She had gone into tour guide mode on the way back to my car. This is this, and that is that. Here’s where I drank beers with my friends. Here’s my high school. Here’s Bobby Droner’s place. He went to Iraq and didn’t come back, etc., etc.

I listened carefully for an IT guy, a kid going to college, a computer engineer, a thief who’d found a way into the liquor store safe, a teenager who spent too many hours in front of video games. Names flew by me, and I caught what I could. But none of them was my hacker.

The only thing that kept me nodding was the knowledge that there would be an end to all this. When we entered a desolate square of empty storefronts and a post office, my phone buzzed.

Note to self: The dead zone is live when the wind blows from the south.

That explained the diamond earrings and how she knew which door of her father’s old factory to open but little else.

She had her wrist on the top of the wheel, hair blowing across her face. I hadn’t fucked her, but man oh man, given the right time and place, a better situation? If my life wasn’t in a spray of broken pieces at my feet?

I had more to say, but the signal dropped and our messages self-destructed, as they were programmed to do.

“Good news from home?” Harper asked at a light there was no point in stopping for.

“Yeah. Hey, where’s the nearest hardware store?”

“We just passed it.”

I felt for the little red rock in my pocket. “Do they sell spray paint?”

“Yeah. Why?”

I held out the pebble. “I wonder if they’d tell me who bought this color recently.”

Her reaction was the reason for the question. Would she look trapped? Would she confess she knew who it was? But as she turned the corner to the hotel, and before I could observe her expression, I saw my car. The conversation about who in town bought and sold spray paint became a big fat fucking joke. My rental car was covered in a red compliment.

“Fuck!” I got out and headed for it. The trunk was open slightly, as if the vandal hadn’t snapped it closed all the way. Probably broke the lock. This was going to cost a fortune. Big damn inconvenience. I might as well just buy them a new fucking car. I didn’t even like Cadillacs.

I noted the similarities in color and that whoever had coded the roof couldn’t be the same guy who’d insulted the make of my rental. Besides the obvious subtlety of the roof message and the blunt ignorance of what was on the car, the E on the roof had been done with careful, straight lines. The E in NICE looked like a backward three.

“Wow.” Harper had her hands stuffed in her pockets. “This kind of thing never happens.”

I opened the trunk.

“Bullshit.”

My bags were intact, though shuffled around from the drive. I looked beneath and between them, in the corners and under the carpet.

“Damnit.”

My laptop was gone. I slammed the trunk closed and it popped open a few inches, as it was when I’d found it.

“Fuck you too.” I cursed at the trunk but it didn’t seem insulted.

I muttered obscenities, getting into the driver seat, door open, one foot still on the pavement as I put the key in the ignition and turned. Nothing happened. Not even a whrr whrr. Not even a click.

Harper got in front of the car and wedged her fingers in the hood. “Can you pop this?”

“You are a cliché of a cliché,” I said.

“What?”

Fuck it. I wasn’t explaining the word cliché or how the small-town girl who knew her way around a car was so unlikely it was obvious.

I popped the hood and joined her at the front grille.

“Well, doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see your battery is gone.” She slapped the hood down before I could get a better look. “My friend Orrin owns a garage. He’ll give it a tow. Until then—”

“You knew the code for the gate the whole time.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You grab me the minute I get into town and send me to a hotel you know damn well is closed. Then you follow me, all surprised, and take me to the fucking factory. And who suggested the roof? You. I was ready to go and then, ‘Oh, try the roof,’ because you might miss the big, fat fucking message.”

I stepped toward her, and she stepped back. I didn’t want to be threatening, but let’s face it, I did.

“You knew the code to the lock, didn’t you? If I couldn’t pick it, you knew it.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You know exactly who he is.”

“Who?”

The innocent act was cute. Real cute. Once I got to the bottom of this, I was going to fuck the cute right off her.

“Just take me to him, Ms. Barrington.”

Her big, multicolored eyes got even bigger, and that crease in her fucking lip got deeper when her mouth opened in surprise. She recovered so quickly I doubted I’d seen it at all.

“I go by Watson.”

“Since when?” I glanced at her finger. No ring.

She put her hand in her pocket. “You know my name. So?”

“Explains the earrings. Your father owned this town.”

“And?” Her back was against the car, and I was six inches from her. “I don’t own anything. The state owns the property for back taxes. And these were my mother’s earrings. Sorry if I’m not allowed to have them.”

“Take me to him.” I was up in her face because fuck her explanations.

“I don’t know any guy.”

“Fuck you don’t.”

A car pulled up. I didn’t look at it. In my world, cars passed all the time. I didn’t look away from her defiant face or her chest heaving under the plaid jacket.

“I told you,” she said.

“You lied.”

“I did not—”

The wind went out of me. The world got swept into a whirl of color. Pain flashed through my back. A dog barked and growled.

When my vision cleared, I recognized his face. The guy from the truck outside the grocery store. He smelled of cigarettes and wintergreen gum. He pushed me up against the Caddy by my throat so hard that my back was arched against it and the only parts of my feet touching the ground were my toes.

“Orrin.” Harper’s voice came from my right, about five miles away. “He’s all right.”

“I don’t like the way he was talking to you.”

“Yeah, well.” Her hand curved around his bicep. “He’s from California.”

“Aw, shit.” He dropped me like a wormy sack of flour. I fell to my knees, rocks sticking in my palms, humiliated. “Why’s he here?”

“Car broke down.”

“Huh. Well, I can take care of that.” He yanked me up by the collar until we were face-to-face. “I’m going to take your car to the shop. Give it a look. In the meantime, you are going to treat this lady like the queen she is. You understand?”

I breathed in the affirmative.

“Where’s he staying?” Orrin asked Harper.

“I’ll keep him at the house.”

“Aren’t you nice.”

“You know us. We take all comers.”

He got in my face. “I’m driving.”

“I can take an Uber.” This dipshit, backwoods, broken-down Deliverance shithole town without decent signal didn’t have Uber. I knew that. But even though I kept my mouth shut for a living, I couldn’t keep it shut in front of this guy.

He pushed me into his truck. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m Uber.”

The pressure on my chest disappeared when he let me go, and I found my footing. Adjusted my jacket. Despite all logic to the contrary, my pride was intact. My value was lodged firmly between my ears. I’d been beaten up by knuckleheads more times than I could count. And that was saying something.

“Now that you two are best friends,” Harper said, “let’s go. I’m getting hungry.”