Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,10

as my abuela had, I suppose her cooking all day on Sundays after church to feed the village was something like the same thing.

It was the one place she and I managed to find some harmony – the kitchen. She was a patient teacher in the kitchen, almost kind to me. I think that was going to be the only thing I would miss, if I were being truthful with myself.

“Um, you have a Coke back there?” Mav smiled and opened a cooler or something hidden by the bar and lifted out a Coke in the glass bottle, the kind from Mexico made with real cane sugar. I smiled as he pried the lid off with a bottle opener.

“Thanks,” I murmured, sliding up onto one of the bar stools.

“Sure, you don’t want something harder?” Derringer, one of the men from the Eastern Washington group, asked. I looked his way. He was a big redneck. The kind that if he drove a pickup, you would expect it to be painted in hunter’s camo with a variety of rifles in the back window. He was a fat guy. The kind of guy who had always been heavy from the time he was a kid, but also the kind of fat that was deceptive. He was a good ol’ country boy and there was muscle under that fat. The kind of muscle that would make cracking an opponent’s head like an egg child’s play for a man like him.

He smiled at me, his teeth a little too perfect – probably dentures despite the fact that he was still relatively young. He didn’t seem the type to have grown up with a family who could afford braces.

His blue eyes sparkled under the brim of his John Deere trucker hat, and I knew he was prematurely balding underneath. He kept his hair shorn short, but when the stubble was long enough, it was enough to know he was a brassy kind of dishwater blond.

“No, thank you,” I murmured. “I’m not twenty-one.”

He cracked a wide grin and chuckles swept through all the men. Even Maverick smiled from behind the bar where he tossed back something amber in a short glass.

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor is the least of our worries out here, darlin’,” the one called Deacon said.

I liked him. He was the epitome of a silver fox – well-kept and easy on the eyes. His beard was carefully groomed and edged; his hair gelled into place. He smelled nice, too – his cologne subtle and woodsy, slightly spicy. It reminded me of cedar and church incense and there was something comforting about the smell, even though I wasn’t, by any means, a devout Catholic girl.

“I’m good,” I said, and held still, despite my wish to shift uncomfortably on my seat.

“You’re all good, sladkiye glaza.”

I frowned and demanded, “What did you just call me?” The men all chuckled and smiled at me like I was adorable, which just pissed me off more.

Maverick took another drink from his refreshed glass and with a wry smile said, “Too familiar, I get you. Wasn’t anything bad, I promise.”

“Do they know what it was?” I asked, looking at each of them in turn.

“None of us speak Russian,” Fenris said, knocking back some of his beer.

“Eh, Slavic is useful for some ciphers and codes,” Cipher declared and Squatch groaned.

Squatch looked exactly as his name implied – unibrow, pronounced brow ridge, but not unhandsome if he could only tame his wild growth of hair.

Cipher, by comparison, was fire to Squatch’s darkness. His copper hair and beard were kept neat, while long on top, and slicked back, his hair didn’t reach past his collar. It was shaven underneath on the sides and the back, probably to keep cool as his hair looked thick.

“Do you know what he said?” I asked.

Cipher shrugged and I tried not to go mad with worry.

“Relax,” Maverick said, which was easy for him. “Nothing bad, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Yeah, right, I thought to myself.

“Girl, it is way too easy to wind you up and watch you go,” Derringer said, laughing to himself.

“Derry, let the woman alone. Jesus,” the third and final man from the Eastern Washington group had finally spoken. Skeeter, the vice president, had been released from jail. Word was he had been arrested on a warrant for assault, and the police had tried to leverage it against him for the other four that were still in jail. He hadn’t given the police anything