Free Hush Money by Susan Bischoff Page A

look again,
and yeah, sort of. But where was she getting all this? How did she
know what happened between Marco and me? What made her think that
Dylan wanted to make any move? Or that I wanted him to?
    Then I pulled my head out of my butt and
realized that she was making that up. Kat needed some way to get
her friends involved in her problem with Marco. So she was using me to do it! She was just making up this nonsense
about Dylan and me out of her own curly little head. It was just a
coincidence that, yeah, I actually had liked him forever,
which she couldn’t possibly have guessed. Right?
    This was no doubt part of my punishment for
the whole thing with Trina that had gotten Kat into her mess in the
first place. And I still felt so guilty about it that I was
inclined to go along with this—even though she was being an idiot
and this party didn’t have a prayer of helping her. What was a
friend supposed to do, beat some sense into her, or support the bad
plan? I’d have to go with choice B, for the time being, anyway.
    “So, what can we do to put Marco in his place
so he stops bothering our friend Joss?”

    * * *

    Dylan

    “I thought you said we were going to do this
in the morning. With Rob.”
    “We will. We’ll do it again with Rob, at
least once, maybe more before we do the job. I’m just…” Marco
rolled his neck and shoulders as we wandered up the chip and soda
aisle, “antsy. To get going on this thing. Didn’t want to wait for
the weekend, and I can’t cut anymore school right now.”
    I grunted. I really didn’t want to be here at
all. But at least right now, during the after-work/pre-dinner
shopping rush, the store was busy and no one noticed two guys
wandering around and not picking anything up.
    “What’s with you lately? You’re jumpy, you’re
pissed off half the time, and you’re way too into this job that we shouldn’t even be thinking about. It’s way too complicated
and not worth it. It’s stupid.”
    “Hey, I’ll decide what’s worth it and what’s
not, all right? You just do what I tell you.”
    “Since fucking when?” I snarled in a low
voice. I was pissed, but not enough not to care about attracting
attention. Still, a few women glanced our way and moved off down
the aisle.
    “Since fucking always. I’ve always looked out
for you. And if I wanted to listen to a lot of nagging, I’d be out
with some bitch who would make it worth my while later on.”
    We had reached the back of the store. “Hold
on,” I said, and took a few steps over to a stack-out of soda
cases. I waited for the last customer to leave the section, pulled
a folded piece of paper from my pocket, and “accidentally” dropped
it. I bent over behind the soda to pick it up, and when I
straightened up I was invisible.
    Hopefully no one but Marco had seen me
disappear, and we had reasoned in the past that as long as nothing
major happened, there was no reason for anyone to be looking at
what cameras might have picked up. Nothing major. I couldn’t
figure out why Marco wanted to start that now. For beer? What the
hell?
    “ I’ve always looked out for you.” It
was true. And more and more I felt like I was paying for that. As
kids, it had seemed like we were always equals, two boys who didn’t
have much good going on at home, running wild, causing trouble and
trying not to get caught. Then when we were nine, Marco did
something for me that maybe sparked the change, for both of us. My
mom’s piece of crap boyfriend had seemed all-powerful to me when he
was knocking me around, trying to beat the Talent out of me. When
your best friend takes something like that on for you, yeah, it
shifts the balance. Makes you grateful. Anything you say, bud.
Anything for a friend, right? I guess when a kid takes on something
like that, and comes out the winner…I guess that changes him too.
That’s when Marco really started to believe that the rules just
didn’t apply to him.
    I stood next to him and moved us toward