Page 23 of Catching Flynn

“Keep your head on a swivel.”

“Same thing,” Flynn argued. “Keep swiveling. Swivel it. Both make your head move around.”

If they were alone, Zavier would kiss the hell out of him. “Swivel your food so we can bounce.”

Flynn threw his head back and laugh. End of argument.

Chapter Six

“I don’t see why you won’t tell me,” Flynn huffed, clicking his seatbelt in place. Wherever Zavier was taking him, it required borrowing Colton’s shiny black pickup, which made him even more curios.

“It’s not a surprise if I tell you.” Zavier turned the key. The truck started so quietly, it didn’t even sound like it was running. Every car Flynn owned had been loud enough to get a few tickets, falling apart, or both. One winter he’d had to pull over on a snowy back road just to grab his muffler. The wire hangers hadn’t lasted aa long that time, and Flynn ended up fighting two raccoons just to get it back.

What were they going to with a rusty muffler, sell it for tiny mittens and scarfs?

“I can give you a small clue.”

Flynn bounced in his seat like a caffeinated gremlin, dying for any information Zavier would give him. Surprises were the worst. Not the gifts, unless that person didn’t like you. It was the waiting that made Flynn feral.

Why make people suffer? He would’ve been perfectly peachy celebrating Christmas the day after Black Friday.

“What is it?” he asked eagerly, hoping he could figure out the surprise from the small clue.

“It’s a forty minute drive.” Zavier pulled from the apartment parking lot then made a left.

“What kind of clue even is that?” +Flynn muttered, watching the town thin out through the passenger window. “You’ve basically told me distance exists.”

The gorgeous prick only smiled and kept driving.

A man should not be allowed to look so smug while withholding information. It was unfair. Criminal, even. Between the fitted dark Henley stretched across Zavier’s shoulders and the relaxed grip on the steering wheel, he looked less like a bodyguard and more like the embodiment of sin.

Flynn was trying not to stare, but failing with quiet dedication.

Beyond the glass, Crimson Hollow gave way to stretches of open land and low fencing. Thick clouds pressed over everything, turning the late afternoon flat and silver.

No rain yet, but the air felt heavy with it. Fields ran dull green beneath the brooding sky, and patches of brush moved faintly in the breeze. Here and there, weathered signs leaned by the roadside, paint peeling, arrows pointing nowhere Flynn cared about.

“Am I being murdered romantically?” Flynn asked. “Because if this is a ditch situation, I’d like a little warning. And a ten minute start.”

With one hand loose on the wheel, Zavier glanced at him. “You talk more when you’re nervous.”

“Silence is where dread breeds.”

A low chuckle filled the truck. “You trust me?”

Annoyingly, yes. Flynn looked at his own hands folded in his lap, then back out at the long strip of road ahead. “That feels like a manipulative question.”

“Still waiting on the answer.”

Through the windshield, a rusted sign finally appeared up ahead, bolted to two wooden posts beside a chain-link gate.

FLYING CLAY SHOOTING RANGE read the top line in fading red letters. Smaller black text beneath listed rates, lane rules, and a warning about eye and ear protection.

Flynn blinked. “...Oh.”

Zavier pulled in.

For a long moment, Flynn just stared. The range opened up over a wide stretch of packed dirt and scrub grass, fenced off in long rectangular lanes that pointed toward open fields and berms beyond. Shotgun reports cracked through the overcast air at irregular intervals, each one sharp enough to make him flinch. Orange clay fragments glittered against the dark ground in broken pieces near some of the stations. A cinderblock office sat near the entrance with a faded vending machine humming beside it and a rack of protective earmuffs hanging by the window.