I’d built this life. I didn’t want to have to parlay to keep it.
Without a word, he flattened his palm on the top of the glass case that housed my rare treasures. When he lifted his hand, I expected to see his coin because the item glinted silver. But as I leaned in, I saw something that sent snakes disco dancing in my belly.
Because it meant I had to help him.
The Pewter Buddha
Hard to believe such a small item could cause me so much trouble.
I stared at it for a long moment, willing it to disappear, but like Chance, it wouldn’t. Not until I handled it and followed the trail to its source. The last time I saw this little pewter pocket Buddha, it had been cupped in Yi Min-chin’s hand.
It wasn’t valuable—such things sold for around two bucks—but his mother rubbed it for luck or when she was nervous, and it had never been out of her possession before to the best of my knowledge. The fact that it lay on my counter...
Well, I understood Chance’s expression a whole lot better now.
“Tell me what you know.” I still didn’t touch it, but he knew my acquiescence was a foregone conclusion. Over the course of our benighted relationship, I came to love his mom more than I ever loved him.
Sometimes I missed him; sometimes I hated him. I hadn’t thought I’d see him again. My life tends to run by chapters, and when I close one, there are no recurring characters, mainly because they lie beneath six feet of cold dirt. So I suppose Chance did well enough with me; he was still breathing when I left him.
While he seemed to gather his thoughts, I knelt and fished from the minifridge a couple of old-fashioned Cokes, the kind that come in bottles that remind you of a sexy woman’s figure. Because I was shaken, the Cokes managed to feed me glimpses of the manufacturing plant and the truck that carried them to the store, the sweaty man with a comb-over who stocked them on the cooler shelf before I bought them.