The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,68

argue. He liked proper categories, naming things. I found that I appreciated it too. It kept me honest. Mostly.

“We make a good team, me and you,” I said.

“We’re a team?”

I thought about that. “Yeah. A team.”

“Okay.”

I looked over at him, sitting there all neat and polite and—it hit me with a pang—so singular, so alone with all he was and all he could never be. I felt a keen sensation of loss, almost familiar now, and I suddenly wanted more than anything to hug him, and if he’d been anybody else in the world, I would have done it.

But he was Trey. And he was separated from me by a gulf far wider than a few feet of leather upholstery. I watched him drive away and thought of empty spaces.

But I also thought of bridges.

Chapter 35

The next morning, I woke up with a stiff back and a stuffed-up head. The photograph of Uncle Dexter looked spiteful in the half-light, like he knew I was taking down his Stars and Bars.

I was feeling conflicted. Not out of any Confederate loyalty—I didn’t much like the thing myself. But taking it down felt like an insult to Dexter, not unlike the way Atlanta had razed what antebellum architecture the Yankees hadn’t burned to a cinder, erecting in its place a post-modern skyline, gleaming and reflecting, a city of mirrors. Atlanta called itself the city too busy to hate. It was a heady fiction.

“Sorry, Dexter—it has to go,” I told him, and rubbed the ache out of my neck.

But it would wait. I had other things to attend to first, namely cleaning myself up and hauling it to Phoenix. So I dressed rapidly and closed the shop, setting every alarm Trey had showed me. The late morning sky loomed low and gray, like a ceiling of dirty ice, and I shivered as I walked to my car. Please, I thought, let this day be easy.

It was not to be. Standing square in my path was Dylan Flint, spiked hair and all. He yanked off his sunglasses. “You’re gonna pay for this!”

“For what?”

“You know what! You think you trash my place, I’m gonna get scared and back down? I’m not afraid of you or your boyfriend.”

He’d moved in close, and I realized for the first time how very young he was, barely twenty. His pale face popped with cold sweat, and he looked like he hadn’t slept, hadn’t bathed, hadn’t even changed clothes in a while.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Passersby stared and kept walking. I tried to sound patient and logical, but fear cracked my voice. This guy was a wing nut of the first order, and I was mostly alone with him, with all my guns locked up in the shop. And he was infuriated.

“That’s bullshit! I heard the message you left. You were checking to see if I was there so you could break in!”

“If I had been going to break in, do you think I would have left a message?”

“I know what I know! And I don’t need pictures to prove it!”

“Prove what?”

He sneered. “Maybe you should talk to your boyfriend, ask him what he’s been doing hanging around with Charley Beaumont when her husband’s out of town.”

“You mean Trey?” I took a deep breath. “He’s not my boyfriend—and she’s his client.” Then it hit me. “Is that why you were following us around Saturday? You thought I was the other woman?”

The sneer twisted, and he laughed. “Stupid lying bitch.”

And that did it. I gripped my tote bag tighter and widened my stance. What was it Trey had said to his class? Balance was my greatest strength. I felt it suddenly, the sturdiness that comes from standing on two feet, owning your space.

“Look, you moron, I don’t know why you’re here, but I know one thing—you’re in big trouble.”

“You don’t know shit!”

“I know you kept Eliza around so she’d score drugs for you. You got the shakes, dude.”

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. There was a folder in my tote bag that described the signs of meth addiction—agitation, paranoia, rage. He was a veritable poster boy.

“Is that how she paid you off for showing up and taking pictures at the Mardi Gras party? A few hits of this or that?”

“The cops want to talk to me,” he said. “And I’m thinking of doing it.”

“Why? What was so hot about those photographs you took?”

He clammed up again and stared at me with this smug look, but