Chapter 6 Brady #2
Five miles on an unmaintained dirt road was way longer than five miles on a normal one.
I put the truck in reverse and backed out onto the road and took us back the way we came. I kept my eye on the left side of the road and kept my speed just above a crawl—I wouldn’t miss the turn to the Papadakises’ twice.
“Boring Brady strikes again,” Collins said quietly under her breath, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, all right. But I’m working. We’ve got a job to do.” Collins chuckled but nodded. “I do want to hear about the first Sweetwater Peak. I want to know more about this town, and you seem to know it all. Tell me something I might not know about Ms. Papadakis.”
Collins’s face went focused, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she thought. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Do you know how she got her money?” Collins asked, and I shook my head. “Her dad was one of the first people to invest in—get this—refrigerated trailers for semi-trucks in the sixties.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” she said. “That’s also why everyone in town loves her. Refrigeration for trucks was revolutionary in general, but obviously especially so for rural towns like this one. My dad drives for her company.”
Honestly, Ms. Papadakis scared the shit out of me. She was an intimidating old bird, but she wasn’t as scary as Boone Ryder.
Boone was an old, crotchety man who lived even higher on the peak than Ms. Papadakis.
He had his own little haven where he ran his own power and water—totally off the grid.
As far as I knew, he wasn’t like an apocalypse prepper or anything— he just preferred solitude.
He didn’t come down from there very often, but he just happened to on one of my very first days in town.
I had rented the shop and the apartment site unseen, and since the Cartwrights were the owners of the building, they were the first people I met.
But Boone was the second, because Clarke called him when I accidentally shattered the shop’s back-door window while I was carrying in some of my furniture supports.
When he rolled up in his black Chevy KC wearing a black cowboy hat, aviators, and a frown, it was clear to me that he was not a man to be messed with. The first words that Boone said to me were “city dipshit,” and they didn’t improve from there.
His voice was deep and rocky, and the fact that I couldn’t see his eyes because of his sunglasses unnerved me, and that feeling stuck around. If I ever saw him in town, I gave him a wide berth and so did nearly everyone else.
I saw the turn to the Papadakis house this time, and started driving up the steep hill. It was only a few hundred feet up, but the incline made it feel longer. The house was large, and the driveway actually led to the back of it. The front of it faced a mountain, but the back had a view.
“Do you want to go to the door while I unload? Let her know we’re here?” I said as I put the truck in park and cut the engine.
“I don’t think you want me to do that,” Collins said.
“Why not?”
“Ms. Papadakis does not like me,” Collins said. “Not even a little.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
A ghost of a smile appeared on her face. “Why do you assume I did something? Maybe it was her.”
“Did she steal your boyfriend or something?” I asked sarcastically.
“She does like a younger man.” Collins shrugged.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “So?” I said. “What happened?”
“I went to school with her nephew,” Collins said. “Emmett—totally awful little gremlin man. He snapped my bra strap once in the eighth grade. He was that kid.”
“I hate that kid,” I said. “So, what? Did you punch him or something?”
Collins shook her head. “No, but one day at lunch he got hit square in the nose with a baseball when he wasn’t looking.”
“So you were the one who nailed him?”
“Inconclusive.” Collins grinned. “I was the prime suspect—got pulled into the principal’s office and everything. Ms. Papadakis wailed about how I’d broken his perfect family nose, but no one saw me throw it.”
“Did you?”
“Not exactly,” Collins said. “I had some help.” Her voice trailed off, and she seemed to get lost in her thoughts for a moment before shaking herself out of it.
“Anyway. Emmett is her pride and joy—the heir to everything—and she wasn’t thrilled that no one got punished with the broken-nose thing.
She has a special dirty look that’s reserved just for me. ”
“That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”
“This town is held together by grudges—grudges and chewed-up gum, Brady. It’s part of our weird little ecosystem.” I was surprised that Collins included herself. So far, it seemed like she had wanted to keep herself separate from anything having to do with Sweetwater Peak.
“But she would’ve heard you on the phone,” I said.
“She thought I was Clarke,” Collins responded.
“How do you know?”
“Because I told her I was Clarke,” Collins said. “It’s easier to be her when dealing with this town sometimes.”
“She didn’t break anyone’s nose?”
Collins laughed lightly—a half laugh that made me wonder what the full one sounded like. “She wouldn’t dream of it. So I’ll start unloading, and you can go to the front door.”
“You’re sure?”
Collins nodded. “The chairs aren’t heavy. Let’s just hope she doesn’t hover when we have to take them inside.”
Both of us got out of the truck, and I got distracted by Collins and her stompy boots as she rounded to the truck bed and the way she flipped her hair out from behind her ears before she pulled the tailgate down.
The noise it made as it fell flat brought me back to earth, and I quickly made my way to the front door.