Simon stepped forward, but I slipped in front of him, pasting on my most innocent it-wasn’t-my-fault expression. It was a look I generally reserved for crisis situations, and even then only pulled out for those of the male persuasion—I’d used similar looks on my dad, Austin, and on guy teachers and coaches. Women tended to be impervious since most of them kept similar looks of their own for just such an emergency.
“It was an accident,” I explained, wrinkling my nose and hoping I looked distressed rather than like I was sniffing something revolting. “I have no idea what happened.”
He just scowled back at me, propping his ham-sized fists on his hips. He wasn’t buying my little damsel-in-distress display. “All I know is, I just got lane one up and running again, and now you kids”—he eyeballed Simon behind me, his bulging eyes getting even bulgier behind his greasy cheeks—“you come in here and fuck it all up again. Do you know how much trouble you just cost me? Not to mention how much goddamned money?”
Natty came back and was holding our shoes. She kept glancing toward the door and then back at the people—at the crowd that was gathering around us—and back to me and the boss man. She reminded me of a frightened animal, which irritated me since she was part of my team, and I was counting on her to have my back. Cat would’ve had my back.
Simon had had enough, and he finally tried to smooth things over. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. Can’t we work something out?” He reached for his pocket, and I thought that would be the end of it. He would buy our way out of this.
Natty must’ve thought the same thing I did, and she took a step toward me, handing me my shoes.
But the boss guy didn’t even blink. He wasn’t interested in making any deal with us.
When I reached for my shoes, it set the guy off. Rage sparked behind his eyes. He’d had enough of us goddamned kids, and one of his ham hands snaked out, his fat fingers closing around my wrist. I had to give the guy credit—he was strong. Not super strong like me or anything, but strong enough, and when he squeezed, I felt my bones pop.
“Where d’ya think you’re going?” he sneered in a menacing voice.
Dizziness surged through me, and I realized that no amount of sweet-talking or cash was going to get us out of here unnoticed.
“Get your hands off her!” Simon insisted, forgetting all about trying to pay the guy off as he tried to shove him away from me. But Simon couldn’t stop what had already started, and the scene we were causing made us a million times more interesting as several more of the nosy bowlers packed in around us.
The boss guy started dragging me toward the shoe rental counter. “We’ll see what the sheriff has to say ’bout all this.” He nodded to the pimply-faced kid who’d taken our shoes. “Call Sheriff Hudson. Tell him we got trouble here.”
When the kid picked up the phone, it felt like the guy had just wrapped his hands around my throat instead of my wrist. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t breathe.
If they called the sheriff on us, eventually someone might realize we weren’t who our IDs said we were. They might even figure out who we really were. And if Agent Truman was notified . . .
There were people standing in our way, and not just Simon and Natty, but a full-blown crowd now too. I wondered why none of them jumped in or tried to tell this guy he’d crossed a line by manhandling one of us “goddamned kids,” let alone a girl, but they all just stood there, gaping with morbid fascination.
Chicken shits! I wanted to scream at them, but all I could think was that they were all seeing our faces. With every second that passed, the chances they could identify us grew.
The guy didn’t slow, and as much as I wanted to try, I was afraid that if I did try to hit him or kick him, that I might not be able to control my own strength and it would end up like the bowling ball incident all over again. What if I hurt him? Or worse?
What if that just gave these people even more reason to recognize us?
“Please. She didn’t mean it,” Natty begged, getting in front of us and trying to slow him down.
But Natty was no roadblock, not for this whale of a guy, and she might as well have been a bug in the path of a car. He swept her aside with his free arm, sending Natty sprawling backward. Her head made a hollow thwack! sound against the hardwood.
Seeing her on the ground like that triggered something in me. “Lemme go.” I thrashed, wringing my wrist in the circle of his unflinching grip. “I can explain. This was all a big mistake.” I couldn’t dislodge myself. All I managed to do was make him yank my arm even harder.
“The only mistake is letting you kids in here . . .” You kids. We were all alike to this guy. “Little fuckers are always messin’ things up, thinkin’ you can call your daddies and have ’em bail you out.” He was muttering as he half shoved, half dragged me. “Not this time. This time you can answer to the law.”
Hot sparks exploded behind my eyes. It wasn’t pain, though, not this sensation. It was sheer-complete-utter panic.
Above us, the monitors and TV screens began to blink, flashing erratically.
Somewhere, down on the lanes, several pins crashed together loudly. The jarring and unexpected sound was followed immediately by another set of pins falling, then another and another. And after each crash, there was the mechanical whir of the automatic pin machines as they worked to set the fallen pins up once more.
Heads whipped around to see what—or who—was causing all the pins to collapse, but the lanes were all deserted since everyone had gathered around us.
Now we weren’t moving at all—me, the boss man, no one in the bowling alley.
“What the—” he whispered, but instead of loosening, his grip on me got tighter, more painful.