She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,37

idea where his dad might be.

Once inside, I went to the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and climbed into the shower. I expected to find the start of some nasty bruises, but there was nothing, not a single scratch, cut, or inflammation.

Shower done, I put on the clothes Dunk had left out for me—a pair of jeans one size too big and a Bobby McFerrin tee-shirt with Don’t worry, be happy stamped across the front under a large, yellow winking smiley face.

I found Dunk in the kitchen drinking a beer.

Willy sat beside him at the table, a beer in his hand, too. “What the fuck, Thatch?”

I took a Coke from the fridge, popped the top, and dropped down into one of the empty chairs. The green vinyl top blew out some air from a hole in the side.

“Maybe you should have a beer, too,” Dunk said. “I think you’ve earned a beer. You’re going to be hurting once the shock wears off. A beer will help.”

When had Dunk started drinking beer? “I feel fine, really. I think my bike took the worst of it and I got lucky—the ground is damp and mushy. It cushioned my fall.”

Dunk leaned forward in his chair. “You didn’t fall, you flew. That SUV launched you like a retarded Superman, your arms flailing all around…” He waved and flapped his arms in the air and made this crooked face, I couldn’t help but laugh.

Dunk got up, went to the refrigerator, retrieved a beer, popped the top, then set it in front of me before returning to his chair. The kitchen smelled like mildew. Dishes piled high in the sink. An empty jar of peanut butter sat on the counter, a fly feasting on the rim.

“I really don’t want a beer.”

“You will.” He reached to the center of the table, to a copy of Boy’s Life, and slid it aside. His dad’s gun was sitting under it.

I glanced from Dunk to Willy, then back again. As far as I knew, he never showed the gun to anyone but me. “What’s that for?”

“We need a new plan,” Dunk said.

“We don’t need a gun.”

“They tried to kill you.”

“They tried to scare me.”

“If they wanted to scare you, they would have driven close to you, maybe even forced you off the road,” Dunk said. “Instead, they sped up behind you, with the pedal to the floor, and nailed the back of your bike. The impact destroyed your ride and would have killed you if you weren’t such a lucky bastard. I’m surprised they didn’t throw it in reverse and back up over you to finish the job. I bet they would have if you didn’t go cartwheeling over the guardrail.”

“They were only trying to scare me,” I insisted.

Dunk leaned closer. “Whoever was driving didn’t even tap the brake pedal. They rode the gas. After they hit you, they sped up and drove off, didn’t even slow down. Even if you hit someone on accident, you slow down, at the very least just to be sure your car didn’t get all fucked up. Not a single tap on the brakes, not one. They tried to kill you.”

Willy took a sip of his beer. It made his eyes water. “You saw your bike, right?”

I nodded.

“You saw how mangled it was? When I rode up, that’s what you looked like—a twisted, mangled, mess. I thought for sure you were dead.”

Dunk drank some of his beer, and his eyes did not water. “Willy here flagged down a station wagon on Brownsville and convinced some old lady that his buddy got shredded in a hit and run and needed help. When he didn’t find us where he left us, he spent the next ten minutes trying to convince her that maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought.”

Willy nodded. “She wanted to call the cops. I had to talk her down. At first she thought some half-dead kid was pushing his bike home. When we couldn’t find the half-dead kid, she got angry and figured I was pranking her—then she really wanted to call the cops. She grabbed my shirt and tried to get me in her car. I busted loose, got on my bike, and rode off into the woods, cut through the cemetery to lose her. That woman could scream. I heard her shouting for half the ride back here. I guessed you guys would come back here.”

My mind was churning. “They knew something was wrong. I don’t know how, but they