Cait straightened up at the sound of her voice. Rebecca could see the relief in the girl’s eyes. “Just seeing if I can figure out what happened with the tank. I’ve had a look underneath and it doesn’t look like we have a leak or anything, at least not that I could see.” She wiped her grease-smeared hands down the front of her jeans. “I’m sorry for not having a spare gas can in the car. I should have been better prepared.”
Rebecca felt herself soften a little, but not enough to accept the apology. Not yet. “How do you know that stuff?” she asked, gesturing toward the hood.
Cait shrugged. “My dad taught me. It’s not that hard, really, especially on an old car like this. Now they’re all run by computers, which makes it way harder to diagnose a problem. You need a technician with a scanner and all sorts of stuff.”
“I don’t even know how to change the oil in a car,” Rebecca admitted. “I guess I’m not very practically minded.”
“Yeah, well.”
“So you don’t think it’s a leak? That’s good, right?”
“Hopefully, though it doesn’t explain why we ran out of gas.” Cait ducked her head back under the hood, and Rebecca could hear the scrape of metal on metal. “Hang on.”
“Did you find something?”
Cait emerged holding what looked like a small electrical plug. “This isn’t right.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the fuel relay. It was loose.”
“Maybe when we hit the fox . . . ?”
Cait shook her head. “Stuff like this doesn’t just come loose.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think somebody’s been messing with it.” Cait kept her eyes on the plug nestled in her palm. “I think somebody might have drained the tank on purpose.”
She fixed the plug back in place and slammed the hood shut.
Ken
Ken parked up outside the Dark Horse and killed the engine. He checked his watch: 5:23. A little early—Nick wouldn’t turn up until six o’clock sharp, with the same clockwork precision that he did everything with—but Ken didn’t mind. It wasn’t like being in Nick’s company was all that different from being alone, anyway.
Don’t get him wrong, he loved the guy like a brother. Hell, he practically was his brother, he’d known him so long. They’d gone to school together, two little kids with skinned knees trading baseball cards on the playground. Nick had been quiet then, too—had taken some crap from the other kids for it—but Ken hadn’t minded. Things at home were always so loud—his father shouting, his mother screaming and crying—and things in his head weren’t much different. From as far back as Ken could remember, his mind had buzzed with a swarm of thoughts, and he usually couldn’t stop those thoughts from coming straight out of his mouth the second they popped into his head. His mother used to tell him he had verbal diarrhea. Nice thing for a mother to say to her kid, right? She said a lot of things in her time, most of which he tried not to remember. It can get to you, that stuff. Wear you down.
Anyway, Nick was quiet, and Ken was loud, and they worked well together like that. Their friendship was like one of those yin-yang stickers he’d see on the back of some hippie’s van.
He walked across the parking lot and pushed open the door. The place was nearly empty, even though it was happy hour. He remembered a time when everybody stopped work at five on the dot, but it seemed like people were working later and later these days, stretching the workday well into the evening, out of pride or necessity, he didn’t know. Ken, he didn’t understand that. Don’t get him wrong, he worked hard, but he didn’t work a minute past what he was getting paid. Why should he? They weren’t running a charity, and he sure as hell wasn’t a volunteer.
Ten more years. That’s what he told himself every morning when he pulled on his stupid brown shorts and buttoned up the itchy brown shirt and set off in his stupid brown truck. Ten more years and he’d be finished. It wasn’t that he hated his job, though his knees were starting to give him trouble. He liked it for the most part, driving his route, seeing the same faces, making conversation with people, seeing the insides of people’s houses and offices, catching little glimpses of their lives. He could tell a lot about people by what