Unmanned Read Free Page A

flexed when he cleaned windshields. “Listen, Will, I don’t know if I can afford—”
    “Shit. I’m sorry,” he said. We’d reached the corner of my garage. It canted toward the south as if fighting a stout northwesterly. He glanced down Opus Street. There was no traffic this time of night. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t mean to make you feel like you owe me a job. Man, I’m terrible with hot…” He paused, flustered.
    My ears perked up, along with my flagging self-confidence. “What were you saying?”
    We made eye contact. The sun was setting, casting a rosy glow over the garage…and my mood. He shuffled his feet. “Hank can charm the socks off hot girls. But I…” Another shrug.
    I remembered our conversation at the gas station. It had actually been kind of witty. “I think you do okay.”
    “You kidding? I’m sweating like a greased pig,” he said. “Of course, in Oshkosh they think that’s sexy.”
    I laughed. He exhaled sharply, stared at me for a moment, then turned away. “So this is the alleged garage.”
    I gave it a jaundiced glance. I’d once parked Solberg’s Porsche in it. He had subsequently threatened litigation. “Can it be saved?”
    He made a face. “Are you religious?”
    “When I have to be.”
    He tapped a rotted board with his foot. “Now’s the time.”
    “I’ll dig out my rosary.”
    He glanced at me. “You’re kidding. You’re Catholic
and
beautiful.”
    Our gazes locked again. “Am I going to have to pay extra for the flattery?”
    He grinned a little, looking boyish again. “We don’t see a lot of girls like you in Oshkosh,” he said, and took a step toward me.
    I knew right then that I should step back, but it wasn’t as if Prince Charming were waiting in the wings. Hell, Rivera wasn’t even waiting in the wings. Still, my nerves were jumping. Nice girls don’t make out on the first date. Of course, it had been about a decade and a half since I’d considered myself a girl. And the rules are somewhat less stringent for aging women who have been inadvertently celibate for twenty-one months, two weeks, and six days.
    “Thought my heart was going to stop when I saw you across the parking lot,” he said, and stepped a little closer, blocking Opus Street from view. He smelled kind of woodsy, like fresh-cut timber.
    Harlequin galloped around the corner of the garage, ecstatically chasing nothing.
    “Would have sold my kidneys just to see you smile.”
    Things were heating up rapidly, like the initial pages of one of those erotic novels. I shook my head, waiting to wake up…or for him to rip off his tear-away pants.
    “Listen, Will—” I began, but then he leaned in and kissed me with mouthwatering sweetness.
    “I’ll leave if you want me to,” he murmured. “Or—”
    He stopped, scowled, and glanced over his shoulder toward the street.
    “Or what?” I whispered, but suddenly there was a loud pop.
    “Fuck it!” he swore, and lurched behind me.
    Another pop. I spun toward him, numb, disoriented, and
sure,
absolutely
certain
someone wasn’t shooting at me. Not again. Wood sprayed into the air. I screamed. He shoved me forward. I crashed onto my knees. A bullet whizzed over my head. I dropped onto my belly, chanting Jesus’ name.
    And it must have worked, because the shooting ceased. My heart was beating like bongos against the dirt. I lifted my head a quarter of an inch. No pinging.
    Behind me, something whined and fell silent, and I suddenly felt sick. Sick and shaky.
    “No,” I rasped, turning on scathed hands and bloody knees.
    Harlequin was nowhere to be seen, but Will Swanson was there, sprawled on the ground in front of me. Eyes staring, hands lax, and blood oozing from his head into the parched earth beneath me.

2
    Death and taxes—the one don’t look so bad when you compare it to the other.
    —Elmer Brady, Chrissy’s maternal grandfather, who had refused to pay taxes on more than one occasion
    “S IT DOWN.”