Winner Take All by T. Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online Page A

was only a matter of time.
    Her internal foment and the day’s searing wind masked the man’s approach entirely. Then a shadow fell over her and a man’s voice said, “You just gotta be the Yankee dolly they warned me about.”
    Kirsten scrambled to her feet. “Can I help you?”
    “Soon as they heard I was stopping by, they said I was gonna fall in love with this dolly and I might as well get used to the idea right fast.” He was a redheaded behemoth with a blade for a face. All his features slanted sharply toward the arrow of a nose, the angles so tight even his forehead appeared retooled. The swept-over curl of greasy red hair almost met with his eyebrows, which only accented the barbed glint to his eyes.
    When his gaze drifted down her sweat-stained front, Kirsten shifted her grip on the trowel. “I asked you what you wanted.”
    His grin ridged out in taut compression until his eyes almost disappeared. “Just came by to deliver this check. You ain’t so rich you’d pass up some extra greenbacks. Not with Glenwood camped over here on the trashy side of the river.”
    “I don’t recognize you as one of Mr. Glenwood’s clients.”
    “That’s all right, dolly. We know Marcus.” A blast of wind pried back the sleeve of his rumpled jacket like the lid of a filthy gray jar. Tattoos crawled down his wrist and over the back of his hand. “Somebody oughta told you by now, it ain’t healthy to do your planting in the high heat.”
    She took a step away, backing toward the porch. “Unless you are registered as a client I can’t help you.”
    He tracked her, moving closer in the process. “I’m the one doing the helping, or I would, if you’d stop this two-step across the lawn.”
    “Are you or are you not a client?”
    “I’m what you might call an interested third party. Never had the occasion to meet old Marcus personally. Couldn’t hardly pass up the opportunity to call on the man himself when I heard he was knocking on New Horizons’ door again.”
    She kept her face to him and tried to angle her backward motion toward the house. “Please come back another time and talk with Mr. Glenwood directly.”
    “You don’t look all that busy to me.” He paced lightly along with her. “Hot and bothered, maybe. But I’ve always liked my ladies to glisten.”
    Kirsten aimed the dirt-flecked trowel straight at the man’s heart and screamed,
“Netty!”
    Quick as a striking cottonmouth, the man snatched the trowel from her grasp. He tossed it in the air and caught it at shoulder height, such that it was now aimed for a downward killing blow. His grin was a distillation of menace.
    “What on earth’s going on out here?” The front door slammed back. “Sephus Jones, are you messing with that lady?”
    The grin relaxed a trifle. The man leaned down and jammed the trowel so hard it disappeared into the earth up to his fist. He then reached into his jacket and plucked out an envelope. He whipped forward and jammed it into the front pocket of Kirsten’s shorts. In andout so fast she did not have time to scream. “Deliver that check to Marcus for me, will you?”
    “
Sephus!
You leave that woman alone!”
    Kirsten scampered for the front steps and Netty’s comforting fury. Her entire frame was trembling so hard her footsteps were as unsteady as an infant’s. She could still feel his hand in her pocket.
    “I’m calling the police, you don’t get offa my lawn!”
    The man cast Kirsten another tight spark from those half-seen eyes, and said, “You have yourself a nice old day, now, you hear? Oh, and tell Marcus for me I’m glad to hear he’s decided to dance another tune with us.
Real
glad.”
    The two women watched him saunter to his idling truck and drive off with a tattooed wave. When Kirsten’s breathing stopped shuddering, she said, “He said New Horizons sent him.”
    Netty squinted into the sun-drenched distance. “I’m not the least surprised.”
    “You know him?”
    “Know of him. Sephus