back the pop. When Nick easily whipped it out of reach, Brian grabbed Nick’s shirt instead and reeled him in. Nick held the can up and back over his head, but Brian’s much longer arms let him liberate it. He took it back and downed another long swallow. “Ah, that’s good.”
“Hey, the solo driver deserves something,” Nick protested, latching a hand onto his wrist.
“You know what you really deserve?”
Their eyes met and held. The humor in Nick’s gaze turned into heat as molten gold as the sunlight.
A voice growled, “Damned queers. They’re everywhere.”
Nick broke away in an instant, the cold, hard-assed Nok Nick expression sharpening his features as he turned. “You talkin’ to me?”
The big guy on the other side of the pump said, “If the tutu fits.” He laughed and glanced at the woman in the cab of his pickup for approval.
Brian could see the violence coiling through Nick’s shoulders, familiar from months of study across a barroom. He quickly said, in a light, airy tone, “We’re here and we’re queer. Get used to it.” And laughed brightly, weirdly, like it was nothing.
Nick and the burly man both turned to stare at him, but when they broke off to focus back on each other, the big guy took a step away. “Fuckin’ Minnesota,” he muttered. His jaw worked, and he hawked a loogie toward their license plate before swinging up into his truck. He drove off from the pump with an extra rumble of acceleration, slowed at the exit to the street, swung left, and was gone.
Nick turned back, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Seriously? We’re here and we’re queer?”
Brian shrugged. “It was something to say.”
“You didn’t have to say anything. I could’ve took that guy with one hand. Half a hand. Anyway, you might’ve made him madder.”
Brian didn’t want to admit it wasn’t the words he’d gone for, it was the tone. If you sounded light and lost, out in left field, it made people uncomfortable. Like, it sometimes cut the ground out from under them, as bullying the loser kid became dealing with the mentally messed-up kid, and they’d pause to change tactics.
I really have to stop doing that.
“Sorry. It kind of floated into my head.”
“Well, you should’ve kept it in there.” Nick moved closer and rubbed a hand up and down Brian’s jacket sleeve. “This is redneck territory. You’re a big guy, but not very scary-looking.”
“I guess.” The sun was slipping below the trees and he shivered. “Are you done with gas?”
“Yup.” They got into the car and Nick turned to him before starting the engine. “One more run? Or should we find a motel?”
He wanted to say motel. His mood had soured and a headache hovered behind his eyes. Another night like they’d had in Carbondale yesterday, with Nick determined to work all the kinks out of every muscle Brian had, would feel so good. But it was barely five o’clock, too early to call it a day. “One more leg.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah. This is the easy-peasy version.” It was almost scary, how smoothly this was going. A few moments of Finding to get a fix and make sure they were still heading the right way, and he could let go of the trace and sit back for a couple of hours. If he’d learned to do it this way with the MPD, how many more people could he have helped? Although it wouldn’t work as well up close.
“Okay. As long as you’re sure.”
He gave Nick a grin and closed his eyes. Slipping into the dark and opening his Finder eye was the work of a moment or two. Yeah, it hurt a bit, but nothing like the blinding pain he’d had only a month ago. Among the web of traces that ran through the dark, he searched out the faint green of Ariana’s. By now, he didn’t need the little hair ribbon to Find her. That thin thread of grass and leaves, a faint haze of long-ago summers and the tang of sun-warmed metal in a playground, drifted in the air in front of him.
It was the most fragile trace he’d ever followed, although he hadn’t told Nick that. Even Emily Stewart’s, whose thread had died as he searched for her, had been more solid. Until she was gone. He shook off the memory, and reached for Ariana’s thin trace, like cotton candy wisping off the spinner at a street fair. Green and warm, light, air and sunshine, a sweaty hand