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“Ten dollars.”

He put a twenty on my cutting table.

“I’ll get your change,” I said.

“Keep it.”

I was still opening my mouth when the curtain dropped behind him. His bike fired up out front, rougher than every other engine in town because he liked it that way, and tore off down Main.

All that time to walk through my door, and he’d left skid marks getting back out of it as quickly as possible.

The woman came in a little before closing. She was in her forties and dressed for a city. She looked completely out of place here. Cream blouse, gold at her ears, heels made for carpet. She had a garment bag over her arm and a nice smile.

“Your sign says alterations,” she said.

“Hems, zippers, patches and miracles when I can. What have you got for me?”

It was a dress. Dark green silk, cut on the bias, the kind I’d only ever seen in magazines. It needed to come up an inch and a half. I took her into the back, stood her on my box and knelt at her feet with pins in my mouth.

“Inés Cordero,” she said, from above me. “I have a linen company in Deming. We supply motels and restaurants. We work with a few laundromats.”

“Mm,” I said, around the pins I held in between my lips as I worked.

“This is a good location. All cash, I imagine.”

“Mostly.”

“And you run it by yourself.” She turned a little so I could reach the back. “That must be so hard. A woman on her own.”

I pinned. “I manage.”

“Eleven hundred a month to your mother in Tucson, to buy her out. Two machines down since spring. You lock up alone after dark and walk out to your car.” Her voice stayed pleasant, like she was just discussing the weather. “I’d say you manage very well, considering.”

The pin in my fingers stopped halfway through the silk.

Three people knew the number on that check. Brynn, my mother and me.

“I’d like to help,” Inés Cordero said. “Every Friday I bring you four thousand dollars. You deposit it with your week’s cash. My plant bills you for commercial washing, you pay the bill by check, and you keep four hundred for your trouble. Nobody counts quarters, Ava-Rose. That’s sixteen hundred a month for carrying a bag to the bank.”

I took the pins out of my mouth one at a time, before I swallowed them.

Sixteen hundred a month. I could fix the washers and own this place a year early. I could quit eating cereal for dinner the week the check went out.

But I knew what this was. It was cartel money. Everyone knew they were trying to get into this town, and this was money laundering if I ever saw it. Tomas Rivas had spent two years trying to buy, scare or burn his way into Salvation. The Unholy Few were the reason he was still on the outside, and I’d sewn the patches on the men who kept him there.

“No, thank you,” I said.

She looked down at me. The smile stayed where it was.

“You should take a few days to really think about it, honey.”

“I don’t need to. The hem’s twenty dollars. It’ll be ready Friday.”

“I’m away this Friday. I’ll come the Friday after.” She said it kindly. “That gives you a little longer to think.”

She changed behind my screen and came out with the dress over her arm. She laid it across my cutting table and straightened the skirt, in no hurry at all.

“A woman on her own,” she said again, gently, “should think about who her friends are.”