Chapter 20 #2
I turn the wheel hard, pulling onto the side of the road.
I switch off the engine and step outside.
Unlike the front of Thompson Farms, there’s no barbed wire here.
Just a low chain-link fence separates me from Thrasher’s enterprise.
I shove my phone into my pocket and give the wire a tentative touch.
It’s not electrified, so I shove my toes into two gaps in the wire and clamber over.
The field stretches as far as I can see.
It’s been tilled, but nothing’s planted, as far as I can tell, so I shouldn’t run into anyone.
I probably won’t find anything, either, but Thompson Farms isn’t my priority right now. I need to deal with Cece’s brother.
I pace into the rows of turned earth, composing mental text after mental text, discarding each one in turn:
Fuck off cheater
Too inflammatory.
I’d prefer we didn’t catch up this weekend
Too polite.
I’m weighing the advantages of skipping town when a flash of orange catches my eye.
A girl in a fluorescent work vest is sitting in the next field over.
Her face is buried in her hands, and she’s clearly crying.
Unless this is some commonly held place for women to have a shit time in Pukekohe, she works for Thompson Farms.
I glance at Cece’s car, barely visible from where I am now.
I can go back and drive away, or I can try to talk to this distressed woman and find out why she’s upset.
I’m trespassing, but if I’m caught, I doubt that’ll get me anything worse than a fine.
It’s a kiwifruit farm, not the fucking Oval Office.
I feel creepy, approaching a crying woman, but at least I’m a woman, too.
I doubt she’ll think I’m trying to take advantage.
I pull out my phone, delete Tristan’s text, open voice notes and hit record before sliding it back into my right pocket. As I do, my fingers brush my knuckledusters. I want to slip them on in case one of my ex-classmates shows up, and I have to punch them dead in the groin. Or just decide to.
But there’s no way to approach a lone woman wearing a neon purple fist weapon and not come off as a complete screwball.
Instead, I pull out my vape and walk toward the girl, drifting right so she’ll see me coming if she looks up.
When I’m less than thirty meters away, she does, revealing she is, in fact, crying her eyes out.
“Hey,” I say loudly. “I think I’m lost. Do you know how to get back to the main road from here?”
The girl blinks like she’s trying to work out if I’m real. “You work here?”
Whoever she is, she’s young. Twenty-one, if she’s a day. She’s also very pretty, with long dark hair and huge velvet-brown eyes. A chill runs down my spine. I bring my vape to my mouth and suck for Australia.
“I don’t work here,” I say on the exhale. “I got lost on a hike. Do you work here?”
“Yes.” She eyes my vape with a look I know all too well.
I hold it out to her. “Want some?”
She gets to her feet, and I’m sure she’s going to book it, but she moves toward me, a small smile on her face. “Not allowed.”
“It’s all good. I won’t tell anyone.” I close the gap between us and hand her the vape.
She takes a deep pull, smoke blasting from her nostrils like a pro, then shakes her head. “I, uh, might get in trouble. If someone sees.” She takes another drag.
“Is Thrasher a cunt about vapes?” I ask, cold still seeping into my bones.
The girl laughs. “Daniel? Yes. You, uh, know Daniel?”
I grin at her, shoving my shaking hands into my pockets. “We went to school together. How do you know him?”
She shifts away from me, glancing over my shoulder toward the gravel road. “You, uh, walked from there?”
“Yeah.”
The girl takes another long draw on my vape, her eyes moving from me to the road, and then behind her. I’d bet any amount of money that’s where Thrasher is.
“Grace,” she says, tipping the vape to her chest.
“Ada. Ada Renaldo.”
Grace extends the vape to me, and I inhale, then give it straight back, eager to maintain the tie between us.
I know nicotine sucks and vapes are the devil, but my gratitude for them right now is greater than my love for mezcal-based liquor.
Grace takes another puff, and I’m all too aware of time ticking away. If she’s gone missing on a shift, there’s every chance someone will come looking for her. Fuck it. I’ll punt.
“Is everything okay with you?” I ask. “You look like you’ve been crying?”
Grace rolls her eyes, and it strikes me again how young she is. I think back to the Facebook posts I saw of the Thompson Farm parties showing girls around Grace’s age holding cigarettes and cans of KGB. My tongue goes sour, and I swallow.
Grace must think I’m twitchy for the vape because she hands it back. “I’m so sorry.”
She says it effortlessly, with barely a trace of her accent. Like she’s said it many, many times before. Another chill goes down my spine.
“You’re fine,” I say, taking a quick suck before boomeranging the vape back to her. “Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head. “Alone.”
“You mean, your family?”
“Boyfriend. Dumped me.”
“Shit.”
She nods, a ribbon of white smoke coiling around her face, then her thick lashes lower. “Daniel.”
The earth seems to tilt beneath me. “Thrasher, I mean, Daniel, was your boyfriend?”
She nods, and I see Thrasher, grinning at me across the table at Stabbies, offering me coke and trying his best to fuck me.
I want to smash a glass into his face. I found those creepy party photos.
I knew this was a possibility. But suspecting someone’s a gross pervert and having it confirmed firsthand hits like a truck. That lowlife, dirty fucking—
“Don’t tell, I said about Daniel,” Grace says quickly. “Please?”
“I won’t. Not at all.”
She smiles, and my heart constricts. Not only am I lying, I’m lying and recording this conversation.
But I haven’t done anything with it yet, and I might not have to. I jerk my head in the direction she was looking before. “Thrasher’s a fuckhead.”
Grace laughs, her hand instantly rising to suppress the sound. “Yes.”
“And he dumped you?”
Grace nods. “Dumped me. Took my car away.”
“He gave you a car and took it away when he dumped you?”
She nods, then shakes her head. “His, uh, friend takes the car.”
“His friend? Who’s his friend?”
“Blond. Tall. Takes the car for Thrasher. That’s, uh, how I know, uh, about dumped?” She looks at me, as though willing me to understand.
I think back to my conversation with Thrasher, the people he said worked for him. Colin Wintergreen isn’t blond, neither is Xavier McColl…
The connection comes like an avalanche. If Thrasher gave Grace a car, it might have been a work car. And the person who sells Thrasher work cars, whose sister is married to his brother and who is also blond, would be—
“Will Sharpe?”
Recognition lights up in her eyes. “Yes. Him.”
Fuck. Christ and the cross he fucking died on. I nod, praying Autism will keep my face normal. “He gave you the car? From Thrasher?”
She nods. “Then he takes it away even though…”
Her mouth tilts, but it’s not a smile. It’s a look I know from Cece, from the mirror after a bad hook-up, from every woman I’ve ever befriended. The embarrassed grimace of a woman who did something with the wrong guy for the wrong reasons.
I raise a hand, do the jerk-off motion. “You mean, something like that?”
Grace bursts out laughing, then claps a hand to her lips again and looks away.
Vomit burns the back of my throat. I pretend to look over the hills as I try not to projectile.
I’m pretty sure Grace is saying she hooked up with Thrasher and Will, under, at the very least, extremely dicey circumstances.
But I can’t let disgust blindside me. There are too many important questions I need to ask.
“Grace,” I say as calmly as I can. “How long have you lived in New Zealand?”
Her eyes dart around like a rabbit that’s about to scarper.
“It’s okay, I’m not going to talk to Thrasher or Will.”
She doesn’t answer, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to run. Finally, she lifts four fingers.
“Four years?” I ask. “And you’ve worked here the whole time?”
She nods.
“Yes to four years and working here the whole time?” I say for the sake of the phone in my pocket, feeling like scum the whole while.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Four. For both.”
I hesitate before I ask my next question.
I’m definitely pushing my luck. Not to mention, no stranger who got lost on a hike should be this interested in the minutiae of a farm employee’s life.
But as I look into Grace’s wide brown eyes, I suspect she knows I’m not a disinterested stranger.
Suspects, and hasn’t ditched me, because she wants to tell someone what’s happened to her. And maybe no one’s ever asked.
“I’m thirty-two,” I say, jerking a thumb at myself. “Thrasher and I went to school together. He’s thirty-two as well, right?”
She nods, her hand back over her mouth, but she understands what I’m saying, I’d bet my life on it. I lick my lips and force myself to say it. “How… how old are you?”
Grace’s shoulders draw into her chest, but she doesn’t move.
“Are you twenty-five?” I ask, my pulse hammering in my ears.
She shakes her head.
“Older?”
She shakes her head again. I want to throw up so bad it stings.
“What year were you born?”
She looks up, her cheeks bright red, her lips quivering.
“It’s okay. Whatever the answer is, it’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong. I just want to know.”
Grace holds the vape out to me. “I, uh, need to go.”
My stomach drops. “Sure. Keep the vape, though. Fuck Thrasher.”
With a miserable little smile, she slips my ElfBar into her pocket. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
She starts to walk away, and I stand there, telling myself she’s fine. It’s all a big misunderstanding, and I shouldn’t come back here with a gun I don’t own because—
“Ada?”
My pulse jumps so hard I feel it in my teeth. “Yes?”
“Nineteen,” she says, her gaze on her feet. “Now.”