The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,74

paintings. The images mostly showed the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains from different places in the valley, at different times of the day and year. The same mountains, the same valley, but jog a few miles north, or wait until sunset, or spring instead of autumn, and they were totally new. You could spend your whole life being surprised by something, no matter how well you thought you knew it, and Jem realized that was one of the things people meant when they said beautiful. He thought about Tean’s face when they’d driven into the Heber Valley, the way he’d lit up, how he’d smiled without knowing he was smiling. And then Jem thought, slurping down the last of the milk, that when you had your own apartment and you had your own job, nice people probably didn’t let you sleep on their couch, and they definitely didn’t buy milk and breakfast cereal just because they knew you liked it, even though you’d never said it, even though you’d never asked.

As he was rinsing the bowl in the sink, his phone buzzed. He padded over to the couch and dug it out of his jeans. Scipio snorted violently and then flopped onto his side, his head coming up to stare at Jem reproachfully.

“Sorry,” Jem whispered.

We’re still on? LouElla’s message read; Jem was proud that he read it almost immediately.

Jem had forgotten that today was the day, but he typed out, Yes, and sent the message.

Toyota Camry, silver, and then a license plate number followed. Noon.

Jem checked the clock; it was ten to eleven.

Swearing, he stumbled into the bathroom, washed his face, scrubbed under his arms with a towel, and spent five frantic minutes with a comb making sure the part in his hair looked good and cursing himself for letting his hair get so long. Then he rushed to the duffel and found a clean pair of chinos and a blue-and-white striped Ralph Lauren polo, complete with the little polo player doing his thing. He got socks and his sneakers. Scipio watched the whole thing, his tail thumping on the couch.

“Oh shit,” Jem said. “Come on; I can’t let you explode.”

He didn’t even pretend with the harness this morning, although most of the time he liked to do a whole production out of trying to get the harness on and Scipio making it too difficult. It spared his ego, a little, and let him keep up the act of not being quite as terrified. This morning, though, there wasn’t time, and Jem just opened the door. He spent the next ten minutes chasing Scipio along the sidewalk, calling the dog’s name, sprinting to get ahead of the Lab and then trying to herd him back to Tean’s place. Scipio was mostly interested in a half-eaten bagel he found near a bus bench; after that, he was happy to let Jem take him back to the apartment. Jem grabbed his windbreaker, checked to make sure his tools were in place, and then, in a last rush, folded up the application and shoved it in his back pocket.

He drove the Kawasaki into West Valley, toward Your Friend Towing and Auto Mechanic. The business consisted of a two-room building, its stucco broken and flaking the ground around it like dander, with a single-bay garage attached. The rest of the lot was fenced with an eight-foot privacy screen, which did a decent job of blocking the view from the street—in case a stolen car was sitting back there, or in case a different kind of deal was going down. When Jem went inside, he waved to Marcy, who was playing World of Warcraft on an ancient monitor, and walked past her to the inner office.

When he rapped on the door, Toro glanced up from his phone and said, “Business is good, and I don’t need to play your kiddy games.”

“Morning.”

“Fuck off.”

“I need to borrow a car.”

Toro laughed and went back to his phone. He’d cut his hair since Jem had seen him last, and there was more gray in the stubble on his jowls. His belly was straining the button on the blue work shirt he was wearing. The nice thing about Toro was that he had a real sense of style that he imparted to everything he touched. He’d done a great job coordinating the Playboy centerfolds that blanketed the walls, for example.

“Three hours tops,” Jem said. “I’m in a hurry. A trooper with light bars.”

Toro hesitated. He almost looked up. Then the chair