Free Zero at the Bone by Jane Seville Page A

was done havin’ feelins, didn’tcha? Thought you was safe? You ain’t safe. Shut it all down 34 | Jane Seville

    ’cause no feelins at all was better’n all them bad feelins. Seeing their faces, hearing yer little girl’s voice in yer head over ’n’ over, callin’ fer Daddy but you ain’t comin’. No feelins was better’n THOSE feelins.
    Don’t know what yer talkin’ about.
    Sure ya do. Those feelins. Like fer girls. Except… maybe not.
    Shut the fuck up. How many times I gotta tell ya?
    You cain’t tell me ta shut up, ’cause I am you, asshole.
    D sighed and put that fight from his mind as he’d done a thousand times before, that voice of his long-ago self made wiser than his real self had ever been by watching his own folly and hearing his own torment inside his head.
    Maybe you oughta jus’ kill him. Maybe you get outta this alive if ya just do it. Do it quick, right now while he’s asleep. He’ll never know; he jus’ won’t wake up.
    D gripped the steering wheel tighter.
    You keep on, both a ya’s gonna end up dead.
    He looked over at Jack again, and his knowing that maybe killing him was the smart thing to do didn’t affect the fact that he couldn’t.
    They passed a sign saying it was 100 miles to Stockton. He ran through what had to be done now. First, find a place to hole up for a few days. Get their shit together. Catch their breath. Make double damned sure they weren’t being tracked. Eventually, Jack would have to contact the Marshals, because they had to be told that he still intended to testify. If he just disappeared without a word, the trial might get postponed. That’d be tricky, though. They’d have to do it in some way that the Marshals couldn’t take him into custody, so D could continue to protect him.
    He wasn’t forgetting the threat to himself, either. The Dominguez brothers might want Jack’s head on a pike, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought that they were not the ones responsible for his own involvement here. If they wanted a hit man, there were a lot less scrupulous ones than himself available, and for them to go to such lengths just to blackmail him into doing something that a dozen other men would do for the paycheck made no sense… unless it was somehow about him.
    He had no doubt that the Marshals knew by now that Jack was out of pocket too. So that was possibly three parties on his ass, and it was starting to feel mighty crowded back there.
    He pulled into a remote gas station just after four o’clock in the morning. He’d used this gas station before, feeling comfortable here because of its very remoteness and its lack of security cameras. The place was deserted, which was just fine with him. Jack twitched a little and blinked, straightening in his seat. “Are we there?”
    “Not quite. Need gas.”
    “I gotta pee,” Jack muttered, rubbing his stubbled face and unfolding himself out of the passenger seat. D had to smirk a little at Jack’s bed-head as he shuffled toward the station. He hesitated and turned back. “You want a soda or anything?” D almost responded with a knee-jerk “no,” but then reconsidered. “Guess so.”
    “What kind?”
    “Ginger ale. Vernor’s if they got it.”
    “You drink ginger ale?”
    D frowned at him. “What’s wrong with that? Toldja got a bad stomach.” Jack shrugged. “Just thought you’d drink something more… intense.”
    “Which sodas are the intense ones?”
    “I don’t know. Mountain Dew?”

    Zero at the Bone | 35

    D made a face. “That shit is nasty. Rot yer balls off.”
    “There is no medical evidence that Mountain Dew has a bad effect on testicles,” Jack said, smirking. “But I can’t disagree that it’s nasty.” He resumed his course to the gas station while D leaned against the car, waiting for the fuel tank to fill. He was glancing around, staying alert for a possible tail. He was almost positive that they hadn’t been followed from LA, but you could never be too