Page 6 of Jackrabbit

Chapter 4

Beau stood in the mess of parts he’d made and closed his eyes. His heart was pounding, and he was breathing hard, a bitter taste in the back of his throat as he shook out his hands. They were shaking.

Later, Merc.

Like that little shit was sent specifically to haunt him, this was the second time in four hours that Beau’s past had slammed into him going full speed. And now all of his carefully organized parts were scattered across the floor. His own fool fault. He’d let his temper get the better of him, and now it would be hours before he got the carburetor back in, if he could at all. With the way the parts had hit the floor when he’d kicked his bench, he was going to be damn lucky if nothing was broken.

He sank to the ground to gather parts. A pin under the left wheel well. A bolt sitting against his toolbox. A hose had slithered under the car and curled up, and his goddamn leg cramped up on him as he reached for it. Once he’d snagged it, he sat on his ass right there on the garage floor and pressed his back against a wheel.

Once the floodlights cut, the crickets started up again, screaming into the dark. And Beau was tired. Bone-deep, soul-sucking tired. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he grunted as he lifted his hips to pull it out only to find an email from his supplier letting him know the shop towel delivery was running late.

Since his phone was out anyway, Beau opened up his search engine and typed in Colton Rourke. An invasion of privacy, probably, but so far as he wasconcerned, this was a case of turnabout being fair play. If the kid could throw Beau’s past at his feet like tacks to be tread on, then Beau could find some of his own.

Not a kid, apparently. Twenty-seven, said an article about his recent arrest, the kind of article that gushed about his tattoos and his smile even as it talked about the danger of what he’d done. The article mentioned a pedigree that had to be a crock of shit. Prep school and karting champion? That punk?

Beau rolled his eyes and tried another search, adding ‘kart racing’ to it. The most recent article was from eleven years ago, and it highlighted the budding career of a young Colton Rourke who had been racing unsponsored since he was eight years old. There were images of a young boy, unmistakably the same one who had just stormed into his garage, with those same messy curls. He was holding trophies, sitting on his kart, getting bigger each time Beau found a new article.

There were never any parents with him, but always the same young man. Standing next to him or holding him on his shoulders. Ruffling his hair, just a shade or two lighter than the other boy’s but lacking that slight red undertone. The older boy had one dimple instead of two, and he was listed as Connor Rourke.

Colton’s brother. Looking him up was a mistake.

’Local Man, Connor Rourke 25, Dies in Tragic Accident on Morrow Peak.’

Beau fished and hiked up Morrow Peak all the time, and he recognized the road the article showed photos of. There had been two cars in a race, his and a girl’s, and they’d been driving down in the dark with no lights. A deer had run across Connor’s path, and he’d skidded off the road, decimating the guard rail entirely.

The girl lived.

Connor had died on impact.

Finally, there was a picture of the parents. A severe looking woman with straight hair the same shade as Colton’s, wearing stiletto heels and standing nextto a grave next to her husband, whom Colt had gotten his face shape from. They were local and wealthy enough to have a building named after them at ASU.

Colton was a teen, standing in a fitted suit with no tie at least ten feet from his parents. His arms were crossed, and he was carrying all the grief for the whole family in his face.

Beau turned off his phone.

***

It was five in the morning when Beau pulled up to his shop, his truck tires crunching on the gravel in the employee parking lot. The sun was reaching up over the horizon already, and when he stepped out of the cab, early-morning heat washed across his face. He walked through the back entrance and into the lobby, his back pissed all to hell from the hours he’d spent on the garage floor. Forty-two was too damn old for it, and he’d hardly slept besides.

He’d spent the night haunted by memories he’d worked hard to bury. Fourteen-year-old Sutton with his wild curls and his wilder smile, standing across from him at a track at four in the morning and raging because Beau wouldn’t let him stop until his times improved. The only way he’d have gotten through qualifiers in his borrowed kart. He’d wrecked his own.

When he’d finally drifted off last night, Sutton’s carefree laugh had been bleeding into Colton Rourke’s.

He was about to flip on the lights when he caught movement out front. There was someone sitting on one of his benches, his back pressed against the front window. The curls were a dead giveaway, peeking out of the skull cap Colton Rourke had on his head. Beau crept closer. The kid had a thermos in each hand, and he brought the one with a peeling neon design up to his mouth while balancing the shining, pristine one on his knee with two fingers pressed to the lid.

Even after Beau had shot him down so thoroughly, after the kid had left with red eyes and tears in his long lashes. With coffee, apparently—one for Beau, too.

What was he supposed to do with that?

This kid clawed his memories up from their graves, was the ghoul of the worst parts of Beau’s dead best friend. Reckless, stupid, impulsive, with a startling lack of respect for his own life. And for what? The girls? The thrill? It had been both for Sutt.

A delivery truck rumbled up to the curb in front of his shop. It was Tuesday, so that one was Joyce getting a supply delivery. Joyce and her wife had owned the diner next door since before Beau had bought his shop. It was just Joyce now, seventy-two and still running.

Colton turned to listen as Joyce hurried out in one of those puffer jackets that went all the way to her ankles and a bright yellow hat to talk to the driver. The big guy who usually helped bring her delivery to the back didn’t show at the door.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the driver said as he rubbed the back of his neck. His voice was deep and loud enough to carry all the way into the shop. “I would if I could. But it’s a liability, you know.”

Joyce said something back and patted his arm, and the driver ambled up into his truck. He came out a few seconds later, wheeling the first load of boxes, and Joyce lifted two with a smile. The usual guy must have called out again. Beau dropped his keys on the counter and took the last few steps toward the door, but movement outside caught his attention. Colton had left both thermoses on the bench and was sprinting across the lot to pick up the next box on the pile. He didn’t insult Joyce by taking either of hers. Just picked his own up and called after her.