Page 3 of Grind
If Frank hadn’t found him injured all those years ago, he’d surely be leading his own wolf pack by this point. Or lying dead in a ditch.
“When did you set them up?” Frank inquired, following the junkyard Tarzan past the gate and toward the truck. They could easily reach the containers on foot, particularly when traversing the junk piles instead of following roads, but the property was huge, and he didn’t want to get his one good pair of shoes wrecked.
“Last week,” Jag said, rolling into the truck bed like a stuntman in his prime.
Getting behind the wheel and opening the little window at the back of the cab gave Frank just enough time to count to ten. “Someone could have gotten hurt. You should have informed me right away!”
Jag’s pout reflected in the rearview mirror. “You would have said no.”
Frank started the vehicle and headed between the nearby hills of crushed cars, into the labyrinth that would lead them to the rotten places where dead bodies disappeared without a trace and people’s secrets were kept for a fair price. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea in general, but someone could get hurt. You know Ros walks around everywhere, scavenging junk for the sculptures. When you said the fox fell in, did you mean that literally? You dug out hidden trenches or something?”
Jag grunted. “Yes, we should tell Ros to stay away from there. I was thinking about putting in spikes or glass at the bottom, but for now I left the traps empty, so if someone fell in, it would just break their leg, or something.”
Onlybreak a leg. No problem at all.
Frank rubbed his face before taking a sharp turn onto a narrow track with piles of used tires on either side. But as worried as Jag’s secrecy made him, an additional layer of security around this most important spot within the junkyard wasn’t a bad idea. If Jag was willing to set things up on his own, why not let him? Anyone who ended up hurt would have been anunwelcome visitor.
Frank must have stayed quiet for a bit too long, because now Jag was grinning like that time they all went on a trip and he caught a fish with his teeth. “Maybe you could use the trap to catch yourself a mate of your own?”
This again? And coming from a man whoselove storystarted with abducting a half-dead stranger?
Ridiculous.
Frank slowed as they approached the empty shipping containers. At times, for a fee, they’d keep someone here for the local motorcycle club. Dex was prospecting for them now, and he offered the club a discount as if it were his to give. He didn’t even work at the junkyard full-time anymore, and only came over on the odd day to lend a hand.
“Jag, I don’t need to trap myself a man.”
“Worked just fine for me.”
Frank sighed, following him away from the containers, toward a sandy area with a gaping hole in one place. The dirt must have fallen into the trap when the tarp used to hide the ditch dipped under the weight of the fox.
“Jag, I have other things to do.”
“You say that, but deep down your heart is yearning for a mate to curl up with at night,” Jag insisted without any sense of embarrassment over his phrasing.
Frank scowled and shook his head. “Not everyone wants to live like a rabbit in a den. I’m a grown man, and I’m perfectly fine on my own.” He spread his arms. “Do I miss getting my dick sucked on the regular? Sure, but I’ll get to arranging that when I have time.Thisis not helping. I still need to move a lot of the cars from around the western gate until I can even dream of days off.”
Jag’s eyes lit up. “Oh. Can I have some of the rusted ones for my trap? I’ll get Dex to drive the truck, and Dane will help move them. He’s very strong.” Any opportunity to boast about his man was good for Jag.
Frank sighed. “Fine. But keep me posted on the progress,” he said, because in his experience, it was better to allow it and know what Jag was up to instead of one day finding out he’d gone forward with a far worse plan.
When Frank returned to Ros and Shane’s home, the two dogs greeted him as if he’d been gone for a whole day, not twenty minutes. By the time he opened the ledger and looked at the rows of items and numbers, it was clear neither his heart nor head were in it, so he walked past the fence, to help himself to one of the massive tractor tires resting nearby. If he couldn’t think, he might as well burn excess energy doing some light training for the competition.
But just as he dragged the heavy thing away from its three sisters and was about to warm up, his phone buzzed with an insistent call.
“Fuuuck!” he screamed into the darkening sky. The dogs started barking in reply.
He took a deep breath, but that wasn’t enough when he saw the name on the screen.
Paul.
And that meant one thing: instead of enjoying a peaceful night in, he’d get to dispose of a body.
“What’s up?” Frank asked when he picked up the call, because business was business.
“Hey Frankie! It’s been a while,” Paul said in a voice that increasingly betrayed how much he smoked. “How have you been?”
“Busy, so let’s cut the small talk. You have junk for me?”
