Sadie had never understood that expression. Since neither bugs nor ears were cute. “Thank you. I just had my roots touched up at Lily Belle Salon and Spa.”

“Crazy Lily Darlington did it?”

She pulled back and looked into Deeann’s brown eyes. “Lily’s crazy?” She hadn’t struck Sadie as off.

“Oh.” Deeann waved a hand. “No. That’s just what everyone used to call her. Especially when she was divorcing that skirt-chasing Ronnie Darlington. She’s a few years older than me, but I always thought she was real sweet.”

“And you were always the nicest girl at charm school. And pretty, too.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

Her daddy didn’t think so. “Show me something cute. Most of my clothes are in my closet in Phoenix, and I’m getting tired of the same sundresses and jogging suits.”

Deeann clapped her hands together. “Are you a size four?”

Who was she to argue? “Sure.” The store was more narrow than wide, with racks and shelves stuffed with everything from skirts and shorts and T-shirts to sundresses and prom dresses. There were a few cute things, but mostly Deeann’s Duds weren’t really Sadie’s style. Too much “embellishment.” Which meant beads and silver conchas and lace.

“I love your jewelry.” Which she did.

“It helps pay the bills.” Deeann looked at her watch she’d made from a spoon. “I have a few of the local girls coming in to look at prom dresses. I hope they find something and don’t go to Amarillo.” She shook her head, and her long red hair brushed her back. “My ex hasn’t paid child support in a year, and I need the money.”

Sadie set three T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, and five pairs of earrings on the counter. “My senior dress was a Jessica McClintock. Blue with rhinestones on the bodice.” She sighed. “I looked fabulous. Too bad my date, Rowdy Dell, got hit in the head with a flying tequila bottle and bled all over me.”

“Goodness. Did he have to have stitches?” Deeann rang up the clothes.

“Yeah. A few.” She chuckled. “I guess it was horrible of me to be more worried about my dress than his head.”

Deeann bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Not at all, honey. A dented head will heal. You can’t repair a bloody rhinestone-studded Jessica McClintock. Did Rowdy apologize for ruining your dress?”

“He obviously wasn’t raised right.” Sadie chuckled. “It was the prom night from hell.”

“Bet it wasn’t as bad as mine.” Deeann handed her the bag of clothes. “I got knocked up on prom night and made matters worse by getting married three months later. Now I run this shop, sell jewelry and real estate on the side just to support my boys and me. All because I crawled into the back of Ricky Gunderson’s truck.”

Deeann was certainly a hard worker. Sadie liked that about her. “Can I help?” She wasn’t licensed to sell real estate in Texas, but she could certainly show a home with Deeann. Give her some tips to close the deal. She was often the top-selling agent at her brokerage in Phoenix.

“You can sell prom dresses with me.”

“What?” She’d been thinking real estate. Showing houses and talking up amenities.

“It’s easy. Those girls are gonna want to try on every dress in the store. I sure could use another pair of hands.”

It had been a long time since she’d bought a prom dress or been around teenagers. The twenty-year-olds at her cousin’s wedding had been annoying enough. “I don’t know . . .”

“It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

“Hours?”


Vince raised the sledgehammer over his head and brought it down on the counter. The sounds of splintering wood and whine of wrenching nails filled the air, and it felt good to go at something with all his force. His motto had always been, “Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledgehammer.” The man credited with the saying was a Marine, Major Holdridge. Vince loved the jarheads. Loved the wild grit and spit of the corps.

Of course, SEALs were trained a bit differently. Trained that it was easy to kill an enemy, but much more difficult to get intel from a corpse. Vince understood and walked the line between knowing that it was often vital to the mission to take enemy combatants alive, and loving a big explosion. And sometimes there was nothing quite like a sledgehammer to deliver a message and bring the point home.

A bead of sweat slid down his temple and he wiped it away with the shoulder of his T-shirt. He hit an overhead cabinet and knocked it off the wall. He’d dreamed of Wilson again last night. This time the dream began before the firefight that took his buddy’s life. He’d dreamed he was back in the rugged mountains and limestone caves. Of him and Wilson standing next to stockpiles of RPG launchers, AK–47 magazines, Russian-made grenades, Stinger missiles, and what someone claimed to be Osama bin Laden’s very own personal copy of the Koran. Vince had always had a doubt or two about that, but it made for a good story.

The operation orders had called for the insertions of four SEALs and a seven-mile hump to the caves. Marine security covered their right and left flanks, watching for enemy snipers hiding in the cracks and crevasses. The assault took longer than expected because of the rough terrain and heat. They’d paused halfway to strip off the jackets they’d worn for the flight in, but that still left him packing water, MREs, H-gear, assorted weaponry, body armor, and ballistics helmet.

The first thing they’d noticed as they’d neared the objective was that the bombs the flyboys had dropped earlier to soften the area missed about eighty percent of their targets. The platoon patrolled up to the entrance and entered the caves like they would a house or ship. The lights on their weapons faded in the deep caverns.

“ ‘Little surprises around every corner,’ ” Wilson said as they rounded the mouth of one cave. Before anyone asked, he added, “Willy Wonka. The original movie. Not the fucked-up Johnny Depp remake.”

“Shit on rye. That’s an ass-load of Gobstoppers.” Vince shone the light from his weapon on boxes of Stingers. “Looks like someone planned on playing war with us.”

Wilson laughed. That deep staccato ha ha ha that always brought a smile to Vince’s face. The laugh he missed when he thought of his friend.

Vince set the sledgehammer on Luraleen’s old desk, which he decided to keep for old times’ sake, and grabbed pieces of busted-up wood and counter. Thinking about Wilson usually made him smile. Dreaming about him made him shake like a baby and run into walls.

He walked out of the office and through the back door he’d left wedged open with a brick earlier. He moved a few feet to a Dumpster and tossed the debris inside. He figured it would take a week or two to finish demolition and another three or four to renovate.

The fading evening sun lowered in the cloudless Texas sky as a red Volkswagen pulled to a stop in the back. A trickle of sweat slid down his temple and he lifted his arm and wiped at it with his shoulder. Becca cut the engine of the Bug and waved through the windshield at Vince.

“Sweet baby Jesus save me.” For some inexplicable reason, she still stopped by on her way home a few times a week. He’d never done anything to encourage the “friendship.”

“Hi, Vince,” she called out as she walked toward him.

“Hey, Becca.” He turned toward the building, then stopped and looked back. “You cut your hair.”

“One of the girls did it at school.”

He pointed to the left side. “It looks longer on one side.”

“It’s supposed to.” She ran her fingers through it. “Do you like it?”

He supposed he could lie, but that just might encourage her to stick around. “No.”

Instead of getting all upset and leaving, she smiled. “That’s what I like about you, Vince. You don’t sugarcoat things.”

There was a reason. Sugarcoating encouraged relationships he didn’t want. “You’re not pissed about that hair?” The women he’d known would have freaked.

“No. I’ll get it fixed tomorrow. Do you need your hair cut? I’m getting pretty good with the clippers.”

Pretty good? “That’s okay. I don’t want my head lopsided.”

Again she laughed. “I’d use a number two on you ’cause you look like you like it high and tight.”

He thought of Sadie, and not for the first time since he’d left her house. He’d thought of her several times a day since then. If there’d been anything going on beyond mindless demo work, he might be worried about how much he thought about her.

“I need your advice on something.”

“Me? Why?” He’d given his sister advice but she’d never listened to him. Becca wasn’t even related, so why should he suffer?

She put her hand on his forearm. “Because I care about you, and I think you care about me. I trust you.”

Oh no. A bad feeling pinched the back of his neck. This was one of those times that called for finesse and a precision extraction. “Becca, I’m thirty-six.” Much too old for her.

“Oh, I thought you were older.”

Older? What? He didn’t look old.

“And if my dad was still alive, I think he’d listen to me like you do. I think he’d give me good advice like you do.”

“You think of me like your . . . dad?” What the hell?

She looked at him and her eyes rounded. “No. No, Vince. More like an older brother. Yeah, an older brother.”

Sure. The only time he felt old was when the cold settled in his bones and cramped his hands. There’d been a time when the cold hadn’t bothered him much, but he certainly wasn’t old.

Behind Becca’s Bug, Sadie’s Saab rolled to a stop, and he forgot about being Becca’s dad. Her running lights shut off and the door swung open. The orange sun shot golden sparks off her sunglasses and hair. She was all golden and shiny and beautiful.

“I stopped to get some super unleaded. What’s up?” she asked.