Page 26

Samantha

“Describe him to me.”

In a flash, Diesel changes before my eyes and becomes the most dangerous-looking man in the worst-looking clothes on earth. Yes, I was lying earlier about the clothes looking good on him; not even he can pull off his outfit — it screams middle-aged, middle manager who peaked in high school that year he made varsity and tells everyone, especially country club servers, about it every chance he gets. It’s the best disguise for a man like him. Something so ugly that not even his innate handsomeness can overcome it, and everyone who looks upon him just wants to look away and pretend he doesn’t exist.

“I couldn’t get a good look at him.”

“Focus, Samantha,” he says, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I will not let anything happen to you. You’re safe when you’re with me. Tell me what you saw.”

“Large guy. Leather jacket. Baseball cap pulled low. I couldn’t make out much more than that.”

“And he’s armed? You saw a gun?”

“I thought I did. Yes. A bulge.”

“That’s enough. I saw the same guy scoping me earlier. Fuck, Moretti’s moving fast.”

“Should we run?”

“No,” Diesel says, scanning the aisle up and down. “We’re not running.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, that’d attract attention. For another, I want to get my hands on this asshole and ask him some questions.”

“Here? In a hardware store?”

“Not here.” Diesel shakes his head, and I release a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “It’s too public right here. In back. Way back. We’ll go through to the gardening section behind the store. It’s usually empty back there.”

“Really?” I say, surprised. We’re so close to Portland that I find it hard to believe that gardening wouldn’t be popular, with every home having its own organic produce, compost setups, and free-range chickens.

“Yeah, the gardening selection sucks here. Everyone in town knows that. If you want the best stuff, you go to Ralph’s off Pine Avenue. His chicken coop selection is off the charts, and he has the widest seed assortment with the best germination rates.”

“You’re not kidding me? You garden?”

“Sometimes. Don’t look so surprised. Have you tasted home-grown tomatoes? They make the ones they sell in stores taste like sawdust scraped from the bottom of a gerbil cage.”

I shrug. When you’re right, you’re right.

“Fine. I’ll go to the gardening section. Then what?”

“Try to draw some attention to yourself on the way to the back, which shouldn’t be too hard, considering how good you look in that outfit. I’ll come behind you — lucky me — at a distance. I’ll sneak up on Moretti’s guy, and then I’ll subdue him. Then we can find out what he knows.”

“You promise you will not kill him? Fighting in a hardware store is crazy enough, but I don’t want to be involved in a murder.”

“I’ll try not to kill him, but whether that happens depends on him,” he says. “And if he tries to hurt you.”

“Just…” My words fail me; there’s more I want to say, about how I’m both flattered that he’d murder someone for me, and also scared out of my mind, but I see a shadow — or think I see a shadow — and my voice just dies in my throat. I turn and look around, scanning every corner, left and right. “I’ll go. Just don’t stay too far away, OK, Diesel?”

He touches my shoulder, squeezes it, and looks at me in a way that makes me feel like taking on an armed killer is nothing compared to what we can really do together.

“I’ll be right behind you. You’ll be safe. I promise.”

With that, I turn on my heel, swallow until my heart feels like it’s somewhere closer to the inside of my ribcage, and stalk toward the back of the store and the entrance of the gardening section. My shoes sound so loud against the concrete floor, like each slap of my feet rings my death knell. Around any of these corners could be an armed killer whose only purpose is to murder Diesel and me, and it’s my job to bring him right to me.

“You know what I really think we need,” I say aloud to no one in particular as I push my cart laden with some paint and curtains toward the back of the store — a cart that I only now realize has an inordinately squeaky wheel. “We really need a few houseplants. Something green and alive. It’ll really tie the room together. Oh, and after that, I want to go look for a nice rug.”

My voice carries in the otherwise quiet hardware store and a few customers turn and give me confused looks, because I’m really talking aloud to no one at all except myself, my shopping cart, and my overwhelming fear of being murdered.

I push through the door to the gardening section.

The stuffy smell of musty compost, blooming flowers, and the sappy scent of freshly made wooden flower baskets hits my nose and I cough, the deep hacking bringing me to a stop for several seconds before terror forces me onward, still coughing, and I find myself in an aisle dedicated to potted ornamental plants.

I stop and listen and pretend to be occupied by an orchid.

Then another sound hits my ears — the door to the gardening section opening and closing on its rusty hinges.

I glance over my shoulder and see an unfamiliar face shrouded beneath a baseball cap; dark tattoos, big muscles, a leather jacket, all send my heartbeat into overdrive.

It’s him.

In the space of my glance, he raises his eyes and locks with mine.

He knows I know.

And he walks toward me, his pace quickening.

I freeze in that moment, my eyes darting left, right, and my feet staying rooted to the floor because, although I know I need to get the hell to anywhere but here so I don’t get killed, my legs — along with the rest of my muscular system except for whatever’s responsible for making me break out into a fearful flop sweat — are paralyzed.

This killer is all I can see, this big man with big, bone-breaking muscles and a look in his eyes like he wants to cut the skin off my body and grind the rest of me into a pulp. I want to scream; I want to run; I want Diesel.

But all I can do is stare while this monstrous man gets close to me with each hammering heartbeat.

“You.”

His voice is a deep-throated declaration of victory that cuts into a dull thud as suddenly Diesel appears behind him, holding a hoe that he swings in brutal fashion to crack the man on the back of the head. There’s a crunch. The man shakes ferociously, and a spray of blood erupts from his head and paints a white rosebush red.

The man falls.

Diesel kneels beside him, pulls aside the bloody baseball cap, and lets out a full-throated curse.

“Fuck. I know this guy.”