High-Caliber Concealer (10 page)

“It?” repeated Jackson warily, and Nikki
rolled her eyes.

“I think your last words to me were, let me
see if I can get this right… Oh yeah… ‘I can’t see you anymore. I
just can’t talk to you.’ End quote. I begged to see you and you
said no. And then I went over to your apartment and you had moved
out the night before. You broke up with me over the phone and said
we could no longer speak. And now we’re just gonna sit here and
shoot the breeze?”

“And another country. Not only did I break
up with you over the phone, I was calling from Canada. They had an
open call for bronc riders at a rodeo up there.” She could see by
his smile that he was hoping she’d laugh, but Nikki didn’t
laugh.

“But we can talk now? Or should I move to
the other end of the bar?”

“It’s been nine years, Nikki.” She continued
to stare, not sure what to say. “Come on, I can’t change my mind in
nine years?”

She remembered a far-away day. It had been
sunny with a sky like an upturned blue bowl over their heads.
Jackson and Donny had found two oversized sets of boxing gloves in
the shed and were wailing away at each other.

“It’s my turn!” Nikki yelled.

“Girls don’t box,” said Donny, the enormous
gloves dangling at the end of his skinny arms.

“You let me play or I’m telling your mom!”
she said, hands on her hips.

“Better let her,” said Jackson.

Nikki pulled the gloves off Donny and
started jamming her fists into them. He helped her with the second
one. “Now tell me what to do,” she said to Donny, squaring off with
Jackson.

“You just try and hit Jackson in the face,”
said Donny with a shrug.

“I’m the bell,” said Jackson. “When you hear
me yell ‘ding’, that’s the start or end of the round. Ding!” Then
he swung for her head. Nikki felt the entire glove along the side
of her face, and automatically kicked Jackson in the shin.”

“You’re supposed to punch!” yelled
Donny.

Nikki swung her left and then her right. It
was hard to land the gloves where she wanted. Especially with
Jackson swinging back. She finally started making progress—first
her left glove hit him in the eye and then her right hit him in the
mouth. She was lining up for another punch when –

“Ding!”

“Ding,” she said. “You always were the
bell.”

“What?”

“When we were ten, you and Donny were boxing
in the backyard, but we didn’t have a bell or anything to signal
the end of rounds, so you would yell ding. Took me years to realize
that every time I started to win, you’d yell ding.”

He laughed. “I don’t remember that, but it
makes sense. If I’d beat you up, your mother would have beat me
senseless and you were probably too good.”

“But you’re doing it again. You always do.
You don’t like the game, so you cheat.”

“You’re going to hold me to something I said
when I was twenty? And be mad at me for something I did when I was
ten?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Nikki. “It’s not what you
said or when. It’s you and me. I know you, Jackson. Everyone gets a
fair deal from you. Everyone but me. I loved you. And beyond that,
we were friends and I want to know why the hell some stranger gets
better from you than me?”

“You only hurt the ones you love?” he asked
with his idiot grin.

Nikki growled. She’d been aiming for a Marge
Simpson murmur, but it came out more like a pissed off Z’ev.

“Because I couldn’t ever win,” he said at
last.

“What?”

“Nikki, I hated college. I hated the
pretentious neo-hippies living off daddy’s money and thinking they
were so much better than the blue-collar slob working in the paper
mill. I hated the professors. I hated all of that and I didn’t fit
in. You, on the other hand, fit like a glove. You knew what the
teachers wanted to hear. You could have dated any guy on campus.
You were where you belonged and I wasn’t.”

“You could have told me that!”

“No, I couldn’t. I could barely explain it
to myself. I’ve barely got it figured out now. But even if I’d been
able to put it into words, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I’d stayed
to talk to you, you would have talked me into staying. You always
got your way with me, and I needed things to be my way for a while.
There was too much you and not enough me. I didn’t even talk to
Donny for a couple of years. I only came home at Christmas for
three years in a row. My mom kept asking what she’d done wrong. And
there wasn’t anything. I just needed to be on my own.”

Nikki opened her mouth to say something
hurtful and then closed it again.

“Yeah, OK,” she said. She drank the last of
her gin and tonic and stared at the neon signs above the bar for a
while. Alison Krauss was playing on the jukebox. The bartender came
back in followed by the Sheriff.

“Jackson,” said the sheriff with a sigh, “I
thought you’d given up picking on things that didn’t outweigh you
by at least a ton.”

“Wasn’t me,” said Jackson.

“It was the girl,” said the bartender.

The sheriff looked speculatively at
Nikki.

“Hello. I’m Sheriff Mervin Smalls. Is there
a reason you took such a violent dislike to our friends Milt and
Pedro, young lady?”

“I felt threatened,” said Nikki. It probably
would have sounded more convincing if she had actually looked
scared.

“Right,” said Merv.

“They were drunk,” said the bartender.

“Thank you, Clyde. I would never have
guessed.”

“They came in with a girl and when she got
up to leave, one of them grabbed her, so then Nikki said they
should let the girl go, but they didn’t want to and one of them
took a swing at Nikki, so she defended herself.”

“Again, thank you, Clyde, for that stirring
narrative. Now, how about we let the young lady tell it?” Merv was
a little over fifty and, while not exactly in fighting trim, had a
comfortable beefy look that said he could toss a few drunks or
small cows around without any problems. He was looking at Nikki
with a set of hard, dark brown eyes, from under a set of bushy
eyebrows, and Nikki wasn’t sure that he was at all pleased with
her.

“They wouldn’t let the girl they were with
leave, so I said they should let her go and one of them took a
swing at me, so I defended myself,” said Nikki. “The one in the
Carhartts,” she added, since the sheriff seemed to want
specifics.

“Milt,” said the sheriff, shaking his
head.

“And the other one tried to jump her from
behind,” said Clyde.

The sheriff raised an eyebrow at Clyde, who
smiled awkwardly and looked at Nikki.

“The other one attacked me while I was
dealing with Milt,” said Nikki, confirming Clyde’s story.

“That sounds like our Pedro, tsk. And where
is the other young lady now?” The sheriff looked around the room,
as if she might suddenly appear.

“She took off,” said Nikki.

“To be honest,” said Clyde, “I think she
might have stolen their car.”

“We don’t know that,” said Nikki. “It might
have been her car.”

“The keys were in his pocket,” argued
Clyde.

“Well, considering how abusive he was, that
would be in keeping with his personality.” Clyde shrugged as if to
say he did not agree, but wasn’t planning on arguing further.
“Anyway,” she said turning back to the sheriff, “they attacked me.
I defended myself.”

Merv collected a handful of bar peanuts from
the dish on the bar and thoughtfully chewed a few. “You paint a
moving picture of fear. I feel that you were indeed threatened and
acting in defense of your person. But just so the paperwork is tidy
can I have your name and where you can be reached?” Merv pulled a
pen and small notebook out of his breast pocket and clicked the pen
at Nikki expectantly.

“Nicole Lanier,” she said.
“L-A-N-I-E-R.”

“Ah,” said Merv, flipping his notebook
closed, without writing anything. “I should have recognized the
hair. Just like your father’s. Up visiting, are you? I had heard
that you were living down in Los Angeles these days.”

“Uh, yes,” said Nikki. She’d forgotten how
much people knew about each other in small towns.

“Good, I’m sure Peg will be happy to have
you around.” Nikki couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so
she said nothing. “Staying very long?”

“Just a week or so,” said Nikki,
frowning.

“Mm-hmm. Good. Thanks, Clyde,” said Merv,
taking another handful of peanuts. Clyde waved his dish-towel in
Merv’s general direction as acknowledgement. “Jackson, I can assume
you’ll make sure the young lady gets home without further
incident?” Jackson nodded and Nikki fumed.

“Without further incident?” repeated Nikki,
when Merv had ambled out the door. “What did he mean by that?”

“I think he meant that he didn’t want to
arrest anyone else tonight and I should keep you out of
trouble.”

“I can keep myself out of trouble,” snapped
Nikki.

“Really?” asked Jackson.

“This wasn’t trouble,” she said firmly.

Jackson shrugged. She could see he was
trying not to smile.

“It wasn’t!” she protested, trying not to
laugh herself. “OK, it was a little trouble, but not a lot of
trouble.”

“Well, maybe your definition of trouble and
mine are different,” he allowed and Nikki did laugh.

“Was it worth it?” she asked, turning the
subject back to where it had been.

“Was what worth it?” he asked, returning her
smile easily.

“Leaving us. Donny, your family, everyone.
Leaving me. Was the pain you caused worth it?”

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he said.

“I believe that, but knowing that you did,
and knowing how much—because believe me, it was no small
amount—would you do it again?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I
had to. I couldn’t continue pretending to be what I wasn’t.”

Nikki hesitated and then nodded. “Yeah, I
figured.”

Jackson was staring at her, a bemused
expression on his face. Nikki stared back, waiting for him to
speak.

“Hi,” he said at last, putting out his hand
as if to shake, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Jackson Tyrell.”

“New and improved?” asked Nikki with a
laugh.

“Old enough to know what can’t be improved.
Now who the hell are you?”

“Funny,” said Nikki, around her last
mouthful of burger, ignoring his outstretched hand. “Anyway, I’m
glad you turned out OK and didn’t go weirdly axe-murderer or
something.”

“Me too,” said Jackson. “Are you heading up
to your grandmother’s?”

“Yeah. Let’s hope I can find it in the dark.
I don’t think I’ve actually driven up to the farm myself in about a
decade, so hopefully the Pederson’s haven’t changed their
mailbox.”

“They did actually.”

“What? No more creepy folk-art kid staring
at me through binoculars? Now what am I supposed to use to
navigate?”

“Giant shark eating a mailbox boat. Mr.
Pederson got a new skill saw for Christmas and Mrs. Pederson found
Pinterest.”

“Do you even know what Pinterest is?” asked
Nikki, her eyebrows going up.

“I’ve had the concept explained to me,” he
retorted. Clyde came out of the kitchen carrying Jackson’s plate.
“Can you put it in a to-go box, Clyde? I’m going to caravan up to
the Connelly’s with Nikki.”

“Sure,” said Clyde with a shrug.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Nikki.
“Stay here and enjoy your dinner. I’ve got a phone; it can give me
directions.”

“Reception’s not so good up there. It’s no
trouble.” Jackson stood up, pulling out his wallet to pay Clyde.
“Peg’s place is on my way home. You can follow me.”

Nikki looked at his dinner, already in a
to-go box, and Clyde already tucking Jackson’s cash into the
register. “OK, thanks.”

She paused out in the parking lot. The air
smelled of wood smoke. A rather homey scent in the winter, but
during late summer and the height of the fire season, it made her
nervous.

“Colville Complex is kicking up,” said
Jackson, sniffing the air as he stepped outside. “The wind has
shifted.”

“How big is that fire now?” She hadn’t been
following the news, but the Colville Forest Fire Complex had been
on the front of every newspaper in every small town she’d driven
through.

“Over a hundred acres to the west and
another fifty to the east.”

“I don’t understand; I thought it was one
fire?”

“It’s all the Colville Forest,” he said
shaking his head. “So instead of calling out the West Colville fire
and the East Colville fire they call it a Complex. Of course, we’re
all worried that it’ll jump the river and the two will merge—then
it really will all be one fire.”

“The river’s pretty wide. It can’t really do
that, can it?”

“If the wind is strong enough,” said Jackson
with a shrug. “All it takes is one little spark. Everyone with half
a brain has been clearing brush, but if it jumps the river, it
could sweep through all the dry grass and hit the town. We’re all
on high fire alert. Anyway, just follow me up to Peg’s place.”

She was unsurprised to see that Jackson was
driving a black F-150, covered in mud, with a gun rack in the back
window.

“What? No rope on the gun rack?” she asked,
pointing at his truck.

“Rope on the gun rack is for posers,” he
said. “You can’t leave a good rope up there. It would get sun
damaged and brittle. Plus, I actually like to use my gun rack to
hold my gun periodically.”

Nikki laughed. “This is one of those, ‘you
know you’re a cowboy when…’ things, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and what about the pimp mobile you’re
driving?” he demanded, pointing to the sky-blue ’53 Impala.

“You mean, what about it could be more
awesome? The answer is nothing.”

He shook his head. “Follow me, and stick to
the speed limit. Merv and his deputies take speed limits seriously
here.”