Frisco

1. Kali

1

KALI

W hen two bikers started trading punches in the middle of the soup aisle, and my first thought was Why couldn’t they have picked the bakery section? , the universe was telling me something.

What was it telling me? That my life was sad. But newsflash, universe: I already knew that. I’ve known that since I came out of my mom’s vagina in the alley behind Grumps and Hoes. That was their witty name for a hardware store.

“Kal.” Otis was huffing as he ran up behind me, and even though I didn’t look, I knew he was pulling up his pants. They liked to sag down, a lot.

Otis was the manager of Friendly’s Grocery Mart. He always meant well, but Otis didn’t much like to manage. He came in, said hello to whoever was in his path, did a walk through the store, and then checked in with me. I didn’t have the official title, but I was the actual manager. I handled the scheduling, the inventory, and making sure everything ran smoothly. This wasn’t a position I’d volunteered for, but my second day back, the assistant manager took a smoke break and never returned. Maybe it was my age (I’m thirty-six), or maybe it was because Otis was flustered and came to me , asking me what was needed for the second shift.

My second day back.

Otis and I had history, but not that kind of history.

We’d both worked here in high school. I moved away, got married, never had kids, and I was back since my divorce was seriously fresh. Otis was the opposite. He never did anything. He stayed, and he just kept getting promoted. He’d made it about four positions to the general manager now. Friendly’s Grocery Mart was locally owned, but the owner spent most of his time hunting or drinking beer and talking about hunting. I could attest to this because he was at Bert’s Pub every night, drinking beer and—you guessed it—talking about the mystical buck all the local hunters liked to discuss.

But since the day I’d returned, everyone took note of my ability to have some idea of what was going on. And like an idiot, I couldn’t handle seeing a store falling into chaos. I’d run the store when I was in high school and college. So it was like pulling on an old pair of tennis shoes. There might’ve been mold, and holes where toes were supposed to go, but they still fit. Unfortunately.

“What are you going to do?” Otis panted as he asked.

“Kali, you want me to call the police?” asked Ben, our bagger who was only supposed to work part-time.

He ended up being here most of the time because Otis was an asshole and called him nearly every day, asking if he could pick up some extra hours. The schedule was handled. I did it, and the point of me not scheduling Ben every day was so that the actual bagger scheduled to work today would have to, you know, do his job. But unlike Ben, who was a hard-working high schooler who probably should’ve been given more breaks in life than he was going to get, the actual bagger wasn’t so great at his job… I didn’t know why he kept it.

I gave him a look, finding him on the edge of the gathering crowd. Noah Berrman, high school jock. The girls liked to come in and whisper, giggle, flirt when he was scheduled (which is probably why Otis hadn’t fired him), but Noah didn’t work. When a cute girl was in line, suddenly he was great at pretending to bag groceries, but he excelled more at standing, talking, winking, flirting, being the cool guy. Right now, though, he wasn’t looking too cool. He was as captivated as everyone else.

Seeing Mrs. Johnson gaping and Viola Prinnesly looking faint, I sighed. It was time to wade in.

“No,” I said to Ben. “Go back to work. Noah.”

He looked at me.

I motioned toward the registers. “Get back to work. Everyone, go back to shopping.”

“Don’t you stop this. This is better than Jeopardy .” Viola shook her wrinkled finger at me, but she wasn’t looking my way. She was busy drinking in all the biker goodness.

I had to admit, I understood. Muscles. There were muscles everywhere.

“Kal, you sure?” Otis breathed behind me.

I suppressed a shiver and a roll of nausea. “Yes, Otis. If Mike comes in, send him back out. These guys are Red Demons. You do not want to call the cops on them. Trust me.”

I heard the hitch in his breath and decided I didn’t want to know if it was from fear or excitement.

Most of the patrons had gone back to shopping, though Viola and Mrs. Johnson were doubling down. Mrs. Johnson had sat down on her walker. Viola leaned against the side of it, her cane resting beside her .

The two guys were trading punches, using cans of soup as weapons.

I liked soup. The soup didn’t deserve this treatment.

I didn’t know these particular two, but I knew the Red Demons. They were relatively new, but they’d been expanding fast, and normal folk like myself wouldn’t usually know this about them. I did because my brother had been friends with the Red Demons’ current VP, or at least the rumor was that Shane King was their VP.

They didn’t have a charter here, but they’d rolled into town a week ago. They’d been spending most of their time at Ruby’s Dexterity, a bar where the rougher folks around here could be found. Bert’s was where the tourists and not-rough crowd hung out. But if you wanted to hire a hitman, go to Ruby’s. I mean, that was the joke around Friendly, Indiana, but people said it for a reason. Because it was true.

Anyway, I still had two bikers and about five hundred dollars in damage to handle, so I waded in.

“Guys!” I shouted, my hands up.

One growled, holding the other up against the shelves.

Sidenote: I was impressed those shelves stayed. I needed to check who the manufacturer was. Good shelving was key.

“You little fuck,” the guy growled. “You don’t think I know, but I know.” He punched the other one.

The other one looked remorseful, and for a moment, I thought maybe the fight was done. He was just going to take his beating.

But then his face twisted. Fury lit him up.

Nope. The fight would continue.

“It wasn’t like that, Corvette!” he snarled, twisting and somehow slipping from the guy’s hold.

He whirled and came at him with a leap and a punch. Corvette was winded, and he fell to his knees from that one. Then with a snarl, he was up, and they were back to shoving each other around.

Not good.

They hit the one section of cans that had been left alone.

Thirty cans fell to the floor.

Lovely.

I was watching three roll past me when I heard a yelp.

A curse.

A shout.

I turned—both bikers were on the ground, and from the scattered cans, it looked like soup had won the fight. Good!

Corvette put a hand to his chest and the other to his face. Seemed he was clueing in to the fact that his face was basically all blood. The other one didn’t look any better.

He cursed and locked in on the second guy. He was winding up another hit or at the very least, a tackle.

I stepped in. “No, you don’t!”

I was too late.

He grabbed a can and prepared to hit the other guy smack in the face.

I stepped in again. “I said, no!” I kicked the can out of his hand. (I could do that. Eight years of soccer—high school and college. Thank you very much.) It was my turn to be a bit dramatic.

I knelt down on both of them. Literally. Knelt down. My knees and hands on their chests, I was thankful I’d worn pants instead of shorts to work today. I glared at them. “I don’t give a fuck how big your motorcycle is. You hit each other one more time, you’re going to regret it.”

Corvette grunted, but he didn’t smart back.

The other one grumbled, “Yeah? You gonna call the cops?”

“Worse. I’ll get you banned from Ruby’s. I’m aware how much you guys like that bar.”

Corvette hissed, touching his face. “How you going to do that?”

“She’s my mama.”

That got their attention, and I knew it was coming.

“You’re Gloves’ little sister?” Corvette asked.

“I’m Gloves’ older sister, by a year.”

I had to add that last part because I was already feeling down. Didn’t need to bring my age into this.

That changed everything, which I’d known it would.

The Red Demons had history with my brother.

“This your store?” Corvette asked, starting to sit up.

I stood so he could finish.

The other sat up, leaned against the shelves, and cursed, probably starting to register the pain that the adrenaline had been keeping at bay. Corvette tried to move, but his hand slipped on some blood and he winced.

I caught his arm, steadying him and helping him sit back.

I realized the blood had a milky texture to it. Some of the soup had opened.

So awesome.

I cleared my throat. “I work here, yeah.”

Both were squinting at me. Or they were trying. Each had one eye completely swollen shut.

I sighed, figuring I should get this over with. “You got two choices. Give me your phone and let me call your club to come get you, or I gotta call the ambulance. If I do that… This is a small town. I’m positive the cops already know, but I had our manager head ’em off from coming in here. It’ll be a different story if the paramedics make a call.”

The second one grumbled, tipping his head back and pinching his nose.

Corvette just handed me his phone. “Press three.”

I did, after wiping it clean of blood, and heard, “Ghost here.”

Ghost . The biker name for Shane King, the one that I actually did know.

“I’m calling from the Friendly Grocery Mart. You’ve got two members here who need assistance—medical assistance.”

“What?”

Gah. His voice was a low baritone, and raspy in a way that hit my vagina, in the right way.

I handed that phone off asap because I did not need to be reacting that way to just a ‘what’ from him. Nope. No how. I had enough drama to handle right now as is.

Corvette took the phone, and as he continued the conversation, I stepped over toward the remaining crowd. Viola and Mrs. Johnson leaned to the right so they could see around me. Noah was also still there, which had me ready to grab a can of soup myself.

“Are you serious?”

He jolted, his eyes wide. “What?”

“Work. Do something!”

Yep. My control had snapped. I was blaming Otis and not Ghost’s very fine voice.

“You come in here every day and do nothing. Ben does everything. If you don’t get your ass working, you’re fired.”

His eyes narrowed. “Right. Like you could do that.”

I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “I’m thirty-six and just divorced from a truly authentic piece of shit. I can walk, and my life will be better. This is my low, so when I go to Otis and tell him it’s you or me, who do you think he’s going to keep?”

His eyes went back to being big. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Get this aisle cleaned, and you’ve got ten minutes to do it.”

With that, I went to update Otis.

He was more than open to staying in his office and hiding for another thirty minutes, and Red Demons who? No Red Demons had been in his store.

I hit call on my phone.

He answered right away. “Daughter! How’s it going? Tell me something funny that happened to you today.”

I told him about the soup cans. And about Viola and Mrs. Johnson.

My dad laughed so hard he had to hang up. “Excuse me, my daughter and love of my life, but I went and almost had an accident. You got me laughing so hard.”