Page 82 of Dark Roads

“Losers sleepers.”

“Doesn’t even make sense.”

“Doesn’t make sense that she likesyou. Why didn’t you open the door for her? She climbed in that window like she was Romeo and you were Juliet.”

“You were spying again.”

“I was checking on you. You’ve been sleeping ever since she left.”

“You been in the house since yesterday?”

“I took off for a while last night, made sure Beth was safe, then came back. Someone has to protect your sorry ass.” I’d been too restless to sleep much. I read his magazines, used his Facebook profile to look at new photos of Cash and Lana.

“Ha.” He inched himself into a sitting position, wincing. “God, that hurts.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why were you ignoring her?”

“You were right, okay? I shouldn’t have gotten involvedwith her. I’m trying to spare her this mess.” He pointed from him to me.

“I would be offended if I didn’t agree with you.”

He nodded, but it was more like he was trying to remind himself, and I knew he hadn’t ignored Beth’s knocking because he wanted her to go away. It was the opposite. Unfortunately.

He gave me the once-over. “You okay?”

I nodded. “I filled up the gas on the bike from the barrel. Can I use it until we fix mine?”

“Yeah. I’ll get your patch kit when I get my truck out of the impound, but it’ll be a couple of days until I can ride up the mountain.”

“Vaughn needs a taste of his own medicine.”

“Stay away from him.”

“You know he’s just getting warmed up. Next he’s going to figure out a way to get a search warrant for this place. We need to cover the bunker in the workshop.” The last thing we needed was for Vaughn to find my winter hiding spot.

“Andy wants me to fix his truck. I’ll get him to park over it.”

“Check the security recordings and get rid of any clips of me.”

“Did it as soon as I got home from jail. I wanted to see if there were screenshots of Vaughn pulling me over, but it was too far up on the road. Can only see headlights.”

“You should have Andy stay for a couple of nights. Vaughn is going to try to frame you for something worse. The more alibis, the better.”

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I just know that Vaughn didn’t expect Thompson to show up the other night. It stopped him from finishing whatever he really had in mind.”

Jonny nodded, thinking over what I’d said. “I’m worriedabout Beth. She wants revenge, and she has that gun, you know? Can you watch out for her?”

“Yeah. No problem. I’ll make sure she doesn’t go near him.”

Unlike Jonny, I wasn’t worried about Beth. Vaughn wasn’t going to touch her, because I was going to kill him myself. I remembered Dad standing in our driveway, burning weeds with a blowtorch. He’d said, “You have to kill them at the roots, or they’ll just keep coming back.”

Staging a suicide would be hard. Making it look like an accident would be even harder. It had to be a robbery gone wrong. The diner at night made the most sense. There was an alley, I could cut across the woods without being seen, and I was familiar with the layout. I didn’t want to mess up Mason’s life, but if things went according to plan, the worst that might happen was he’d have to buy a new door.

Vaughn was on patrol every Thursday night. The timing was perfect. I left Jonny’s dirt bike at the end of the highway, with Wolf guarding. He’d grumbled at me, annoyed that he was missing out, but I bought his forgiveness with a bone from Jonny’s freezer.

I jogged through the forest, dressed in black, and wearing a knit hat. My face was covered with dark grease. The Smith & Wesson pressed into the skin on my hip, the holster chafing. I didn’t stop to adjust it. I felt high on adrenaline, sharp and ready to fight.