Rocky Start

CHAPTER 10

A fter all the trail food and the game Maggs had caught, the thought and smell of lasagna were enticing. But I was ignoring my warning system, which is never a good thing. If my warning system was akin to a Geiger counter, then the town of Rocky Start, especially this kitchen, was equivalent to the Nevada Test Site, to the west of Area 51, which looks like the dark side of the moon after hundreds of nuclear blasts both on the surface and underground. Don’t ask me how I know firsthand what that forsaken place, or Area 51, looks like; I’d have to kill you. And I’m too damn tired to kill you.

I was not ignoring the warnings I’d felt about the guy I’d confronted, the one Rose had called Junior, because she was right. There was something off about him; he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill bozo and the Mercedes screamed trouble. Rose still had a red mark on the side of her face where the guy had backhanded her, and I’d seen her sneak an aspirin, keeping the bottle away from Poppy’s sightline, probably so the kid wouldn’t worry. The guy was claiming to be family of this Ozzie, and that could be trouble, bigger trouble than the Weed Brothers and their boss, Pike, who was a hard case, and not just in words and demeanor. The customized grips and combat sights on the forty-five-caliber pistol in his truck meant it wasn’t there for show. He gave off the aura of a professional, which didn’t jive with small town Appalachia. Plus there were two funeral homes. A bit overkill, pun intended.

Nothing here added up, besides the smell of the lasagna.