Graveyard Games by Sheri Leigh Page B

widened even further when his gaze met her hemline. “What are
you doing here?”
    “ Working.” She poised her
pen above her pad. “What can I get you?”
    Jake flipped a strand of long dark hair out
of his eyes. “What happened to your job in Chicago?”
    She shrugged, trying to ignore the twist in
her belly at the mention of her former employer. “It sort of
disappeared.”
    “ Kind of a step down,
isn’t it?” Jake looked around the Starlite and then back at her.
His hair had fallen over his left eye again, but he didn’t bother
with it this time.
    “ It’s temporary,” she
explained. “Keeps my mind off…things.”
    “ Ah.” He grimaced and
nodded. “Hey, listen…about Nick…”
    She waved the question away. It was the last
thing she wanted to talk about, especially here. “What can I get
you?”
    He ignored her question, asking instead, “So
what are you going to do after this, then?”
    “ I don’t know,” she
replied honestly. Whenever she thought of her future now, it looked
blank to her, like static on the television. There was nothing
there. “Any ideas?”
    “ You could always come
work at Vikings with me and Shane.” He winked at her as he leaned
back in his chair.
    She laughed. “I’m hardly qualified.”
    “ Oh come on, you could
drop an engine with the best of us,” he reminded her with a smile.
The memory of working on cars with Nick and Shane and the rest of
the gang made her both sad and nostalgic. She had rebuilt the
transmission on Shane’s Mustang herself.
    “ That was a million years
ago,” she said, reminding them both of that fact. “I don’t remember
the difference between a torque wrench and a screwdriver
anymore.”
    Jake scoffed, blowing a stray piece of dark
hair out of his eyes. “Most girls don’t even know what a torque
wrench is.”
    “ Most girls didn’t grow up
in Larkspur.”
    He sighed. “Man, I miss those days.”
    “ I guess life goes on…”
Dusty bit her lip, hard, not wanting to remember the things that
were coming back.
    Jake leaned forward, hair falling in his
face again, his eyes softening along with his voice. “Dusty, I
really am sorry…”
    She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
“Thanks.”
    “ I really wish we hadn’t…”
Jake’s voice trailed off and when she raised her eyebrows at him in
inquiry, his mouth snapped shut. He didn’t finish the sentence, but
she noticed he glanced toward the door.
    “ Hadn’t what?” Dusty
prompted.
    “ I just…” Jake shrugged.
“I wish he’d been with us that night. Here, I mean.”
    She cocked her head at him, eyes narrowing.
“Wasn’t he?”
    “ No.” He shook his head,
his eyes meeting hers. She was good at knowing when someone was
lying—it was a skill cops developed quickly—and she could have
sworn Jake was telling the truth. That was maddening, considering
where Nick had claimed he was going that night, and she couldn’t
reconcile those two things.
    Jake wasn’t lying…but she was sure Shane
was. Chris, too, for that matter. She remembered how restless Chris
had been that morning she saw him at Nick’s grave. Of course, no
one was going to tell her the truth. They were hiding
something…something. But what?
    “ Earth to Dusty?” Jake
waved a hand at her, looking bemused.
    “ Sorry.” She smiled
sheepishly. “What can I get you, Jake?”
    “ Strohs,” he said. “And a
shot of Jack.”
    “ Coming up.” Dusty turned
away and headed toward the bar. "Stroh’s," she told Lee. “And a
shot of Jack.”
    "In a minute." He was just opening the
breather cap on the keg. Dusty leaned against the side of the bar,
waiting.
    "You okay?" Lee asked, and then swore as
foam came out of the spout. The second was better. Dusty didn’t
answer him for a minute. The guy she was standing next to was
peering at the front of her blouse, his gaze then slipping below
the line of her skirt, and then up again. She had the urge to take
him down. She was certainly capable—two