Dirty Mechanic (Dirty Deeds #2)

Chapter 1 Annabelle

I f love were safe, I wouldn’t be coming home with a lie and a target on my back.

My suitcase scrapes the dirt road, wheels bouncing like a shrapnel echo.

I should’ve packed sneakers instead of stilettos and at least a shred of survival instinct.

The plastic suitcase thuds against my shin with a measured beat, matching the pounding in my chest. I’m hours late, and every minute that ticks by feels like a second chance slipping through my fingers.

I pick up my pace.

To a mechanic.

Not just any mechanic. Derek “grease-stained” Fields—king of engines, wrenches, and reckless wagers. Back when I thought glitter eyeliner was mysterious, he told me if we were both still single by Lords Valley’s centennial May Day, we’d get married.

We shook on the deal. Then we found other ways to seal it that night.

This year marks the ninety-ninth anniversary—one year shy of a century.

But guess what?

I’m single.

He’s single.

Why not?

I can almost hear wedding bells under the cherry blossoms. My new sister-in-law has nailed the timing this spring, and the ranch must look like a postcard. My brother and Emma are about to say, “I do,” and I picture Emma fussing over last-minute details, every petal and place setting.

I break into a brisk walk.

I’m five hundred feet away from freedom and three thousand miles away from a landlord from hell who installs hidden cameras in bathrooms. The universe might be a dumpster fire, but for once, she came through and gave me a backbone.

Not just for me. For Derek. For the man I’ve loved since I was old enough to understand what love meant. The same man I pushed away with every silent year I spent away.

I told everyone I left town for nursing school to become Lords Valley’s first nurse.

But after I got my degree, I never practiced.

Every exam room, blood stain, and broken bone brought me back to the night John Huntz kidnapped me and my brother.

When white coats made me suffocate, I stashed my diploma in a drawer and buried myself in baking.

Though pies couldn’t make me whole, flour and butter on my hands felt safer than patient charts.

Yet even as I buried myself in baking, the world back home never stopped turning.

In two weeks, Lords Valley will flood with banners and beer tents for the May Day race.

I’m sure Derek’s entered again, as he has every year.

When I lived back home, he spent every dawn wrestling that burgundy ’67 Mustang Fastback into submission, tweaking its fuel maps and cornering springs so it hugs the turns like a thoroughbred.

I cross the last bridge, round the bend and close the last quarter-mile. My parents’ farm unfolds like a living photograph. River-washed breeze, tinged with hay and wildflowers, brushes my cheeks as petals drift through the air.

My throat goes dry and my fingers tingle at the wrought-iron gate.

God, I’ve missed this place.

But mostly, I missed him.

I hit the gate—W-shaped flourish and all—and push through with a grin. Derek’s probably pacing by now, boots clicking on the brick path, ready to throw down a wedding right after my brother and Emma’s vows. That would be so him: zero patience, all heart.

The thought makes butterflies riot in my stomach.

Except, I’m late. And they probably already said their vows.

If Derek saw me now, heels deep in soft grass, he’d laugh. Or maybe pull me into one of those rough, grounding hugs that smell like motor oil and home.

My phone buzzes. Derek’s name lights up the screen like a lifeline, until leaves rustle behind me. I freeze, and the call goes to voicemail.

No.

“Going somewhere, Belle?” His voice is an icicle down my spine. The taste of copper builds on my tongue.

My legs lock and my gut hammers to run.

I turn slowly, like I’m stuck in some nightmare, and if I move too fast, it’ll make the monster real.

But the nightmare is real, and the monster’s alive.

Mike Bishop, my former landlord from hell, steps from behind a weeping willow, all smirk, swagger, and venom dressed up in expensive cologne. His eyes gleam with cruelty.

My stomach twists in on itself.

“Mike,” I swallow, a worthless sound.

He crosses the last yard in two strides. “I knew you’d try to slip away.” He reaches out and drags my suitcase free.

“Give it back.” I lunge.

He sidesteps, amused, his glare dipped in gasoline. “We’re going back to San Francisco.”

“No.” My voice cracks. “My lease is up. I’m going home.”

His laugher echoes as he opens up his coat and removes my black journal from within.

“How did you get that?” I snatch it.

He smirks. “You think I didn't see you writing in it? Cameras in your apartment catch everything, and I kno-o-o-w what you did…” His tone drips with taunt before snapping deadly serious, intimate in the worst possible way.

The world tilts, and I sway.

“You’re lying,” I whisper, but even I don’t believe it.

“Am I?” He yanks it back and swings open his coat on the other side. My revolver is nestled against his hip.

“You left this too. Tss, tss, tss…sloppy, Belle,” he sneers. “My brother Rick says you owe us both, but I’m just the lucky bastard who gets to collect first.”

I stop breathing because I know I hid the gun in my parent’s house.

“Wha…what were you doing in my parents’ attic?” My voice barely carries.

“Collecting proof.” He removes the gun from behind his belt. “It’s the piece you used to kill my father, right?”

I stumble backward. “Your—” My throat tightens. “Your father?”

The gunshot from over a year and a half ago still echoes in my ears and vibrates in my bones.

I feel the handpiece in my palm and smell the metallic burn in the air like it happened moments ago.

I pulled the trigger to save Emma and my sister Misty from John Huntz.

And some nights, when the world’s too quiet, I can still feel Derek’s hand on mine, steadying the aim.

“John Michael Huntz.” His smirk hardens. “The bastard never claimed his kids, but at least kept the money coming until your brother shut it off.”

Eric was paying off Huntz until the son of a bitch kidnapped my half-sister and tried to kill my brother’s fiancée. They almost died that day on the bridge.

He unslings the revolver like a barista grabbing an espresso. The cylinder spins into place with a hollow click, cold metal sliding over cold metal, so deliberate it echoes in my skull.

I backpedal into a gnarled stump. My heel drags against rough bark, the rasping scrape tearing at my sole like sandpaper on skin.

“Huntz knocked up my mother in Mexico and bailed. And since you shot him, you’re gonna fix what he failed to do.”

Acrid smoke curls around us, sharp and metallic, searing my throat with every breath. I taste ash on my tongue and feel it cling to the back of my throat. I whip around.

My parents’ house—our family home—is on fire.

“No—” My voice cracks.

The flames reach the gutters, orange tongues licking the roof, the blaze engulfing the house and my roots in black smoke.

He jams the gun into my ribs and shoves me toward the tucked car in the bushes.

“We’ve got an appointment at City Hall.” He eases the passenger door open like we’re going on some twisted date.

“City Hall?” I swallow smoke.

His hand clamps down on my arm. “You owe me, Belle. You’re going to pay off my father’s debt.”

What debt?

What debt?

My phone buzzes again. I know it’s Derek, but Mike snatches it before I can even think.

“No distractions.” He slides it into his pocket like he owns me. “You’re mine now.”

Instant regret flares in my chest. Derek’s been trying to reach me for months, and I never answered.

I can still hear his voice in those messages, pleading, angry, begging me to come home.

But I was too ashamed. Too scared he’d hate me for cutting him off while I tried to figure out my life.

In his last voicemail, he said he’d wait for me at my brother’s wedding.

And that’s when I realized: without Derek, I might as well not be alive.

My stomach flips, and my brain scrambles for an exit that doesn’t exist. Mike brushes my bangs aside like he has any right to touch me. His fingers graze my forehead with a mocking tenderness that curdles my stomach.

“You’re my golden ticket, Belle. Huntz never filed papers for my mother and never got us citizenship. Since you killed him... You owe me.” His voice is a low rasp in the space between us. “You’re going to be my wife.”

He leans in even closer. “You’re gonna get me a green card.”

“I will never?—”

“It’s either that or prison.” He flings my journal onto the dash like a royal flush in a game of poker I never agreed to play. “Pick your poison. And let’s be honest, orange is not your color.”

The bile rises so fast up my throat, I taste acid. The car lurches forward, the engine roaring like it knows it’s carrying me straight to hell.

I twist in my seat for one last look.

My childhood home collapses in on itself, flames devouring the last fragile pieces of who I used to be as friends and family rush toward the fire. Everything inside me breaks.

Mike floors the gas, and just like that, I’m gone.

Two days later, I’m on the other side of the country, on the outskirts of San Francisco, drifting through a gloomy courthouse. My heels echo like a death knell and my black dress is funeral linen cinched too tight. This isn’t a wedding. It’s my burial.

The bouquet he shoved into my hand wilts with poetic timing, petals bruised and curling. Thorns bite into my palms, but the pain is dull and distant.

Mike prowls beside me.

“Pick up the pace,” he elbows my ribs right where the bruises are blooming and raw, from his “accidental” shove into the door frame last night.

I keep my shoulders squared. Surviving is more important than flinching.

The officiant stands at a plain podium in a gray suit, with clipboard in his hands, and no soul.

I could scream. Run. Beg.

But I already tried that. And got shoved into a door frame.