Chapter 7: The Bronco

The caterer's office was in an industrial park off Highway 71.

Priya went in with a clipboard and her mother's list, and I went in with a laptop and a lie.

By the time we were done, the guest count on the order had dropped from two hundred and twenty to twenty-two.

It was sabotage number two.

I had made the typo myself on the spreadsheet, and the caterer had nodded and said, "Wonderful, we'll pull the rest of the lamb."

Priya had seen me do it and said nothing.

She had also not corrected me, and she had kept her face very still.

Now we were sitting in my gray Bronco in the back lot at dusk, behind a row of refrigerated trucks.

The engine was off, the windows were down a crack, and the sky was orange.

Priya wore a green wrap dress that tied at the waist, and her glasses, and no stockings.

She had her feet on the dash.

"Twenty-two," she said.

"It was a typo."

"It was a beautiful typo."

"You're not mad?"

"I'm" She turned her head against the seat and looked at me. "I'm not sure what I am."

She reached across the console and laid her hand on my thigh.

I looked straight ahead through the windshield, at a man in a white apron wheeling a cart of crates across the asphalt.

"Priya, there's a guy."

"I see him."

"He can see us."

"He can see a woman in a car." Her thumb moved along the seam of my jeans. "He can't see this."

She slid her hand to the inside of my leg.

My whole body went tight.

"You wouldn't."

"You wouldn't what, Jo?"

I turned my head.

Her face was serious, and her eyes were bright behind her glasses, and I realized she meant to take the lead from me.

"My turn," she said.

"Priya."

"Don't talk."

She unbuckled my belt with one hand.

It was slow, and deliberate, and the clink of the metal was very loud in the small car.

The man with the cart stopped to adjust a crate, a hundred feet away.

I gripped the steering wheel.

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