yet, but he’d seen enough to know that the small town’s inhabitants adored Daniel Burne. And if he hadn’t, the easy expectation in Daniel’s green eyes would’ve made it clear. This man had never been told ‘no’, and never thought he would be.
Those were the men you had to watch.
“Alright,” Evan relented as they broke out into the cool, evening air. It was just after five, so Ravenswood’s streets were busy. Which meant that there was an old woman heading into the town centre on foot, and two Volvos making their way there via road.
“Great!” Daniel clapped Evan on the back, a firm slap that spoke of a camaraderie they had not forged. It was funny; in the army, that sort of immediate connection had come easy. But here, with this man, the familiarity set Evan’s teeth on edge.
“I parked in town,” Daniel said. “Just ‘round the corner.”
Evan nodded. Since ‘town’ referred to the centre of Ravenswood, and Ravenswood itself was about three miles long—surrounding farmland included— nothing was very far from anything else.
But Daniel managed to pack the next five minutes with a lifetime’s worth of meaningless chatter anyway.
“So, where are you living? Those new flats?”
The flats had been built in 2015, but here in Ravenswood, that counted as new.
“Yep,” Evan confirmed. “Elm Block.” The town’s habit of naming everything in sight was something he quite enjoyed.
Daniel, apparently, did not agree. His already-pale face blanched slightly, his brow furrowed. “Serious?” he asked. “Elm?”
Something in his voice had changed. It was tight, strained, slightly scratchy.
Evan slowed down, his eyes focusing on Daniel with curiosity rather than veiled disdain. “Yeah. Why?”
“That’s bad luck, mate,” Daniel said. He nodded his head over and over again, disturbingly emphatic. “Very bad luck. I suppose you had no-one in town to guide you. There’s some very shady characters living in Elm, you know.”
Evan’s brows flew up. “Shady characters?” he echoed. “In Ravenswood? I haven’t been here long, but that doesn’t sound right.”
“Trust me,” Daniel said darkly. “We all have our burdens to bear.”
Evan bit back a snort. Apparently, he could add Drama King to the list of Daniel Burne’s irritating qualities.
“Be careful,” Daniel continued. “I’m just saying.” Then he jerked his head towards a huge, blue BMW a few metres away, parked across two spaces. “That’s mine.”
Evan blinked at the monstrous thing for a moment, trying to come up with a compliment. He failed. To fill the silence, he returned to the ominous topic of his little block of flats.
“I only have one neighbour. Haven’t met them yet, but I think it’s someone elderly. They don’t seem to leave the house.”
“Hm,” Daniel grunted. “Well—”
His sage wisdom was thankfully interrupted. As they neared the BMW, a small figure came rushing around a nearby corner and knocked right into them both.
2
Ruth entered the town car park with a lot on her mind. Major highlights included:
1. Her stomach cramps, which had gone from mild irritation to knuckle-biting pain in the space of twenty minutes.
2. The indignity of waddling about town with loo roll stuffed down her knickers.
3. The absolutely extortionate price she’d just paid for a packet of substandard tampons that didn’t even have bloody applicators.
4. Mrs. Needham, newsagent proprietor and town gossip, who would tell everyone that Ruth had come in to buy tampons as if they were Year Eight children instead of grown adults.
5. How much the average person might know about the theory of relativity. Because, the less people knew about it, the more she could get away with fudging the details for the latest issue of her web comic.
Was it really surprising, with all that to ponder, that she ran headlong into a pair of enormous men?
Ruth landed on the tarmac with an unladylike grunt. At least it was more elegant than the word currently burning through her mind: Motherfucker!
This was to be imagined, you understand, as an outraged yowl of pain.
For an instant of blissful, foolish shock, Ruth blinked down at the ground. Then she looked up slightly, just a touch—enough to see two pairs of sturdy, boot-clad feet before her. The sight of those feet, along with her embarrassment, took Ruth from mildly irritated to unreasonably angry.
But really. Those boots were entirely too solid and quite abominably stable. The men hadn’t even wobbled. They might at least pretend to be slightly unbalanced, since she was literally on the floor. Such firm uprightness in a situation like this struck her as rude.
“I’m so sorry,” one of the men said. She didn’t know which,