Lindsay Buroker: Torrent

“We can find a way.”

“Says the man who stole the pepper shaker from Denny’s last night.”

Simon pointed at my nose. “That was a revenge theft, and you know it. They charged me for the onion ring upgrade, but I didn’t get onion rings.”

“A normal person would have simply pointed this out to the server.”

“If you don’t know I’m not normal by now, you haven’t been paying much attention over the last four years.”

I conceded this with a wriggle of my fingers, but said, “We can’t hire her, and this wouldn’t be a good time to expand the business anyway, what with the possibility of vengeful motorcycle riders coming after us.”

“What if we didn’t hire her? What if we made her a business partner? She could share profits.”

“You barely know her, and you want to share our meager profits? I know she’s pretty-”

“She’s gorgeous.” Simon sighed and gazed over my shoulder. Temi had opened her car door and sat with her legs crossed as she poked around on her phone.

“Yes, but that shouldn’t influence our business decisions.” I prodded him in the chest to reclaim his attention. “What if she were four feet tall, hunchbacked, and had breath like moose droppings?”

“If she drove a Jag, I’d still want to take her on. She obviously has some resources at her disposal. Maybe she’d finance the purchase of a new Dirt Viper.”

“If she’s desperate enough to want to work for us, I doubt she has funds left to finance anything, but I’m glad you don’t want to simply sleep with her-you’re planning ways to exploit her financially too.”

Simon’s shoulders drooped. “I… it’s not like that . I thought that practicality would appeal to you .”

“Uh huh. Listen, I have personal reasons for not taking her on.”

“Like what?”

“Like nothing I’m going into here.”

Skid Row’s Youth Gone Wild blasted from my pocket. It startled me, both because Simon had changed my ringtone without telling me-again-and because I’d been dreading a call. If those motorcycle riders on the hillside had written down my number and were using it…

“Are you going to answer it?” Simon asked.

“You think I should?”

“It could be a client.”

“It could be a psycho with a tool that can rip people’s heads off.” I glanced toward Temi, hoping she hadn’t heard that. She was politely ignoring our conversation, ostensibly at least.

“Here.” Simon held out his palm.

I dropped the phone into it without hesitation. My brave moments didn’t extend to talking to creeps on the phone.

“Rust and Relics, this is Simon,” he answered. “Yes. Yes. That’s right.”

“Who is it?” I mouthed.

“Let me give you to my assistant.” Simon gave me an arch look. “She’ll get your address and payment information.”

In other circumstances, I would have smacked him for calling me an assistant, but this time the tension flowed out of my body in a wave of release. A client. Clients were good.

Unless… What if it was the motorcycle people pretending to be a client?

Simon handed me the phone. I would rather have picked up a snake, but I lifted it gingerly to my ear.

“Hello?” I listened to the request and said, “Yes, we still have the antique coffee grinder. It’s in our warehouse in Phoenix.”

Simon rolled his eyes at the mention of a “warehouse.” What we had was a small, non-climate-controlled storage unit in South Tempe. We paid my old roommate Sarah to pack and ship items when we weren’t near town.

I entered the man’s credit card information into my payment-processing app. He lived in Maine and wanted the big hand-crank grinder to display in his family’s coffee shop. More importantly, he didn’t sound like someone harboring a barely-contained resentment for slashed tires.

As I ended the call and stuffed my phone back into my pocket, a roar from the highway drew my attention. Two black motorcycles came down the road. The riders wore black leather and black helmets, and one head turned in my direction as they passed. I couldn’t do anything more cogent than stare back. When they’d disappeared from sight, I glanced at Zelda, making sure the van wasn’t visible from the highway. Trees and leaves stood between it and the pavement, so I didn’t think the riders would have been able to see it, and they shouldn’t have been able to recognize me… I didn’t think. Unless more than coincidence had brought them to the same old mine shaft as us. What if they’d been following us since we arrived in town? What if-

A hand clamped onto my arm again. “That was them, wasn’t it?”

Before I could answer, Simon sprinted to the Jag. “You want to work with us?” he asked Temi. “We need a ride in something fast, right now.”

Temi shrugged and took out her keys.

“What?” I blurted. “We’re not going after them. What are you thinking?”

Simon had already hopped into the passenger seat. “They have my Dirt Viper!”

“Simon,” I called, running toward them, “it’s not worth getting hurt for.” Or killed. “We can write it off on our taxes and-”

“Go, go,” Simon barked to Temi. His urgency to get his metal detector back had made him forget his shyness.

Temi had started the car, though she looked back at me before putting it into gear. “Are you coming?”

I should have said no, but if the tech half of the business got himself killed, who would update the website? I climbed into the back seat, though not without a few choice insults for Simon’s stupid metal detector.

Like a prize thoroughbred, the car roared into motion. It startled a dog three campsites down, which roused every other dog in White Spar. A serenade of barks accompanied us to the exit. Temi didn’t pause at the stop sign; she merely tore out onto the highway, eliciting an irritated honk from a truck. It wouldn’t have hit us anyway, not at the speed Temi was going. From the back seat, I couldn’t tell if she was grinning, but I had a feeling she’d sped in this car before.

Simon pointed and shouted, “Pass those guys.”

Paying no attention to the solid double yellow line in the center of the road, Temi roared around three cars before veering back into our lane. I clutched the back of her seat, my fingers like talons. We were approaching town, and the speed limit had already dropped to thirty-five, but we were going seventy.

Was there some rule about not getting into a sports car with anyone crazier than oneself? If there wasn’t, there ought to be.

We passed four more cars before slowing for a light. I was half surprised she didn’t run it, but Simon was pointing again. Up ahead, beyond a few other cars, the two motorcycles had come into view. Metal detector thieves or not, they were obeying the speed limit.

I leaned forward between the seats. “What are you planning to do when we catch them?”

“I haven’t come up with a plan yet,” Simon admitted.

I groaned, flopped back into the seat, and pulled out my phone again.

“Who are you calling?” Simon asked.

“I’m texting Sarah.”

“About what?”

“Gonna relay that client’s shipping information to her,” I said. “If we get killed, I’d hate for some coffee shop owner in Maine to be forever wondering what happened to his order.”

Simon gave me his Coyote smirk. “Yeah, that’d be my biggest concern related to our deaths too.”

“Just… shut up and come up with your plan.”

Our high-speed chase ended with us sitting in front of Cuppers, the Jag parked between a dented Toyota with plastic duct-taped over a missing window and a Volkswagen bug even older than our van. Lots of tourists visited Prescott, and some people from Phoenix had second homes up there, but I felt conspicuous in the fancy car anyway. Of course, that could have to do with the way we had roared around the corner and into the parking space, causing the collective eyebrow raising of numerous people sitting at outdoor tables, sipping their lattes.