Hush Money (3 page)

“You guys all know Joss, right?”

There were another few awkward moments as the
girls muttered and nodded. Then they sort of shrugged and turned
back to each other and whatever they’d been talking about before.
Backs on either end of the circle turned away from Kat and me,
leaving us relatively alone.

“You know that was stupid, right?” I said in
a low voice. “Trust me, you do not want to get on Marco’s bad
side.”

“Well hey, you’re welcome.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m sure Marco will totally
lay off now that you diffused that situation so brilliantly.”

“Wow. I’ve been wondering if you’re really
the ice bitch everyone says you are.”

“Yeah, well, now you know.” I started to get
up, but Kat put a hand on my arm.

“I’m not sure I do...”

Two of the girls switched seats and Heather
pulled her chair up alongside Kat’s. Heather was petite and
adorable, and just needed a few feathers and fringes to make her
look like a Native American princess figurine in a gift shop. I
wondered again why I was still there.

“So what was that about? Marco being
Marco?”

“Yeah, he seems especially fond of Joss,
here.”

Heather made a sound in the back of her
throat. “I hate that guy.”

She looked across at me, an intense look that
made me feel like she was seeing too much. I dropped my eyes.
“Yeah, me too.”

Kat’s next remark about Marco’s attitude,
anatomy, and possible parentage made Heather laugh out loud and
even I had to smile.

On possibly the worst day ever, Jocelyn
Marshall was sitting in the cafeteria talking to two other
girls.

Smiling.

And violations of the Laws of the Universe
were just getting started.

Joss

“But Jo-oss, it’s too hard. You do it.”

“I know I didn’t just hear you ask your
sister to do your homework, Jilly-bug.” Dad came out of the back
room, pulling his coat on, and saved me from second grade math
homework.

“Um, no way Daddy!”

“Good. Now honey, are you sure you’ll be ok
with the Bug?”

“Sure Dad, it’s fine. Don’t worry about
it.”

Dad was going to the range like he always did
for the weekly target-shooting match. It was his guy night out, and
he’d been doing it for as long as I can remember. Mom, Jill, and I
used to watch the store on those nights, but, starting this year,
I’d been running the store and closing up by myself. Mostly my
parents had been pretty cool about it. A little nervous, maybe, but
cool. I’d been working in the store like forever, so no big. But
Mom had to go visit her sister out of town that week, so I had Jill
and the store. It wasn’t any big deal to
me
, but you know
dads, right?

Plus there was the thing with Krista. He’d be
wigged out about that. I knew he knew. He knew I knew. But we
weren’t going to talk about it.

“Maybe I should stay.”

“Go!” we both ordered.

So Dad gave Jill a smacking kiss on the cheek
and walked around the counter to stand in front of me. He grabbed
both my hands and looked hard into my face.

Dad could change—just like that. One minute
he was a normal dad, attentive parent, responsible business owner.
The next…

“You’re right. We have to keep things normal
now. The last thing we want to do is draw attention to ourselves.”
His voice was low and intense, and his eyes darted to all points
around the room and back to mine. Away again. “If you see anything,
anything
suspicious, you know what to do. Under the counter,
shotgun. Handgun’s under the register. Emergency locks?”

“Panic button in the cabinet locks the door.
Exit through the stockroom. Shoot anyone who doesn’t follow
instructions. Passage behind the boxes in the bathroom leads out to
stockroom next door with roof access. Follow planned route across
to the next building, down the fire escape to the alleyway. Use
untraceable cell phone to contact you to meet us at the rendezvous
point.”

“And how are you going to contact me with the
cell phone if you don’t remember to pick up the G.O.O.D. pack?”

G.O.O.D. stands for Get Out Of Dodge. It’s
important—I really can’t stress this enough—it’s really important
not to roll your eyes at Dad when he goes into commando mode.

“Sorry sir. Secure G.O.O.D. pack from hook
next to delivery door before proceeding to bathroom, as pack
contains contact phone, provisions, medical supplies, extra ammo,
and tear gas which may be necessary in an escape situation.”

“Good girl, Joss.” And just like that, he
started to fade back into normal dad mode. “I did all the checks
this morning. You’re good to go.”

“We’re not going to need it, Dad.
Everything’s fine. Go shoot stuff, k?”

“Yeah. Yeah. It’s all fine. You’re out of
here by 9, bed by 10, got it?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

Dad gave me a peck on the forehead and walked
out of the store without looking back. I knew he was thinking about
who might be watching. I took a deep breath and let it out as the
tension level immediately dropped back to normal range.

And spiked again when I turned around and
Jilly handed me the hugest, pinkest, most beautiful rose anyone has
ever seen.

“Do my math, pleeeeeeezzzzz?”

“Jilly! Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch, get rid
of that thing right now!”

“Don’t you like it? I snagged the leaf from
Mrs. O’Neill’s yard on the way home from school today.”

And then used her Talent to grow that
incredible blossom from it in the palm of her hand. No wonder Dad
was a basket case.

“Go to the bathroom and flush it down the
toilet. Right. Now.”

Jill’s face screwed up and her eyes got
really bright.

“I love it, ok? It’s great. It’s the most
beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And you know we can’t keep it. So
go get rid of it and when you get back, your homework will
magically be done.”

“Really?”

“Go!”

Jill slid off her stool and ran off toward
the stockroom. I made a mental note to myself to check the place
for petals so Dad wouldn’t have an embolism.

And you’d think the Universe would have the
decency to call it day by that point, let me relax, feather dust
the holster and accessories display, maybe find a better
arrangement for the new rifle cases Dad had just leaned up against
the wall near the boot “department”… But nooooooo.

Because no sooner had the stockroom door
started its backswing, than the sensor on the door that tells us a
customer just walked in made its incredibly loud buzz. I just about
had a heart attack, thinking it was Dad coming back in to use the
bathroom before driving out to the range. But no, even that would
have been too much karmic kindness to hope for.

Nope, I jumped up and spun around, with what
I’m sure was an oh-so-attractive deer in the headlights look on my
face, and my eyes smacked right into Dylan’s baby blues as he
sauntered into the store.

Gene’s Army Navy has all kinds of customers.
Even though downtown is having a hard time, and a lot of the stores
in the once thriving pedestrian mall—once, like meaning back in the
20’s I think—have closed up and moved to the strip malls on the
roads out from town, we do ok. I think this is partially due to our
wide selection of merchandise. We’re not just military surplus, you
know. Although we don’t sell any firearms because Dad doesn’t want
to deal with the paperwork for that and get on anybody’s
“radar”.

Plus it helps to be almost right across the
bricks from Vinyl Salvation, a pretty cool music store. It used to
be a Record World, but it got better. There’s a decent thrift shop,
with the oh-so-original name Second-Hand Rose, a few doors down
from us. And a movie theater—ok, it only has one screen and shows a
lot of independent films, but some of them aren’t bad—and an ice
cream parlor called Sweet Blondies on the corner. Plus there’s
Pizza Pit.

So we get some kids coming in here sometimes,
but thankfully more college kids than kids from my school. We don’t
have the shoplifting problems that the other stores have because
cops shop here sometimes and people think they’re friends with my
dad, because he sucks up to them and gives them discounts. Then he
spends twenty minutes muttering about them as soon as they
leave.

So not like Dylan’s never been in the store
before. He usually just looks around. One time he bought boots.
Nice boots too. My mom waited on him. I remembered I had to count
some stuff in the stockroom. And no, that’s not hiding. That’s
being a responsible employee. But now that I had the store to
myself on Thursdays, I actually had to stay on the floor and
deal.

I expected Dylan to wander the store, but he
was coming right at me. Well sure, I thought, ’cause I was standing
right behind the glass display case where we kept the knives, and
that’s one of the things guys like to look at. So I moved aside to,
you know, give him some space. His eyes followed me, and his course
changed, just that fraction to let me know he was coming toward me,
not the knife display.

I hate it when I do the girl thing, even in
my head, you know?
Oh my God, he’s going to talk to me. Please
don’t let him talk to me. I’m totally going to curl up and die if
he doesn’t talk to me.
Ugh.

“Hey.”

Hey, Dylan, ’sup?

Hi, welcome to Gene’s Army Navy, how can I
help you?

Hi, Dylan, how’s it goin’?

Hey yourself.

What are you doing here?

“Hey,” I replied.

“Um, how’s it goin’?”

“S’ok. Thursdays are kinda quiet,
usually.”

He nodded, like he knew. “So…you here
alone?”

Why, are you planning to—
Flippant and
highly inappropriate thought crushed beneath my boot before it
could make me blush or worse! come out of my mouth.
Be cool.
“Uh-huh.”

“Cool.” He glanced over at the knife case.
See, it was the knives. Did I want him to ask to see one, or was
the risk of using it to put myself out of my misery too great at
this point? “I wanted to—”

The security buzz blasted from the door
again, and we both jumped away from each other. I didn’t know what
his
deal was.

“Hi, Mr. Jensen. I thought you’d be at the
range tonight.”

“No such luck, Jocelyn; couldn’t get there
tonight. But I was in the neighborhood on my way home and thought
I’d check to see if my order came in. It was—”

“The speed-loader pouches. Yeah, they came in
the mail little while ago. They’re still back in the office. I’ll
go get ’em.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

And maybe,
I thought,
Dylan will
wander off while I’m back there and find someone else to pick
on.
I mean, clearly I had a thing for him, but I marked that
down to typical teen female hormonal bad judgment and tried to
ignore it as best I could. I’d never really seen him treat anyone
the way Marco did, but I felt there was a reasonable
guilt-by-association factor involved.

“Jilly, what are you doing?!” She had pulled
a chair from the office into the bathroom and there was a tin of
grease paint involved.

She jumped down from the chair and ran at me
with a war cry. I just stood there, glaring.

“Rawr! I’m a warrior princess! Fear me!”

“Trust me, I do. How many times—”

“I’m going to go scare the customers!”

“I’d rather you—” But I was talking to a
swinging door.
Screw it.

It took me a few minutes to get Mr. Jensen’s
order because it wasn’t even unpacked, the invoices had to be
checked against the order, I had to get the special order book and
sign off on that form, etc. There’s a lot of papers involved, and
Dad can be really anal about it.

When I finally got back out on the floor, Mr.
Jensen was looking at the belts on the other side of the store and
Dylan and Jilly had their heads together over something on the
counter.
No good can come of this
, I thought. The
speed-loaders were paid, so I thanked my customer and wished him a
good night. But he hesitated.

“Are you sure you’re ok alone?”

“Sure. I manage the store by myself all
time.”

“I know, it’s just…”

I realized he was looking at Dylan. Which
made me look at Dylan. And yeah, the boots, leather jacket, that
long, somewhat shaggy hair, the shoulders out to here…and there was
something about Dylan’s quiet, I-could-give-a-shit attitude. While
to me these traits added up to a hopeless and ridiculous crush for
as long as I could remember, I could kind of see how someone like
Mr. Jensen might be concerned. I thought it was sweet. But while we
were watching, Jill brought Dylan one of Dad’s cleaning rags from
under the counter and he used it to wipe the worst of the
greasepaint off her hands.
Awwwww
. If a talking gorilla was
the next customer through the door, I wouldn’t have been surprised
at that point.

But anyway, the gesture seemed to reassure
Mr. Jensen, so we exchanged pleasantries and he went on his
way.

Back at the checkout, Dylan had Jill’s pencil
and was leaning over her math homework. They were both gonna get it
now.

“So look, what I’m saying is, you don’t have
to have the whole times tables memorized right now to do this
stuff. Because you can count really fast, right?”

“1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12—”

“Ok, ok. So look here, you’ve got six times
four equals…”

“I don’t knooooowwww,” she whined.

“You don’t have to
know
. You make some
dots—six dots, four times. Like six dice.” He did it really fast of
the margin of the paper. “Then you count them up. Here, you count.
Really fast.”

Jill took the pencil and bounced it over the
dots. “Twenty-three!”

“Are you sure? Better check.”

“Oh, twenty-four.”

“That’s right! Six times four is twenty-four.
So write that down and erase the dots.”