Page 56 of Not Quite Dead Yet

The man pushed up his hard hat, falling into his meaty eyes.

‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is private property, and it isn’t safe.’

He pointed them back toward the road, a hand on Jet’s back.

‘I’m going to have to ask you to stop asking us to leave,’ Jet countered, pulling away. ‘Scott Mason is my dad.’

The man hesitated. ‘And Luke, he’s –’

‘– My brother, yeah,’ Jet said.

The man nodded, retracted his arm. ‘He’s not here right now.’

‘That’s OK.’ Jet smiled. ‘It’s you I came to see.’

His mouth folded down, merging with his chin. ‘M-me?’

‘What’s your name, sir?’

He pointed to his own chest, a silent question. Jet nodded.

‘It’s Jimmy.’

‘Hi, yes, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Just the man I was looking for. You’re the foreman, right?’

‘Right?’

‘Great,’ she said, moving toward the outline of the new house, through the mud. Her poor Birkenstocks. ‘I’m just here to ask you a couple of questions about the site. It’s a company policy thing.’

‘But I –’

‘– That gate across the road.’ She pointed. ‘I assume that’s shut and locked at night?’

‘I – Of course.’

‘But it’s not like there’s a fence around it, so even if nobody can drive through, you could easily walk around, onto the site.’

‘Yes, well, Luke didn’t think we needed a fence, as these are the only properties up here and it’s not a through road. No one ever comes up here.’

Jet pursed her lips. ‘Butifthey did, you guys got any cameras set up here? You know, for security?’

A blank look on Jimmy’s face. ‘Why would we need cameras?’

‘A great question. Billy, my associate, will write that down.’

Billy’s face stirred, taken aback.

‘He’s new,’ Jet said to Jimmy, in a loud whisper behind her hand.

‘If you’re on site, you really should be wearing hard hats. It’s the rule.’

Jimmy doubled back to an open van, grabbing two yellow hard hats from the pile.

‘Your associate?’ Billy whispered out the side of his mouth, watching Jimmy return.

‘Don’t talk back to your boss.’

‘Here.’ Jimmy passed one to Billy, one to Jet. ‘Accidents happen all the time on site. We had a floor collapse here a while ago, brought some of the roof down with it, some guy still working inside. I wasn’t here then, wouldn’t have happened if I was here. But my point is, anything can happen. Gotta protect those heads.’ He knocked against his own hard hat.

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