As for Ginger? She looked forlorn as she watched Cain go, holding on to her bottom lip with her teeth, a slight frown troubling her usually sunny expression. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, her lips lifted into a brilliant smile, transforming her whole face to such beauty, Woodman sucked a hiss of breath through his teeth. She was happy about something, and it had everything to do with Cain. She looked down at her watch, then slipped back into the barn. Woodman watched as she came out of the barn on her cell phone.
“Gran? It’s me. Cain’s goin’ to take me!” Her smile was so brilliant, even from this distance, it could have blinded him. Slowly, so as not to draw attention, Woodman crouched down behind a boulder and some tall grass to shield himself as she walked up the hill toward her grandmother’s cottage.
“Yes, I’m serious! He’s takin’ me to homecomin’, Gran.” She giggled, the sound musical and happy as she walked by the place where Woodman hid. “Help me get ready? I’m headed up to the manor house now. He’ll be back for me in two hours!”
As soon as she was far enough along the path, Woodman stood up and headed quickly down the hill to the parking area behind the barn, where his secondhand BMW waited.
He wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on, because he’d arranged for Robby Hanson, one of the probies on last year’s football team and a nice kid who’d been warned against making any untoward moves on her, to be Ginger’s escort. Now, somehow, safe little Robby was out of the picture, and Cain, the big bad Wolfram, was in it.
But Woodman had seen the look on Cain’s face as he zoomed away from McHuid’s as fast as he could. Whatever Ginger believed had transpired between them, Woodman knew that Cain wasn’t coming back tonight. And his heart lurched at the thought of Ginger spending hours waiting for Cain before she finally realized he wasn’t coming. She thought she was going to a dance; instead, she’d end her evening with her heart in shreds. And the truth is, despite everything he’d just witnessed, Woodman loved her way too much to let that happen.
Which meant he needed to find Cain.
***
Although Woodman wasn’t a stranger to the distillery grounds, he hadn’t treated the crumbling, overgrown complex like a debauched combination of the local brothel and bar in which Cain had indulged over the past three years.
From time to time, his Aunt Sarah would call him and ask him to find Cain—generally after he’d skipped a night at home—and Woodman always ended up finding his cousin at Glenn River. He wasn’t alone there, either. There was a whole crew of Apple Valley kids who frequented the distillery grounds, holding loud, raging parties on Saturday nights and hooking up in the shadows of the many outbuildings. Since Cain was a regular, it was never too tough to find him.
Woodman parked his car by the brush near the abandoned gates and walked purposefully along the chain-link fence to one of the many places where there was an opening. Slipping through it, he heard music on the breeze, likely coming from the old peristyle on the far left side of the property. Woodman circled the main building, built to resemble a castle back in the 1930s. He knew the way like the back of his hand, walking over crumbling concrete overgrown with weeds, through the well-trod dirt path into the high grass, taking a right at the rusted water tower, until he found a bunch of his former classmates gathered in one of the distillery outbuildings.
“Hey, Woodman!” cried Kim Nadel, one of his friends from senior trig. She slipped under a metal bar and ran the few steps to meet him, wrapping him in a big hug before he could even say hello.
“Hey, Kim,” he said, patting her back.
They’d gone out a couple of times, but Woodman had never let himself get very serious about anyone. He’d given his heart to someone else a long time ago, and he didn’t mind waiting for the girl of his dreams to grow up. Drawing away, he grinned at his friend. “Thought you were at Kentucky Wesleyan. What the heck you doin’ here?”
“Just home for the weekend,” she said, smiling back at him.
Kim, with her curly brown hair and bright blue eyes, was a pretty girl, and the way she checked him out told him she wouldn’t mind spending a little time with him on his last night in Apple Valley. “Heard you’re headed to boot camp tomorrow.”
He nodded, placing his hands on his hips. “That’s right.”
“Chicago?” she asked.
“Town’s called Great Lakes,” he said. “Real near Chicago.”
“Surprised everyone when Cain enlisted, too.”
Woodman’s eyes narrowed at the mention of his cousin, his anger rushing back quickly and crashing over him like a wave. He looked over Kim’s shoulder but didn’t see Cain’s jet-black hair in the crowd of partying teens.
“You seen him around?”
“Cain?” she asked. “Uh, yeah. Sure. He just got here a little while ago. Saw him talkin’ to Gina and Nicole over there by the lower pool.”
She gestured to the rounded end of the peristyle, then turned back to face Woodman, placing a hand on his arm. “But don’t go runnin’ off. Knowin’ Cain, he’ll still be here an hour from now. Why don’t you and me . . . catch up?”
The problem was, if Cain was still here an hour from now, he’d be standing up Ginger, a circumstance Woodman couldn’t bear if there was any way for him to intercede on Ginger’s behalf.