Page 53 of Glamour and Grit

After a moment, her eyes snap open and she gags.

“What the fuck?” she sputters. “My mouth is on fire!”

She grabs a half empty bottle of water from the cup holder and drains it in one breath.

“Are you all right?”

“I–Dane? How did…what’s going on? Where’s Petty?”

“Dead, hopefully. I shot him but I don’t know what happened to him after that. What I do know is, this situation is a lot bigger than any of us thought. You stopped breathing for a bit.”

A look of abject terror comes over her face.

“Oh god, it was horrible. I just…oh god, we didn’t even get a chance to look for Justin. Did you see all the bandages, and the blood? What if he’s hurt?”

“The bandages would indicate someone worked really hard tokeep him alive…assuming it was his blood, and his bandages. You never actually saw Justin get hurt.”

“No, but I’ve just got an awful feeling that I’m never going to see him again. We were all that eachother had growing up.”

“I can relate. My brother and sister and I were frequently left alone. I mean, we had housekeepers and such. My father was…well off.”

I don’t think now is the time to tell her my father was an infamous high-end cat burglar.

“Nothing can replace a parent,” she says. “I found that out the hard way with Justin. I tried to steer him right, but he just seemed determined to fuck up his life in his own way.”

“I’m surprised that you haven’t given up on him.”

She scoffs, tears rolling down her face even as it twists with anger.

“I have, that’s the thing. Multiple times. But he has a way of just worming his way back into my life. Plus, he’s my brother. I can’t just leave him twisting in the wind, no matter how much he deserves it.”

I mull this over for a bit as we race down the freeway. What would I do, if my brother or sister came to me in that kind of situation? It would be hard to tell them no, I won’t help. I can relate. It would be impossible, in fact.

“I understand. Right now, we should just concentrate on finding your brother and keeping you safe. Everything else can be sorted out later. No matter if you want him in your life or not, you definitely don’t want him dead, right?”

She nods, wiping her tears. I hand her some napkins embossed with the wing place’s logo.

“All right, then. Let’s start there, with getting him back in one piece.”

I cringe when an SUV comes up behind us. A big man with a pair of shades on seems intent on driving up our tailpipe. Just when I’m about to reach for my piece, he veers into the other lane and passes us.

He wasn’t after us, but he could have been.

“We need to find a place to lie low for a bit.”

She reaches into her purse.

“I think I have a membership at Marriott.”

“No, that won’t do. Moreno’s intelligence network is too good. We need somewhere that will take cash and won't ask too many questions.”

She heaves a long sigh. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

I drive right past the first fleabag motel we come across. It looks like a great place to catch Pink Eye or get stabbed with a dirty syringe, but not to get a good night’s sleep or lay low.

Instead, I find a place that’s technically a campground with cabins for rent. The owner is a ninety-something who stuffs our money into his back pocket without giving us a receipt. Perfect. No electronic record of our having been here at all, plus it’s off the beaten path. I don’t think Moreno’s boys can find us here.

The cabin itself isn’t half bad. There’s a strong smell of citronella oil, and that lingering aroma of propane from the stove, but otherwise everything is in pretty good shape.

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