Peter Miles Has to Die

Peter Miles Has to Die

Chapter One

DYLAN

There are events in life that mark you and events in life that make you.

Beck’s death had marked Dylan. She’d carried it like a burden the past several months, a ghost taking up a permanent lease in her mind. She thought about Beck more now than when she’d been alive. At home, at the grocery store, even during her busiest shifts at the bar, it was impossible for Dylan to exorcize the memories of her dead friend.

She’d been coping. Furious, but coming to terms with it.

Until he slid onto the barstool across from her that Thursday night.

“Hi there, gorgeous,” he said.

For a moment Dylan froze, her eyes locked on him. Then the pint glass she was holding slipped from her fingers and shattered around the toes of her Doc Martens 1461s.

“F***,” Dylan said, but not because of the broken glass.

“Oh, shit!” He pressed his fist to his mouth. His eyes were round in mock shock. “Didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

Lowering his hand to the bar, he grinned. A swarm of goosebumps crawled up Dylan’s back.

If he knew who she was, he didn’t show it. Was she not worth remembering? Of course, the first and last time they’d met had been at Beck’s New Year’s party. That was nearly a year ago. It’d been dark, he’d been drunk, and they’d spent less than two minutes together. Since then, Dylan had also let her hair grow longer and dyed it from blond to black.

He didn’t remember who she was. And now, here he was, sitting on a stool at the bar where she worked, looking at Dylan like she owed him something.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Carefully stepping around the broken glass, she left the bar and pushed her way through the swinging door that led to the back. The smell of cooking oil spilled from the kitchen at the end of the hall. She stepped into her manager’s tiny office. Jason rarely used it, preferring instead his regular booth out front where the beer taps were within arm’s reach, and he could make sure she wasn’t skimming from the till or drinking on the job herself.

Hand trembling, she brought the phone to her ear. Her fingers hovered over the keypad. Who should she call? Isabel? Priya? Both?

She shifted her gaze to the clock over the filing cabinet. It was just after seven. Isabel would be home by now, her classes done for the day. Closing her eyes, Dylan tried to remember if Priya worked evening shifts at the hospital on Thursdays.

But what would she say? That their best friend’s killer had just walked into Aces of Spades?

Her mind raced, Beck’s ghost elbowing out every other thought, screaming at her: Do something. Beck had always said the three of them—Dylan, Priya, and Isabel—were like her sisters. They were supposed to have one another’s backs. But they’d failed Beck. Dylan most of all.

Slowly, she lowered the receiver back into place. It wouldn’t do any good to call either of them. Not now. She glanced at the calendar tacked to the wall over the desk. Above SEPTEMBER 1993, two impossibly small kittens were asleep inside a pair of coffee mugs. Dylan grabbed a red pen from the pencil cup and drew three angry circles around that day’s date: September 2.

A small, hard walnut of rage formed in her as she left the office, grabbed a broom and dustpan from the storage closet, and headed back to the front bar.

He hadn’t moved.

“Be with you in a sec,” she said, keeping her tone neutral and eyes on the shattered glass as she swept it up.

“That’s fine, gorgeous. You take your time.”

Dylan’s fist tightened around the broom handle at the indulgence in his tone. As if he were doing her a favor.

She dumped the glass in the trash and returned the broom and dustpan to the closet. As she stepped out into the front again, Dylan pulled her damp gray shirt away from her lower back. Despite the ancient AC unit’s best efforts, the heat had snuck in to wrap its fleshy arms around the room. That was September in the Texas Panhandle: eager for fall, reluctant to let summer go.

For once, she welcomed it. The heat stoked her mood like embering coals, helped raise her anger to a fever pitch.

Now she didn’t hesitate. Dylan walked right up to the counter and, to stop herself from settling her knuckles in his face, gripped the edge with both hands as she asked, “What can I get you?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Another grin, partnered with a wink. “I’ll have a Bud.”

This time, she didn’t care. Let him think he was in the clear. That he was too clever, too well-connected, too untouchable.

By the time she’d filled the beer glass and set it down on the counter, Dylan had made up her mind. She knew it as certainly as she knew her eyes were blue.

And that she’d never talk to Beck ever again.

An image became clear in her mind, a telescope twisting into focus. Beck’s death had marked her, but this day would make her. It might even redeem her. She understood what she had to do next.

Dylan didn’t know when. She didn’t know how. But she did know one thing for sure.

The thought flared bright, a neon sign at the back of her mind:

Peter Miles has to die.