me bag them. He watched me take his ten and count his change, and when I held it out, he left it sitting on my palm.

“You’re Chelsea,” he said pleasantly. “Harry’s girl.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of your father’s. A business friend.” He laid a square of glossy paper on the glass between us and slid it toward me with two fingers.

A photograph. My car at the Unholy Few gate, lit up white by the floodlights. My face in the driver’s window, turned toward the prospect.

Cold went through me as I looked at it.

“You open at six,” he said, in the same easy voice. “You go to the post office Tuesdays. You live upstairs, and your bedroom light goes off around nine, most nights.” He smiled. “Your father and my employer have an arrangement. It’s been very good for everybody. Your father understands that. It would be a shame if you made things complicated.”

I couldn’t find my voice. I found it anyway. “I haven’t done anything.”

“You drove out to see your biker friends and told them stories about your father’s buildings.” He tapped the photograph once. “That’s the kind of thing that makes people nervous. I’d hate for there to be any type of misunderstanding here.” He glanced around the shop, at the chalkboard menu, the tip jar, the photo of Dolores on the wall. “It’s a nice place. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Everything I’d told myself over the last week went out from under me like a pulled rug. I’d gone to the club to help my town. I’d thought the worst that could happen was my father never speaking to me again.

This man had known everything about me before I’d ever driven past the ice house.

“Keep the change,” he said with a false smile, and picked up his rolls.

The kitchen door swung open behind me.

Deacon came in without a sound. I only knew he was there because the young man’s eyes moved past my shoulder and his smile slipped, just a fraction, before he hitched it back into place.

Deacon walked around the end of the counter and past me. He touched my back on the way, one light brush of his fingers, and kept going. Out on the sidewalk, a guy I recognized from the clubhouse gate stood with his back to the glass.

Deacon flipped the sign to Closed. He turned the lock. The click sounded loud as a gunshot.

Then he looked at the man, and I realized I had never seen Deacon’s face before. Not this face. The occasional devastating smile gone like it had never been invented. What was left was flat, patient and cold to the bone, and the man I’d been falling asleep next to was nowhere in it.

“Adrián,” Deacon said. “Adrián Soto.” The man’s smile held. Barely. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“We haven’t. I know you anyway.” Deacon’s voice was mild. Conversational. It still made the hair on my arms stand up. “You drive a gray Camry off the Desert Star lot in Deming. You sleep at the motel on the interstate on Tuesdays and at your girlfriend’s place in Las Cruces the rest of the week. Her name’s Marisol. She works at the nail salon on Solano. She thinks you sell insurance.”

Adrián’s throat moved. His false smile faltered.

Deacon picked the photograph up off the glass. He studied it for a second. Then he tore it in half, and in half again, and let the pieces drop on the counter between them.

“Here’s what happens next,” he said. “You go back to whoever signs your checks and you tell them she’s off the list. She’s nobody’s leverage. She’s nobody’s message. You don’t come in here again. Nobody you know parks on her street. Nobody takes her picture.”

“You don’t understand the situation.”

Deacon leaned in, hands flat on my counter, until his face was a foot from Adrián’s.

“I understand it fine,” he said. “If anything happens to her. Anything. A flat tire, a broken window, a bad feeling on a dark night. I won’t just come looking for you, Adrián. I’ll go to Las Cruces first. Then I’ll come for you. And nobody will ever find enough of you to bury.”

The shop was so quiet I could hear the walk-in fridge humming.

Adrián looked into Deacon’s face for a long moment, and I watched him believe it. I watched it sink into him, the smile draining out, the color after it. His hand tightened on the paper bag until it crackled.

Deacon straightened. Unlocked the door. Held it open.

“Leave the rolls,” he said.

Adrián set the bag on the counter. He walked out past the prospect on the sidewalk without looking at either of them, got into a gray car at the curb and drove away.