“What?” Grade asked anyhow.
Harry jangled the keys idly in one hand. “Do youreallyhave a resume?” he asked.
***
The rugs were thick and expensive, the pile short but so dense it felt like velvet. Grade got them out of the van with a grunt, one after the other, and dragged them over the hard-packed dirt and into the old machine shop.
No one came out to the old mining camp on the outskirts of Sweeny. It wasn’t well-preserved enough to be historical or creepy enough to interest TikTok vloggers. And it was way too out of town to be worth the trip for the local teenagers. Other than Grade, the last person who’d been out here had been the guy who’d towed the old storage unit all the way from Lexington for him.
It was amazing the places you could get people to deliver things to, as long as you paid on time and weren’t overtly weird.
He laid the rugs out on the floor and went into the storage container to get the shears to cut them up. It took twenty minutes, and by the end his hands ached and he had a pile of shedding carpet strips. He tossed them into the waiting drums, on top of his shoes and the rest of the stuff he’d taken from the scene to get rid of.
Back in LA, he knew a few other people who did what he did. Some of them dumped everything in water, the murkier and more pissed-in the better, while others went with acid or chemicals. They all had their pros and cons. Grade preferred fire.
He grabbed the industrial-sized bottle of paint thinner, soaked the shredded rug thoroughly, and then struck a match. It flickered dimly under the fluorescent lighting he’d strung up, the heat of it building as it burned down toward his fingers, and then tossed it into the drum. The accelerant caught hungrily, and flames scorched the inside of the drum. Grade grabbed a pole, hooked out a strip of flaming wool, and tossed it into the second drum.
Grade left them to burn while he unloaded the bags of stolen goods they’d taken from the woman’s house. He dumped them in the corner of the shop. They were unfinished business. Or at least undecided.
In LA, he had the contacts to drop the haul into the local black market. Give it a week and the cops would find flagged items as they turned up in pawn shops or on the fingers of some petty crook’s mom. It made it look like a real burglary.
It would be harder to pull that off in Sweeny. Possible—Grade could pull in a few favors, ask for some names, hit up any of his dad’s old associates who weren’t in jail or the ground—but it would put him out there more than he was comfortable with. Too many opportunities for the cops to do their job right.
The risk probably wasn’t worth the reward—and why he’d let Harry handle the Lexus, which he was starting to regret—but he didn’t have to decide just yet.
Grade cleaned the inside of the van out quickly while the rugs burned. One thing about his new transport, it was quicker to scrub down. It was just bare metal walls and floors. All it took was a quick spray of concentrated bleach and a few minutes of focused scrubbing and you were left with a feeling of accomplishment and a mild cough.
The flames in the drums had guttered down by the time he finished. Grade grabbed the pole again to poke at the remains in the bottom. There were still a few bits of backing, curled and charred but intact, so he emptied the rest of the paint thinner in. It made the embers smoke; then the fumes caught and the flames belched up out of the metal. High enough that the heat stung Grade’s wrists.
He pulled back and hissed softly, shaking his hands to shed the sting.
While they burned down, he grabbed the bags of stolen goods and hauled them outside. He lugged them through the woods until he reached the old, rusted manhole cover half-buried under dirt and leaves. Grade kicked them out of the way and bent down to hook his fingers into the pick hole. The fit wasn’t tight, so it was easy enough to lift and drag out of the way.
Whatever had been down there had mostly dried out. From the smell, Grade assumed it had been a sewage tank. The layer of mulch down on the bottom and the stench were enough to dissuade casual interest.
Professional interest would be more thorough—but they’d have a hard time tying Grade to the location in any concrete way.
He knotted the bags together and dropped them into the hole. They hit the bottom with a squelch and a muted thud. Grade pulled the manhole cover back over and dropped it into place. He threw some rocks and dirt over it and then headed back to the shop.
The fires had guttered down into hot ashes when he stepped back in under the rotted-through roof. Grade could feel the heat from the metal against his legs. He grabbed two containers of water and poured them into the drums. Steam replaced smoke, dry and acrid. Once it sizzled out, he went and got the five liter bottles of acid wash and upended them. It was still hot enough to make the liquid bubble as it heated up, but that wouldn’t do it any harm.
Well…
Grade lifted the bottle to squint at the label. Or at what was left of it, the paper stained and tattered. It wasn’t easy to read, so… probably wouldn’t do any harm. If it did, Grade didn’t plan to be here to deal with it.
He grabbed the empty bottles and carried them over to chuck them into the back of the van with the cleaned-up bat. Then he checked his phone to see if there was any message from Harry about the Lexus.
Nothing.
Grade couldfeelhis stress levels ratchet up a notch. The fact he couldn’t do anything about it just made him feel more anxious, and he’d already been running hotter than normal on his nerves. The rationale that Clay had sold him on about how this was subcontracting, not breaking his rule about amateurs, felt thinner every time he thought about it.
He slammed the van doors shut.
Fuck it.
He’d not been sure whether he was going to go to Clay’s tonight or not. It had gone from being too late for a hookup to too early for one. Plus, the idea that their no-strings thing might be an actualthingmade Grade edgy enough that he wanted to give the whole concept a wide berth for a while.
Just long enough to prove that he didn’t care about whatever he had with Clay.
