2
BISHOP
I'd been picking up the same to-go order from The Soda Jerk every Tuesday and Thursday for three years. Cheeseburger with pepper jack and fries.
The owner, West, had it bagged and waiting by the time I walked in most nights. I'd drop cash on the counter, grab the bag, and be back at the cabin in twelve minutes.
Tonight, I walked in, and Breanna Ingalls was sitting in the third booth from the door. She had her laptop open and her reading glasses on. The to-go order stopped mattering.
The glasses were small and round, and she wore them low on her nose, the way people did when they'd forgotten they were wearing them. Her hair was still up in the same bun from this afternoon, but pieces had come loose around her face, and the blue light from the laptop screen caught the angle of her jaw and the line of her throat. I stood in the doorway like an idiot for about three seconds longer than a man should stand anywhere.
She hadn't seen me yet. She was deep in whatever was on that screen—leaning in, one hand on the trackpad, the other holding a coffee mug she wasn't drinking from. Her lips weremoving slightly, the way they did when someone was reading something dense and processing it in real time.
A food basket sat pushed to the side with half a burger and a few cold fries on it. My guess was she'd eaten without tasting any of it.
"Do me a favor," I said. "Plate it for me."
West's hand stopped on the bag. He looked at me. Then he looked past me toward the third booth. When he looked back at me, his expression didn't change as he pulled the burger and fries out of the bag, set them in a wax paper-lined red basket, and slid it across the blue countertop without a word.
I took it and walked to her booth. I slid in across from her.
She looked up—over the top of the glasses, not through them—and I caught the full sequence. Surprise, recognition, a quick hardening behind her eyes. She closed the laptop halfway. Not all the way. Halfway, like she was reserving the right to return to it if this conversation didn't earn her attention.
"Bishop," she said.
"Breanna."
"Are you following me?"
"I pick up dinner here twice a week. I thought I'd dine in tonight."
"And you decided to sit down."
"I decided to sit down."
She glanced toward the counter. West was wiping it down with an indifference that made it clear he was absolutely listening to every word. He didn't look up.
"I didn't realize this was here," she said, meaning the diner. "I almost drove past it. The outside looks like?—"
"Like it should be condemned. I know. Everyone says that. West considers it a feature."
The corner of her mouth moved. The beginnings of a smile she wasn't ready to commit to.
She opened the laptop back up, angling the screen slightly away from me. Not hiding it. Just establishing that the work was still the priority and I was an interruption she hadn't decided to allow yet.
"I'm reviewing habitat data," she said. "For tomorrow."
"Find anything useful?"
"I found six candidate sites along riparian corridors in Haywood and Jackson Counties before I started the drive out. Three of them turned out to be inaccessible or wrong once I talked to local outfitters. The fourth had the right canopy profile, but the water was too fast. The fifth—" She stopped. "You don't need the full report."
"I'm not in a hurry."
She looked at me over the top of her glasses. Assessing. Deciding whether I meant it or was faking interest the way men faked interest when they wanted something from a woman. Usually something sexual.
I let her look. I had nothing to hide and nowhere to be.
"The fifth was on a private stretch I couldn't get access to," she said. "The landowner told me to call the county extension office, which is a polite way of saying ‘go away.’ The sixth is Hadley Bend. Your stretch."
