Chapter

11

“Don’t even think it, Charms,” Brodie said after Danny left with yet another stern warning to stay out of the investigation, along with a slice of Cindy Mae’s cherry pie, charged to our bill. “I mean it,” Brodie said to me. “Do not.”

“What?” I asked with complete, albeit affected innocence, the sort of innocence that won golden statues of undressed men. Too bad the academy would never know of my brilliant performance.

“Boone is not the kind of guy you mess around with.” Brodie hesitated before adding, “You know that as well as I do.”

I did. The day of my sixteenth birthday was my first date with an older guy named Boone who hung around our high school, though he’d dropped out the year before. He wore black and sneered at everyone and everything. At the time, I’d equated this with the soul of a poet.

A big mistake, like drinking anything but Lucky.

Our “date” turned out to be an attempted rape in the back of his pickup truck off the side road teenagers probably still used for parking. Had Brodie Gett not stepped in when he did, surely the attempted part of the equation would’ve changed to outright rape. Brodie had pulled Boone off me, punching him until Boone lost consciousness. He then held me until my tears dried, and rage took over. I added a few bruises to Boone’s ribs with the heel of my boot.

After that, we’d left Boone slumped over the back of his truck. Brodie gave me a sweatshirt with University of Miami emblazoned over the chest to cover up my tattered dress so Jack, if he was up, wouldn’t see the damage. Nothing could’ve stopped him from outright murder if he learned of the assault.

His own date long gone, Brodie kindly drove me home, lecturing me on the evils of all guys. Besides himself, of course. For the barest of seconds, I thought for sure he’d try and kiss me. But he didn’t, leaving me oddly disappointed.

The next day we never spoke of it again.

We went back to our old ways, him pissing me off to no end with pranks and taunts and me doing my best to ignore his childish antics.

Somewhere I still had that sweatshirt.

According to gossip I’d heard since my return, Boone Daniels hadn’t aged gracefully, and was now even more of a scumbag than before. He lived in the trailer park on what, in a town as small and generally poor as ours, was deemed the wrong side of the tracks.

It was swampland for one thing. Gators roamed as if they owned it, much like Gator Alley. I shivered remembering the beady-eyed creature lying in wait below me from Mary’s patio.

According to that same gossip, Boone made his living dealing drugs to high schoolers, selling illegal guns to rednecks with poor impulse control (not that Florida law looked down on such actions), and generally making life hell for the good people stuck living check to check in the trailer park.

Danny had reportedly arrested him a time or two, but nothing more than a six-month jail stint stuck.

Boone was bad, bad news.

And I planned on confronting him about a murder.

But Boone had made the anonymous call to the sheriff. I was somehow sure of it. The question was, why? Boone wasn’t the good neighbor type. The only way he’d have made such a call to law enforcement was if there was something in it for him.

I had to find out what.

With or without Brodie Gett’s help.

By the way Brodie watched me, I suspected I just might be going it alone. Fear tingled along my nerves, but my spine and resolved stiffened. Jack’s life was at stake. Like grandfather like granddaughter.

I would kill or be killed for one reason and one only—Jack Lucky.

The humor of such a dire sentiment eased some of the tension in my body. Boone wouldn’t kill me.

I was eighty-five percent sure of it.

Ninety if one factored in the bottle of Lucky I planned to offer him.

“Damn it, Charms.” Brodie crossed his arms over his chest. “If you get me shot I’m going to be real pissed.”

I laughed and immediately sobered when Brodie didn’t join in. “Oh, don’t be such a drama queen.” I motioned to the swamp beyond the greasy window of the diner. “You’re far more likely to get eaten by a gator.”

Oddly enough, I wasn’t wrong about the gator. The next morning Brodie picked me up in his Jeep and we drove the short distance to the Wrong Side of the Tracks Trailer & RV Park. Like I said, Gett wasn’t all that imaginative when it came to names.

The trailer park hadn’t changed much since I’d left. A dilapidated sign in the front as old as Jack announced, Don’t Feed the Gators.

Or rather it once had.

Someone had changed the feed to another f-word. Seeing as I had my own graffiti past, I forgave the vandal for their lack of creativity.

Rows and rows of run-down trailers sat on three-foot stilts. A few of the renters had tried to liven up their space, planting yellow and pink flowers in foot-long patches of dirt. Rather than pretty up the place, the flowers made it look sadder somehow.

Kids on Salvation Army–purchased bikes, spokes missing from the wheels, rode hell bent around the swampland. A lone dirt pile had turned into a playground for the youths, bikes flying through the air with little regard for their safety.

There was a lesson in there somewhere, but I ignored the knowing glint in Brodie’s eyes.

Once we pulled into the parking area—or rather, dirt patch—in front of Boone’s trailer, Brodie jumped down from the driver’s seat of his Jeep. Boone lived in a derelict trailer that had seen better days, at least a decade ago. The windows, or what used to be windows, were blacked out. And the door hung on one single hinge.

As Brodie landed on the muddy ground next to his Jeep, a brown muscular gator launched itself up on tiny but fast legs, dashing from the nearby mangroves and into the murkier waters a few feet away. The bright morning sunlight sparkled on its wet flesh like diamonds.

Brodie, to his credit, didn’t scream like I would have. Instead he leapt up, at least three feet into the air, before diving back into the Jeep. His head landed in my lap in the passenger seat, breath hot on my bare thighs. I was immensely glad I’d opted for shorts rather than a sundress for today’s adventure. “Son-of-a—” he yelped.

Seconds later, a round of buckshot peppered the Jeep, hitting the roll bar just above our heads. Flecks of black paint rained down as the air filled with the harsh scent of gun powder. A scent a small-town girl never forgot.

“Get down,” Brodie ordered, scrambling to keep low while opening his glovebox. The cold, black steel of a gun glimmered in the light. But Brodie never pulled it free. He never had a chance. The crack of another shell of buckshot loaded into a shotgun stalled his hand.

From my scrunched position in the seat I couldn’t see the shotgun or the person holding it. But the sound alone sent a rush of adrenaline spiking through my body. So much so I shivered in the heat of the day.

“Stay here and low,” Brodie said as he slid out of the Jeep once again. He kept his hands in the air. The edge of his t-shirt rose, flashing tight abs. “Boone, you and I ain’t got beef,” he said, his language going good ole boy before my ears. The twang sounded as natural as birth, and yet, it was far from it. “I ain’t the law.” He motioned to the Jeep where I sat scrunched down. “Charms and I got questions. You don’t wanna answer, fine. But we’re gonna ask ’em.”

“Lucky’s here with you?” the ravaged voice of a two-pack-a-day smoker asked.

Brodie lowered his hands. “She is. Why don’t you go put on some pants and we’ll talk.”

“Hell, Gett. You tear into my lot at nine in the morning …” He growled. “You lucky I’m hungover and can’t see straight else I would’ve blow your fool head off.”

With those words hanging in the humid air, Boone Daniels, the currently naked scourge of Gett, turned around and marched back into his rusted trailer, pausing momentarily to scratch his hairy butt. Unlucky for me, I chose that exact moment to pop my head up. The vision will and would always be seared into my brain, blotting out the nice image of Brodie’s six-pack.

“Hell, Charms,” Brodie said with a genuine laugh seconds later. “That went better than I expected.” He patted his body, dressed in a faded gray t-shirt and worn Levis. “Not a bullet hole to speak of.”

I laughed, relief making my voice weak. “We never did discuss who’d be doing the shooting. So you’d better keep on my good side, Grodie Brodie.”

“Good to know you have one, Charms.” His wicked smirk taunted. “I’ll be sure and keep a look out for it.”