Free Wild Ride by Jennifer Crusie

Ethan said.
    â€œAlthough Cindy’s ice cream really is fabulous.”
    â€œYou don’t have to explain the park to me. I grew up here.”
    â€œI know. I graduated with you.”
    â€œOkay,” Ethan said, clearly not remembering her, which was not strange, considering what an outcast she’d been. “Uh, sure.”
    â€œI mostly stayed in the art room and the library. You didn’t know me.”
    â€œOkay,” Ethan said. “So you do this for a living, fix amusement parks? Or is this something you’re just doing for Ray?”
    He sounded suspicious, the way he said “Ray” sounded like “Batty Brannigan” to Mab, and she steeled herself for whatever insult was coming next.
    â€œBecause I’d think after growing up around here,” he said, “the last thing you’d want to work on would be an amusement park. Didn’t you get sick of this place as a kid?”
    â€œI was never here as a kid,” Mab said. “I wasn’t allowed to come anywhere near here. I could hear the music at night during the summer, we didn’t live that far away. And I could see the lights from our attic window.” She swallowed, the yearning for lights coming back to her as if thirty years ago were yesterday, and then smiled tightly at him. “I never got to come here, but I did all my college art history work on carnivals and amusement parks and gypsy wagons, and I did my thesis on carnival art, so. . . . no, this is not something I’m doing for Ray.”
    â€œOh,” Ethan said. “So this means a lot to you, being in Dreamland.”
    â€œNo, it’s just a job,” Mab lied.
    â€œRight.” Ethan looked uncomfortable, and Mab would have changed the subject, but he beat her to it. “What’s it mean to your uncle?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHe’s here a lot. What’s he want with Dreamland?”
    â€œI have no idea,” Mab said. “Can I go back to work now?”
    â€œIs there something here he wants?” Ethan said, not moving. “Or is he just coming here now because he couldn’t when he was a kid?”
    â€œHe came all the time when he was a kid,” Mab said. “He had his get-out-of-town epiphany here when he was fifteen.”
    â€œWhat?” Ethan scowled at her, as if she was being obscure.
    â€œMy mother said Ray came here one Halloween night and the next morning, he started doing everything he could to get out of Parkersburg.” Of course, Mab thought, being a Brannigan in Parkersburg was enough reason to do everything you could to get out of Parkersburg.
    â€œFifteen,” Ethan said. “What happened?”
    â€œI don’t know. He left the day after he graduated high school three years later and didn’t come back, so I don’t know him very well.” The pause after that stretched out, so she added, “I was two when he left. We hadn’t bonded.”
    â€œHe’s back now.”
    â€œYes, he is. I have to work now.”
    â€œHave you ever seen guys dressed in black running around here at night? Black ops?”
    â€œNo. But I wouldn’t, not unless they ran me down. I concentrate on my work. Which I should get back to.”
    â€œSomebody with high-tech equipment was in the park last night. That’s who—”
    â€œHigh tech?” Mab said, interested now. “High enough to animate an iron statue?”
    â€œâ€”shot me.”
    â€œBecause that would be helpful. Frankly, the hallucination thing seems far-fetched, but I know what I saw, and I couldn’t have seen that, so that left me with hallucinations, which is so unlike me, I’m a very calm person, and then you saw clown footprints, but if it’s Men in Black animating statues . . .” Then the rest of what he’d said sank in. “You got shot?” She surveyed him doubtfully. “You look okay.”
    â€œIt was a