That part we didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was the fact that the Sunoco probably had cameras.
And if the cameras were in the right spot, they may have caught the SUV on its way to the mountain.
It was dark when we made our way to the gas station a few hours after we’d left the park with Cassie. Our picnic had been a lot less lighthearted than we’d expected, and now that we had details about what had happened the day of Cassie’s accident, we weren’t willing to sit around with our thumbs up our asses.
Bram was at the house with Maeve for one of their visits with Cassie, which made it the perfect time to run our little errand.
Cassie had begged us not to tell him about the car on the mountain. She wouldn’t say why, but I had a hunch it was because she didn’t trust Bram to stay calm.
The irony of Cassie trusting us to do the same wasn’t lost on me. The second Cassie was out of earshot we’d made plans to goto the Sunoco, and Vigo had wasted no time picking up “his” bat for the field trip.
I thought I understood Cassie’s thinking — she was trying to protect Bram the way he’d protected her all these years, even if that meant protecting Bram from himself — and I was happy to have the jump on him when it came to the SUV that had run Cassie off the road.
I wasn’t sure when it had started to matter that we stake our claim on Cassie, that we prove we could be trusted to take care of her.
But it fucking mattered.
“What if the cameras didn’t catch them?” Vigo said as we made our way along the dark road.
It was a weeknight, and even though it was summer, there wasn’t much traffic. Tourists were either at one of the overnight camping spots on the mountain or in town cooling off with a few beers after a day spent hiking or rafting.
“Then we’ll trace in the other direction,” Hawk said. “As far as it takes.”
I wasn’t surprised by Hawk’s determination. For all his calm, cool, and collected bullshit, any doubt I might have had about his feelings for Cassie had disintegrated in the wake of her accident.
Vigo had told me how Hawk had held Cassie’s hand through the broken glass of her shattered windshield while they’d waited for search and rescue, and I’d seen for myself the way he’d sat by her hospital bed when she’d been drifting in and out of consciousness from the drugs they’d given her after her surgery.
Hawk was as fucked as Vigo and me, all of us pulled into the deepest end of the pool by the little redhead who would be — if Bram had anything to say about it — off-limits to us in six more weeks.
Vigo pulled into the gas station parking lot, the Sunoco sign casting shades of red, yellow, and blue light on the cracked pavement.
The place was deserted, the gas pumps silent, an electrical wire buzzing overhead.
“Good,” Hawk said. “Nobody’s here.”
“Would it matter?” Vigo parked out front and turned off the car.
“Not really,” Hawk said. “But less fallout this way if it gets ugly.”
We hadn’t brought guns. We wouldn’t need them. This was small time.
Plus, Vigo had his bat.
We got out of the car and headed inside, all of us clocking the cameras over the door, pointed at the gas pumps.
“Be chill with that bat,” I said to Vigo. “I’m not doing a night for assault because you can’t keep it together.”
I didn’t give two shits about doing a night in jail — our lawyers would have us out by morning — but Cassie needed us and getting pinched for assault would be all the ammo Bram needed to move Cassie out of our place and into the loft.
“I’m hurt,” Vigo said. “I wouldn’t do anything to cost us our mouse.”
An electronic bell chimed as we stepped through the gas station’s glass doors and we entered a large open room lit with sickly fluorescent light. The space was filled with racks of snacks and convenience food, coolers and freezers bordering the space on every side but the front, where a scrawny, familiar guy with thinning brown hair sat behind the cash register.
“Dude,” Vigo said, approaching him, “I didn’t know you were working here.”
The guy instantly turned wary, his brown eyes shifty. “For a few months now. How’s it going?”
Vigo turned to Hawk and me. “Griggs works here. Can you fucking believe that shit?”
