“I had to.”
“You had to what?”
Strange boots flash on the pavement, and before Dez understands what’s happening, she and Moses are shoved aside by a man wearing a black hoodie and a black skeleton-print balaclava.
“MO!”DEZ SHOUTS, HOLDING HERstoned and swaying brother in the doorway, trying to get him to notice, to act as the masked man leaps over Dez’s mop and skids on the wet floor toward the kitchen. The cash register.
But Mo doesn’t budge. His arms clasp her waist more tightly, she realizes, holding her still.
I had to, Mo said when she’d unlocked the door.
Her brother has tricked her. Betrayed her. She’s being robbed.
“Mo,” she says again, softer this time, though her fists begin to wail against his chest. “How could you?”
“Please, Dez.” His grip cinches tighter, until it hurts. “This will only take a second.”
Hell no.She squirms and kicks and presses her cheek hard against Mo’s head. Being high makes him more limber, less sensitive, harder to overcome.
Through her fury, Dez can’t help feeling a familiar sorrow, the very specific pain she’s felt often recently for Mo.
Her mother, Uncle Bob? They’ll be so disappointed.
“Is this worth it?” she demands, trying to reach his windpipe with her elbow. “For one high?”
“You don’t understand,” he says, both his hands gripping her shoulders, turning her swiftly so her back is against his chest. He bends at the waist, folding her up against him.
“I understand that you’re a giant piece of shit,” Dez grunts, feeling immense pressure in her ribs as both of them drop to their knees on the wet floor.
“Just open the till, Dez, please,” Mo says.
“No fucking way.” She’s lost sight of the man in the skull mask. She needs to get to the register to stop him.
“I owe them,” Mo says. “I can’t pay.”
“Yeah, well, neither can I.”
As kids, they used to wrestle on the living room rug whenever their mother wasn’t home. By the time Mo turned ten to her fifteen, he was bigger than she was, stronger. But Dez always had more drive to win. She used to narrow her eyes and pretend Mo was one of any number of kids at school who’d been cruel to her. Then she could pin him in under ten seconds.
The worst thing about tonight is Dez doesn’t have to pretend Mo is anyone but himself to feel the drive to waste him.
She twists underneath him, gaining enough distance to raise her Doc Marten and kick him in the groin.
He scuttles into himself, off her, making sharp, coughing sounds. Dez fights the urge to look at him. She can’t afford to feel sorry right now. Should she grab her brother, drag him out to her car and away from this mess until he sobers up? Call the cops and let them handle the guy in the mask?
No, he’ll be long gone by the time they get here. And this is her family’s place, her family’s livelihood. A fight flares bright in Dez. She’s on her feet in a flash and using her hands to vault over the counter.Adrenaline pumping, she lands next to the register, next to the guy in the mask.
He’s grabbed a heavy-duty grill spatula and is using it like a crowbar on the prehistoric cash register. Dez hasn’t balanced the receipts yet, but she’d guess there’s close to three hundred dollars in there. Three hundred dollars of her family’s money, and this guy isn’t getting his hands on it.
She’s one for one on dick-kicks tonight, so she decides to go for two. She grips his shoulders from behind—so much narrower than Mo’s. A stranger’s body. She thinks: frail. She can take him.
Dez narrows her eyes. Readies her foot. And bam. She nails him in the balls. She knows she does.
But he doesn’t double over, makes no choking cough like Mo. He lets out a soft, almost sensual moan, and then—where his hoodie has slipped back—he meets her eyes.
Dark eyes, inky, like a squid washed ashore. A glint in them like he’s out for something more than money.
Blood?
