seems to have its own share of drama, just like California."
I laughed. "Shit. That's for sure."
"Elias was worried about you," she said.
Elias' footsteps were heavy as he thumped into the kitchen. "I wasn't fucking worried," he said grumpily, opening one of the cupboards to take out a coffee cup and then slamming it shut. "I was worried about my car, maybe. Where the hell have you been?"
"What, are you my wife?" I asked. Elias' nosiness was making me testy, and I was suddenly feeling protective of the time I'd spent with Tempest. I could anticipate what the hell Elias would say if I told him I'd been with her. Elias left West Bend right after Tempest did, got his GED and joined the Navy early, but he knew what happened with Tempest. And he knew that I was torn up about it, back then. Elias would hate that I'd been with her.
He would be sure she was running a con on me.
I wasn't certain I could trust her, either.
But it didn't matter, since I wasn't going to see her again.
Elias' jaw clenched, and I knew he was trying not to fly off the handle right in front of River. "You were disappearing before, acting all mysterious and shit, and this time you took off on the way back from Los Angeles with my car, but you're still not going to say where you've been? It doesn't take that fucking long to drive from LA to West Bend, Silas."
Sitting at the table, River cleared her throat. "Elias."
"No, seriously, brother," he said.
I exhaled heavily. "I'm sorry I wasn't answering the phone, okay? I had a fight while I was there."
"A fight?" River asked. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. Then I realized she thought I meant that I'd gotten into a barroom brawl or something. "I fight sometimes. Or I used to, more regularly. In Albuquerque, then in Vegas on the fight circuit out there. Boxing, some MMA, that kind of thing."
"I thought you tore your ACL," Elias said, citing the lie I'd told him before as the reason I was back in West Bend. I hadn't wanted to tell him that Coker had done a number on me. I was trying to keep him from getting involved in any of that shit.
"It's pretty much healed now," I said. "Anyway, it was just a favor to a friend who had to back out of the fight, a one-time deal. I'm out of the scene now. I would have called, but I was tying up some loose ends there, all right? I'm sorry."
Elias grunted a response, but I knew that meant I was forgiven. "Look, I've been trying to get in touch with you for a reason. Killian had to get back on the rig, but Luke has been hanging around here between jobs. He's been doing some looking into things."
My brother Killian was a roughneck, working on the oil rigs for months at a time. Similarly, Luke's job as a smoke jumper generally took him away from things. I was surprised he'd stayed in town as long as he had. My two older brothers had been as ready as Elias and I to get the hell away from this town and away from our family, as soon as we could.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, gulping my coffee. "It's weird that Luke has been sticking around here. Is he really that interested in our parents' deaths?"
Elias shrugged. "Luke isn't staying around because of that," he said. "I think there might be a girl here that he's soft on."
"Still," I said. "Now that Luke has been asking about mom's death, you're interested? But when I said that the suicide was suspicious, I was the crazy one."
"Luke doesn't have a history of being erratic," Elias said.
"Dude, what's your fucking problem?" I asked.
"Come on, boys. No fighting." River stood beside Elias and put her hand on his arm. "Elias."
Elias narrowed his eyes at me. "Fine," he said, kissing the top of River's head. "I need to call Luke anyway."
River sat down at the table in the kitchen as Elias stomped upstairs. She motioned toward a chair opposite her. "Elias was worried about you, you know."
"Elias has a habit of worrying about things for no damn reason," I said.
"I imagine so," she said. "He's your brother, so he's probably overprotective."
"Were you overprotective with your sister?" I asked, immediately regretting the question. It had to be a sore spot with her, after she had caught her sister and her ex-fiancé together. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm a total shithead."
"Don't be," River said, laughing. "I used to be overprotective of her. I probably could have done better. You know, since she turned out to be an asshole."
I sighed. "Family, right?"
"Yeah," she said. "Can't live with 'em, can't murder 'em and dump their bodies."
"You're all right, River," I said. "I mean, you're pretty easy to talk to." Easier to talk to than my own fucking twin sometimes.
She blushed. "Thanks, Silas," she said. "I'm sure Elias means well, you know."
"Yeah, well," I said. "He thinks I'm the same guy that got kicked out of college a few years back."
"Are you?" she asked.
"No."
"Well, then, don't worry about it," she said.
"I'm sorry about what happened with your sister and mom and stuff," I said.
River laughed. "I'm not," she said. "I'm so glad it all happened that way. Viper was such a douchebag. And my sister and mom were parasites. Things work out exactly like they should. If it hadn't happened like that, I'd have never run into Elias. Besides, karma got them anyway."
"What do you mean?"
She grinned. "I shouldn't feel as smug about it as I do, but, what can I say? I'm petty."
I laughed. "I'm pretty sure it's not petty to feel smug. What happened?"
"I've gotten all of this second-hand from friends, mind you," she said. "And some magazines, too. My sister lost the big contract she had with the cosmetics company. It turns out they had some kind of morals clause. Having one of their models blowing someone on a reality show wasn't exactly in keeping with their brand."
"That serves her right."
"Well, wait, there's more," River said. "Then she went and got some plastic surgery. And, from the looks of it in the tabloids, it was...um, not good. So she's been dropped from her agency, too. And Viper banged his way through her model friends, so that's over."
"I hope your mom got what was coming to her," I said.
"River gave all her stuff to charity," Elias said, walking up behind her and putting his hand on her shoulder. "Sold the house and evicted her ass."
"She's just toxic," she said, reaching for Elias' hand. "So now, I've cleaned the dead weight out of my life, and we're getting a new start here in West Bend."
The way River looked at Elias made me think of Tempest. Forget about her, I told myself. She's probably forgotten all about you by now.
***
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TEMPEST
I walked up the sidewalk to the building with my helmet in my hand, and looked around warily. I hadn't been back to the town of West Bend since I was seventeen years old. I had returned to this general area to visit my grandmother Letty, but after the scandal with my parents, she had moved to the next town over. I stayed away from Colorado entirely for the first two years after I left West Bend until I was no longer living hand to mouth, and then returned for short stints when I could over the years.
Back when everything happened with my parents and we'd run out of town, my grandmother had spent what little money she had to hire someone to track us down, but failed. It was two years later, when I'd finally come back to see her, that she'd learned my parents had ended up kicking me out and I'd been living on my own.
Since then, we'd gotten close, albeit only through infrequent visits. My grandmother was my only family, and she was a reminder of a time in my life when things were peaceful. Happy.
Of course, that period of time was like the calm before the storm.
I hadn't able to come back to see her as often as I wanted, and had never returned to West Bend itself, since my grandmother had moved to one of the neighboring towns.
Until now.
Now that she was in this - what the hell had the web
site called it? - an assisted living facility, I had to come back to West Bend to see her. I wasn't keen on the idea of putting her in this place. I had even tried to hire a nurse to come by and help her out at her house, but she wasn't having any of it. She had protested, said it was time for her to move here. I bristled at the idea. A nursing home? No thanks. But she had insisted it wasn't that kind of place, and on the phone she sounded happy.
Until she called me a few weeks ago and said she wanted to see me. That had me worried, even though she said it wasn't an emergency.
So I was back in West Bend, for the first time in seven years.
I'd lied to Iver and the others, telling them I was flying somewhere and taking time off. My team knew nothing about my past or about my family. Of course, Emir probably had a dossier on me, but he had never said anything, so I preferred to think he'd refrained from using his tech skills to figure out everything there was to know about me.
My team were the closest people in the world to me, yet they knew nothing about my past. And the only thing I knew about their pasts were the parts that involved grifting.
Grifters were funny that way. We were masters at leaving our pasts behind, creating new lives everywhere we went, and shedding the old ones. My childhood wasn't as real to me as my present life, and I didn't want to taint my present with ghosts from the past.
Except for Silas.
I'd brought that part of the past right into my present. And it was amazing.
But I needed to leave Silas back in Vegas, where he belonged.
The door to her room was open, but I knocked anyway. "Nana?"
Letty looked up at me from where she sat in her upholstered chair, dressed head-to-toe in a leopard tracksuit studded with rhinestones. Her face immediately brightened. "Tempest!"
"Don't get up, Nana," I said, walking across the room to hug her. "How are you?"
"Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes, honey," she said. "Sit, sit. Stay a while. You are staying a while, aren't you?"
"A few days, Nana," I said. I could afford to take a few days in West Bend, I told myself. I doubted anyone would recognize me anymore, at least from a cursory glance. The last time I’d actually set foot in the town of West Bend, I was a gangly, awkward seventeen-year-old. And even if someone happened to recognize me, it wasn't like there was a warrant out for my arrest.
There was also a part of me that craved the familiarity of West Bend. It was the only place I'd ever been truly happy, and I wanted a dose of that feeling again.
"Let me look at you, girl," Letty said, pausing, her eyes trailing up and down my body, narrowing as she looked at me. "Have you lost weight? Are you eating enough? You look like you have dark circles under your eyes. Are you sleeping? Don't lie to me - you're not getting enough sleep. I can see it in your eyes."
"Okay, Nana," I said. "Enough with the barrage of questions."
"Oh, don't Nana me," she said. "What's the helmet for? Are you riding that death trap again?"
I sighed, feigning exasperation but secretly happy with all the questions. It was a part of our routine that was familiar. "Yes, Nana. I'm sleeping. No, I haven't lost weight. Yes, I'm eating. Yes, I'm still riding the bike - I rode it out here from Vegas, in fact. Now, how are you feeling?"
"Sit down, girl," she said insistently, motioning to the upholstered chair across from her. She waited until I sat down to start in on me again, clucking her tongue against her teeth as she shook her head. "You kids these days. I don't know why you'd want to ride on something like that. You're asking to be flattened by a semi-truck."
I laughed. "Yeah, well, we can't all ride in horse-and-buggies, the way people did when you were a girl."
Letty hooted. "Horse drawn carriages," she said. "Do you think I'm two hundred years old, Tempest?"
"You don't look a day over a hundred and fifty, Nana," I said.
She guffawed, her hand on her stomach, and finally caught her breath. "Oh, Tempest, I missed you and your sense of humor."
I leaned forward in my chair. "Really, Nana," I said. "How are you doing? Be honest with me. Are they treating you well?"
"Are you kidding, girl?" she asked, gesturing toward herself. "Look at me! I'm fucking fantastic. This place is paradise."
I laughed so hard I nearly choked, hearing the words fucking fantastic come out of Letty's mouth. "Nana!"
"Oh, hush," she said. "I'm eighty years old. I can say the word fuck if I want to."
"Well, you seem like you're doing well, Nana," I said. "And you look good. I'm digging the leopard."
Letty grinned. "It's got rhinestones for added bling," she said. "You have to stand out here, you know, keep up with yourself. There is a lot of competition here."
"Who are you competing with?"
"There are more women here than men, you see, so you have to make sure you’re in primo shape," she said. Her gaze lingered on my arms. "Did you get new tattoos? That one, with the bird there, near your shoulder - I like it. I think I need some ink."
I laughed. "Nana, what the hell has gotten into you?"
She leaned forward, dropped her voice low, her tone conspiratorial. "Who hasn't gotten into me, Tempest?"
"Oh my God, are you talking about what I think you're talking about?" I asked. "Are you dating someone?"
She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Oh, honey, I'm not dating anybody," she said. "I'm playing the field. A lot. All the time."
My jaw fell open. "Nana, I don't even know what to say."
"Oh yes," she said. "This place is heaven on earth. I mean, the accommodations themselves are so-so, and the food is infrequently edible, but my social life has never been better. I wasn't having this much sex when your grandfather was alive, God rest his soul." She made the sign of the cross, even though I knew she wasn't religious.
"I'm glad you're having fun," I said, unable to stifle my chuckle.
"Fun isn't even the word," she said. "I'm having the time of my life. There are eligible men with prescriptions for the little blue pill all over this place."
"Oh, Lord," I said. "I'm not sure the staff here is equipped to deal with you."
"They aren't," she said, matter-of-factly. "And don't you go tipping them off, either. You let me have a little fun before I die."
"As long as you don't go dying on me," I said. "Not for a long time."
"I've got a few years left in me," she said. "Don't you worry about that."
"Well, if you keep partying like you're twenty-one, you might be kicking the bucket sooner than that, Nana," I said.
"Well then I'll go to the grave whooping it up," she said. "Like a rock star."
I laughed. "I missed you a lot, Letty."
"It's so good to see you, Tempest," she said. "But there is a reason I wanted you to come by."
"Not so you could regale me with tales of your debauchery?" I asked.
"Well, if you want to hear them, I can tell you all about Mr. Johnson in room 122," she said. "He snuck over here the other night and -"
I held up my hand. "Nana," I warned. "Do not tell me this story. I'll have to insist. Did you hear from my parents or something?"
She shook her head, a dark look crossing her face. "Your parents," she said, scowling. "The more appropriate question is whether you, their only daughter, has heard from them."
"I would tell you if I had," I said. "Of course not. I haven't heard from them since I went out on my own."
"How are things going?" she asked, her voice just above a whisper. "I know you won't spill all your secrets, but have you taken down any bad guys lately?"