Taken By Storm by Emmie Mears

woman — her name tag says Bonnie — glances over her shoulder. "I reckon I'd like to help, but my boss probably wouldn't like me giving out information about our customers."
    Just then, the man behind her heads back through a swinging door, and I pull out a stack of twenties and set them down in front of me, careful to keep it out of view of the one other real customer in the shop. Bonnie's eyes triple in size, and she darts another look behind her.
    "Want to make a quick grand and save some lives? To the hells with your gods damned boss." I'm gambling on the assumption that she, like most retail workers, isn't overly fond of her supervisor.  
    "Uh," she says.
    "Look. You can help me, save me some time, and make some money. Or I can just sit yonder all day —" I point outside to the parking lot, "— and just wait until I see some dodgy bastard come in here and leave with an armful of meat."
    She reaches out and takes the money. "He'll be in around two," she says. "He's always alone. I don't know his name, but he's always twitchy. Real twitchy. Wears a pendant like the yin yang y'all use as a symbol, but different."
    Bonnie has gone from zero to sleuth in about three seconds. She pulls out a length of receipt paper, scribbles on it with a pen to make sure the ink's flowing, and sketches out what she means. It's the yin yang, all right, but the tail of the black section is bleeding into the white one, swallowing it.
    I take the paper and stuff it in my pocket. "Thank you." Looking over at Carrick and the others and then back at Bonnie, my eyes fall on a stack of filets. "I'll also take five pounds of those filets. You can put that on my card."
    Blinking, she starts packing up the order, a question in her eyes.
    "Bait," I lie, deadpan as I can manage.
    Bonnie nods seriously.
    We've got three hours before our little hells-zealot shows up, so we run the steaks home — each of the shades gulps down one of them, saving the rest for later — and I run through a drive-thru so I can eat something not raw.  
    We get back at one, and the waiting begins.  
    Jax suggests we park the car behind one of the other businesses on the street, out of sight just in case someone knows what I drive. We spread out, each staying as inconspicuous as we can. Carrick is in the car behind the wheel, in my line of sight.  
    The minutes slip by, and in the distance I watch a traffic light go through its cycles, the afternoon flow of cars sluggish and unhurried. Two o'clock comes and goes, and a breeze picks up, chasing clouds in front of it to cover the sky.
    It's 2:37 when the van pulls up.
    It fills me with a vague sort of disappointment that it looks exactly like you would expect a hells-worshipping fuckhead to drive. A black minivan with half-worn off stickers littering the tail end, it needs a new muffler and belches black smoke from the tailpipe as it careens into the parking lot.  
    The man who gets out of it certainly fits the twitchy description, sporting tight black jeans that look like they've been laundered by an asbestos factory and a tank top that probably used to be white once upon a decade. Now it about matches the sallow pastiness of his skin. He looks like month old mashed potatoes. On top of all of that, his dingy blond hair is cut in a mullet.
    May the gods help us all.  
    I can't see the pendant from where I'm lurking, but I can see that he's wearing one. I make eye contact with Evis, who's all the way across the lot, pretending to clean his fingernails with a pocket knife I gave him. Or maybe he's not pretending, but either way I know my brother's body language well enough to see that his attention is fully fixated on our putrid little hells-zealot.
    The mullet bedecked prince of hells wannabe disappears into the butcher shop, and Carrick pulls the car around to the side of the shop itself, stopping it about twenty feet from me.  
    My foot taps on the parking lot, and I'm not sure of the source of my jitters. This is good.