from surprise as the crowd turned in time to see Locke opening the trunk of his car and pulling something long out.
By now the men had gone quiet, their attention glued to Locke as he strode past them, slinging a shovel over his shoulder. His expression was dark, his body foreboding as he eyed the men he passed with cold eyes. He walked to the front yard, stepping over the flowers and along the trimmed grass.
Then he stopped and stood before the men and, grabbing the shovel in both hands, he plunged the end of it into the ground and used his very expensive leather monk-strap dress shoe to press it into the earth so that it stood upright before them.
“Take one step forward and you’ll be using this shovel to dig your own grave,” he threatened. He stared at them hard as the silence stretched, and then he raised his brows. “Test me. Come on, test me.”
No one tested him.
Eyes darted from Locke to Thames and suddenly their faces cleared and some even shrugged because, pfft, there was no trouble – what trouble? If Conor Thames wanted to be in town, had anyone said otherwise? Not them. Surely not them. Locke had it all wrong and they were going now – yeah, they didn’t mean anything by it.
In under a minute, the men had scattered in all directions, climbing into their cars. They sped out of there, but not too fast because Locke’s car was in the middle of the road and, shit, they weren’t going to fuck with his car, no way, but, fuck, one man may have gotten too close and he was sweating bullets, but it was okay because he didn’t actually graze the car; he raised a hand in apology at Locke as he safely drove the rest of the way down the family neighbourhood.
Thames felt the smile stretch across his face. Locke turned around to look at him, his eyes softening.
“Already the drama finds you, Thames,” he remarked lightly.
Thames nodded. “Always.”
“How’d you know?” Jem asked haughtily, his tone strange as he eyed Locke with nothing light in his own expression.
Locke didn’t even look at him. “Charlotte,” he simply answered.
Thames spotted the odd tension between the two men but decided not to address it. Instead, he gave Locke a meaningful look and said, “Thanks.”
Locke stiffened a nod in return, saying nothing.
“You should come in,” Thames continued. “Out of the cold, all of us…”
Jem didn’t respond, and Locke took a step back, glancing briefly at his watch. Thames instantly recognized it. No matter the expensive suits and shoes and haircuts, Locke always wore the same watch since he’d graduated high school. It wasn’t anything special, but Locke had worked a shitty job for months and months and splurged on it one day in what seemed like the most impulsive purchase. It was a Seiko square watch with a plain blue face. At the time it was four hundred dollars, and Thames knew it meant a lot to Locke to purchase it. Such a curious thing to see it still on him.
“I was in the middle of something…” Locke began to say.
“I recognized some of those guys,” Jem interrupted, his tone sharp. “They’ve been a problem in town for a while now. I’m curious why you haven’t run them out of here.”
Locke flexed his jaw, snarling, “I didn’t realize running unsavoury people out of Blackwater was my job, Jem.”
“You’ve driven all kinds of them out before.”
“If you want me to kick out every shitty person, who’d end up going to your bar?”
Jem took a moment to absorb that insult and then he chuckled, but it was not out of humour. “You can come around here and play the hero all you want, buddy, but it doesn’t erase what you’ve done to this place.”
Locke smiled coldly at him. “Tell me what a hero does then, Jem, so I understand it right.”
Jem didn’t respond, but his expression twisted to confusion.
Right then the sky thundered loudly, and the clouds opened up with heavy rain. The three men stood still, eyes darting from face to face, a strange undercurrent of emotions filling the space between them.
How had they ever buried the past before? Because right now it was present like a ghost: you couldn’t see it, but you could feel its haunting touch.
Poking her head out the door, Charlotte called out, “Get in before you get drenched.”
They were already drenched and didn’t care. The tension wasn’t broken. Something was happening there