Free Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller by David C. Cassidy Page B

of the man she called George, she froze.
    “Ray … what are you doing here? You—” She lowered her voice. “I want you to leave right now.”
    “Just wanna talk, baby.”
    The man stepped back from the counter, but this gesture did nothing to settle her. His pasted grin did even less.
    She seemed to shrink. She trembled as if she might wither and die, and Kain feared she just might.
    “Just five minutes.”
    “ Ray. ”
    Already the grin had soured. “You owe me.”
    “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
    “Miss?” It was a short man in a booth who sat across from the young couple. He motioned with his cup.
    The waitress grabbed a pot of coffee from the burner behind her. She used the counter as a buffer, purposely taking the long way round, but her husband echoed her steps, cutting her off at the end.
    “Jesus, Ray.” She waved the stench of whiskey from the stale breath in front of her. “It’s not even eight-thirty.”
    “Five minutes.”
    “ Miss. ”
    “ Com ing.” She turned, her eyes fighting bravely. She tried to brush past him, but Ray Bishop stabbed out a hand and snared the arm holding the coffee.
    Lynn Bishop straightened, stiffening like a corpse. The steaming pot slipped from her grasp and struck the floor, exploding in a shower of glass and hot black liquid. It singed her leg, and she winced as she tried to pull free. She kept silent, but if she had been anywhere else, she likely would have screamed.
    “… Please let me go.”
    Ray Bishop did. Slowly, most unwillingly, but he did.
    Everyone in the place had been doing their best—which wasn’t very good, or very easy—to mind their own business, but that now seemed an impossible chore. Ray Bishop, the mechanic who would be King of the Idiots, had crash-landed on their little world, and whether he liked it or not had everyone’s attention. All eyes were focused on him, and the concern seemed to unnerve him.
    The cook, an ample woman who just had to be Rosa (she sure looked like a Rosa), barreled out from the swings. She had solid meat on her, stood a stocky five-one in her saffron apron. One arm was planted firmly on her right hip. In her left hand she held a solid wooden spoon, brandishing it like a club.
    “What’s goin’ on here? Lynn? You okay, honey-child?”
    Ray Bishop cast her a look of stone that told her to keep her nose out of it. But Rosa of the Roadside had other ideas.
    “You get outta here, Ray Bishop! Right now, you hear?”
    “Just talkin’ to my wife … right, baby?”
    “Is there a problem?”
    Ray Bishop whipped round. The man had cold hard eyes. A long, wormy scar ran along his left cheek. It looked as if it had been carved at birth. He gave the drifter a look up and down. A look of Fuck off.
    “Get out of here, Ray. Just leave me alone. Please. ”
    Kain stood at the register at the far end of the counter. He didn’t know what the man’s next move was, but if there was one thing Brikker had taught him, it was bite the bear before the bear bites you.
    “The hand,” he said, “is quicker than the eye.”
    Ray Bishop turned again, and suddenly there was bite in his bark. “Shut the fuck up.”
    Kain started toward him with sound steps. Ray Bishop lunged to meet him, and in the next instant, he had him all turned around and on his knees crying for mercy. The King was still loving it up tenderly on the jukebox when Kain cranked the man’s arm a second time, drawing it higher up his back. The mechanic shrieked like a schoolgirl.
    “The lady doesn’t want to talk.”
    “Go to hell, you sonofa— arrrrrgh! ”
    Kain relaxed the pressure, just a little. He leaned in close to the man’s ear. “Don’t make me break it.”
    He waited a moment, and when he was almost sure the man had had enough, eased him up.
    The man stood boiling, cradling his arm. He looked like he might charge again.
    “I wouldn’t,” Kain said.
    Ray Bishop seethed. He turned to his wife, who had shrunk behind the counter to a safer