Page 52 of The Best Shot

I shoved my hands in my pockets and started toward the entrance.

They saw me coming, and suddenly became very interested in a poster for a Romanian slow cinema film no one in this county was going to see.

Tabby gasped theatrically. “Hale! Fancy seeing you here.”

“Y’all ain’t slick,” I said. “I want to be real clear about that. There’s a word for what y’all are doing tonight, and it’s nowhere damn close to slick.”

Tabby grinned like I’d just paid her a compliment. “We support the arts.”

Annie didn’t even attempt denial. “Field research.”

Yasmine was holding a flyer.

Upside down.

She still hadn’t looked at me.

“Ava?” I said, because of course.

“Yup. In Dallas with Grant,” Annie confirmed. “She’s concerned there’s something wrong with you.”

“Thought so.”

Yasmine was standing feet away with that upside-down flyer in her hand and her attention anywhere but on me.

I didn’t know what it meant yet, and this wasn’t the place to figure it out. She finally lifted her eyes, bit at her lip like she was bracing, but I wasn’t going to make her say a word. Not there with our friends watching us.

“Ricochet?” I said instead. Time to reset the board.

“Yes,” Tabby said immediately.

Annie nodded. “I’m starving.”

Yasmine hesitated half a breath. “Sure.”

“Ride together?”

Annie perked up, her eyes cutting across the half-empty lot to where I was parked. “In the Chevelle?”

I pulled the keys from my pocket.

“Fuck yeah,” she said.

She’d seen my father’s 1970 Chevelle SS in the shop once and started treating me like I was the keeper of a holy relic.

I handed her the keys. “You can drive.”

“You’re serious?” Annie asked.

“You so much as think the word burnout, I’m taking them back.”

“So drive it wrong. Got it.”

“Annie.”

“I heard you.” She clutched the keys to her chest. “I respect her.”

As we started toward the cars, I fell into step beside Yasmine.