“You all right?” Miguel asked, peeking his head out from around the front end of the Malibu he was detailing as I walked by him.
“Have you seen Jason?”
He tipped his chin toward the door. “He was on the phone. He went out that way.” Miguel made a thoughtful face. “That was a while ago though. Right after Mr. C took off.”
This little shit. “Yeah, it’s been over half an hour since I last saw him. Let me go see if he’s out there.”
My coworker shook his head, and I made a face at him before cutting the rest of the distance toward the door. I saw Rip stop where he was, right by the SS he was working on, and I waved at him. He didn’t wave back, but I’d swear his mouth moved and his dimple popped.
Good enough for me.
Three steps later, I shouldered the door open and standing in the doorway, called out, “Jason?”
I could swear I heard voices.
“Jason?” I called out again.
Still, I could hear… something.
I needed to go ahead and tattle. I really did. I let the door shut behind me as I walked across the lot, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from. The lot was filled with employee and customers’ cars. I had probably gotten across half the main lot when I spotted Jason’s head over the top of his Mitsubishi Eclipse.
“Hey,” I called out, stopping in place.
He turned to look at me, and I could see the hesitation on his face before he seemed to nod to himself and start walking toward me.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jason was busy looking at the ground as he approached, and he didn’t respond.
I said his name again just as he passed by me.
He still didn’t even bother looking over at me.
I stayed where I was and tried again. “Jason.”
Still nothing.
What was going on with him?
I turned around to watch him as he walked toward the door I had just come through and opened my mouth to say something—I wasn’t even sure what—when I heard the pounding footsteps.
But I wasn’t sure what I was thinking. Wasn’t sure why I slowed down so much to look over my shoulder to figure outwhyit sounded like someone was running up behind me. But the point was, I didn’t turn around. Not fast enough.
I didn’t put the pieces together until way too late.
Until I got shoved forward from behind so hard I went flying. Until my hands stretched out to break my fall, them and my forearms scraping the concrete when I landed what had to be ten feet away. It wasn’t untilthenthat I figured out what the hell was happening.
I wasn’t sure why, I wasn’t sure I would ever know why, but the first thing out of my mouth was a shouted, “RIP!” at the top of my lungs. I yelled it again the second I could get another mouthful of letters into my body.
But it was the second that name was out of my mouth that I heard the grunted, “Fuckin’ bitch” that triggered some part of my brain a second before a hand dug into my hair, my short freaking hair that barely passed my chin when it was wavy, and jerked my head back, giving me a split-second view of a face I recognized.
A face I made a plan for spitting into a second before my cousin backhanded me like the piece of crap he was.
Stars flashed across my eyes just for a moment, just for a second, as that stupid ring he always wore bit into my cheek.
“What the fuck are you doing, Rudy?” a voice I didn’t recognize shouted, panicking. “You said we were going to talk to her!”
“I—” my cousin started to say as the sound of a door being opened filtered across the lot. I opened my eyes against the tiny dots filling my vision, every single thing that had gone wrong in my life lately refueling me in that split second… and I swung my leg out, sweeping my cousin just perfectly… just enough that I heard him hit the ground.
