Chapter One
~ Ransom ~
Every small town claims to have a heart, but McKenzie River's pumped diluted blood at best. I watched it circulate through Main Street every morning, the flow no different from the day before: same people, same errands, same bullshit.
If anything changed, it was only in the details—whose dog pissed on the war memorial first, which local retired from hating their neighbor and started in on city hall, who at Rosie's Bakery finally snapped and poisoned the scones.
Still waiting on that one.
I propped myself up against the front counter of Inked Rebellion, boots crossed on the bottom rail, mug in hand. I liked the vantage. The hand-painted gold logo on the Victorian window—my art, so of course immaculate—gave me just enough privacy to scrutinize the sidewalk parade undetected.
Not that anyone in this town believed in glass being one-way. Small-town secrets were always see-through, especially when they involved the local tattoo degenerate.
The scent of antiseptic still lingered from my morning deep-clean, waging a cold war with the diffuser’s essential oil blend. This week’s flavor was patchouli and mint, a combinationoffensive enough to keep the real housewives of McKenzie River clutching their pearls if they dared come in for a gift certificate.
The buzz of my coil machine hummed in the background, promising more rebellion for the masses, and the Stones were crooning out of the rebuilt 70s speakers I’d liberated from a junkyard.
I kept the volume a hair past “comfortably loud,” just enough to annoy the park committee meeting across the street in the Founder's Park pavilion. Never let it be said I didn’t contribute to the local culture.
By eight-thirty I’d already reorganized my entire workstation. Needles, tubes, inks, paper towels—everything had to be just so, or I got twitchy. My ex said it was OCD; I called it professionalism.
You don’t get best in county—three years running—by letting pigment splatter your liner caps or by treating your tips like dollar store Q-tips. And you sure as hell don’t get to keep your street cred by letting the law think you’re slipping.
Right on cue, the sheriff’s department’s parade float—a battered Ford Explorer with more antennae than a cockroach—glided to a halt in the yellow zone across from my storefront. I clocked the silhouette immediately.
Floyd Hardesty, Sheriff, McKenzie River’s answer to John Wayne if John Wayne had a subscription to Men's Health and unresolved issues about authority.
He didn’t get out right away. Instead, he sat in the cab and stared through my window, mirrored sunglasses catching the sun, arms folded across his broad chest. The tension radiated from him even from fifty yards away. He wasn’t even pretending to read the clipboard in his lap; this was all for my benefit, a little dance we’d been perfecting for years.
I set down my mug with deliberate slowness and took a sip from the bottle of water I kept under the counter, keeping my eyes locked with his. The first move was always his.
Old man Jenkins shuffled past on his way to Rosie's, cane tapping out a slow tattoo. He gave my window the ritual side-eye, probably still trying to decide if I was a threat to his granddaughter or the next mayoral candidate. He’d been using the same joke about “colorful characters” for a decade. If I ever got arrested, I planned to request him as my sole juror.
I could tell by the way the morning light hit Main Street who would come next—Mrs. Ballinger with her sweater sets and the little dog in the bicycle basket, then a wave of high schoolers late for first period, then Rosie's delivery guy huffing pastry boxes.
The town was nothing if not consistent.
I’d mapped every predictable habit in a spiral-bound notebook before I was legally old enough to drink. There was comfort in the repetition, I guess, or at least a certain predictability. If McKenzie River was a watch, I knew which gears to jiggle to make it run off-kilter for fun.
What the town didn’t know was that I liked being its problem child. Every time some old biddy gossiped about “that McKenzie boy with the face art,” my reputation gained another coat of lacquer.
Even when I did good—pro bono cover-ups for domestic violence scars, free tattooing for local veterans—the town chalked it up to ulterior motives. Fine. At least no one expected me to show up at the Founder's Day picnic with a pie and a candidate's handshake.
I let the Stones play out “Gimme Shelter,” then killed the music and the buzz of the tattoo machine both. Silence, thick enough to taste, settled in. The only noise was the ticking of the old telegraph clock on the wall (still works, try me), and thefaint hiss from the diffuser as it spat defiance at the cleaning chemicals.
With nothing left to rearrange, I decided to clean the front glass. Again. The act itself was mindless, but it put me right in Floyd’s line of sight. I made a show of squeegeeing the corners, flexing my sleeve up so the river valley half-sleeve popped against the navy of my shirt. If he was going to make a spectacle of his watchfulness, so was I.
His window rolled down, and the sound of classic country floated across the street. Floyd's mouth moved, probably muttering some sheriffly observation about “criminals keeping business hours.” He knew I could lip-read, and I knew he hated that I could.
I gave him a salute with my rag and grinned, white teeth and all. He gave nothing back but more sunglasses and the clench of his jaw. The world’s least interactive mating ritual.
I wondered, not for the first time, what he’d do if I ever just walked over and introduced myself like a normal citizen. Call for backup? Slam me against the hood and recite the Miranda out of spite? The possibilities were almost entertaining enough to risk it. But then the town would have a new scandal, and the last one—Rosie’s nephew caught naked in the bakery kitchen—was still holding strong in the local hierarchy of shame.
I finished the glass, stepped back, and surveyed the result. Not a single streak. Satisfied, I let myself stand for a minute, just breathing. There was something about the combination of antiseptic, ink, and the faintest tinge of ozone from the machines that always grounded me.
The light coming through the window made the whole shop glow like a cathedral—if cathedrals were painted deep navy and decorated in vintage flash and concert posters.
I took the sight in, as I did every morning. There was pride in it, and ownership, and more than a little bit of challenge: Come at me, River Town. I’m ready.
