I kept driving but did it staring.
Then I did it glaring, anger flaring fast and rocketing straight to fury.
He gave me big eyes. Then he gave me hand gestures.
I ignored both, kept driving, stopped at the stop sign at the end of the road, made my turn when it was clear, and drove two blocks before I pulled over and yanked my phone out of my purse.
I jabbed at the screen and put it to my ear.
My friend Ryan, who right then was sitting in a car across the street from my dickhead neighbor’s house, answered on one ring.
“Cher—”
“Do not speak,” I hissed. “Meet me at the bar…now.”
“I kinda can’t leave my—”
“Ryan, what’d I say about speaking? Get your ass to the bar.”
“But the guy who hired me for this job is kinda scary.”
Oh yeah.
I was ticked.
“Trust me, right now, Ryan, I’m scarier.”
Ryan said nothing.
“You gonna meet me at the bar, like, in two seconds?”
“I’ll meet you at the bar, Cher,” he muttered.
I disconnected.
Then I jabbed at my screen again.
After I did that, I put my phone to my ear.
It rang a long time, then I got Ryker’s voicemail.
“Your surveillance guy just quit. And you’re off my Christmas card list. And if you come into J&J’s and I’m the only bartender on, you aren’t gonna get a drink. And if I didn’t totally dig your missus, I’d never fucking speak to you again.”
After I said all that, I hung up and drove to J&J’s.
I stormed in, and being me, I didn’t bother hiding how pissed I was.
This made Feb, who was standing at Colt’s side of the bar seeing as her husband had his ass planted on a stool there, widen her eyes at me.
Colt saw his wife’s face and twisted on his stool.
He got one look at me and let out an audible sigh before begging, “Please, fuck, tell me Merry isn’t the asshole who’s makin’ you look like that.”
“No, Merry isn’t the asshole who’s making me look like this,” I returned, stomping toward the office.
“Who’s the asshole makin’ you look like that?” Feb called as I opened the door to the office.
I turned to them. “Ryker,” I spat.
Neither of them looked surprised.
This was likely because Ryker didn’t have a habit of making people look pissed off.
He’d made it an art.
I went into the office and stowed my purse, slamming drawers as I did it, this not making me feel any better.
Me slamming the office door when I left also didn’t help.
Further not cooling me down, I felt something coming off Colt as I tramped his way.
I looked at him and stopped when I caught the expression on his face.
“You wanna tell me why Ryan just slunk in here, lookin’ like a whipped dog, and made his way right to the back where I can’t see him or whatever the fuck that moron’s got goin’ down?” he asked.
Colt knew Ryan. Back during the manhunt for Denny Lowe, Ryan had led them to me, and both Ryan and I had given them lots of information to figure out just how many screws Lowe had loose (in other words, all of them). That information might have even helped them (a little bit) to track him down.
Unfortunately, Denny had managed to wound three men, one woman, and murder three more victims before they stopped him.
But we’d helped (maybe…and not altogether willingly, but the last part only because Ryan was tweaked and I was pissed off I was fucking an ax murderer).
I knew Ryan because he was a regular at the strip club.
He was a nice kid, geeky, not real good at being social, and unbelievably smart. But smart in that bad way that made him geeky and not real good at being social.
He’d had a crush on me. He’d made it clear. It was sad and cute at the same time.
He also gave me money. It wasn’t a lot, but back then, when Ethan was much younger and every time I turned around he needed something—new clothes because he was growing, medicine because he got an ear infection, food because he was human and had to eat—I needed all the money I could get.
It didn’t feel good taking Ryan’s money, but I consoled myself (poorly) by being his friend.
One of the only ones he had.
Sadly, this led to Denny meeting him, learning Ryan might work at Radio Shack but had many other skills, and Denny put him to work, spying on Colt and Feb. This meant he’d gotten Ryan to plant cameras everywhere—in Feb’s house, on Colt’s street—and Ryan had taught Denny how to do it, so Denny planted cameras in J&J’s.
Ryan then kept an eye on the feeds because Denny was paying him.
And because of me.
This meant it was me who got Ryan caught up with a serial killer, hauled in, questioned, and scared out of his mind.
I held guilt about this, obviously. In the end, I’d wanted to give Ryan a bunch of the money Lowe had left me to pay him back for all his kindness and then never see him again.
But Ryan had told me that would hurt worse than any of the other shit that befell him because he’d been unlucky enough to cross paths with me.
So I paid him back the way he wanted me to.
By continuing to be his friend.
This was not a hardship. He wasn’t real good at being social, but he was a good guy, he could be funny, and he’d always been a good friend.
Eventually, I got over what I did to him and the reminder he always was of what Denny did to both of us.
I did this because I cared about him a lot.
However, even with all that had happened, Ryan had not learned not to be stupid regardless of how smart he was.