The Attraction by Douglas Clegg Page A

a feel. And you slugged her. Get a grip. See a psychiatrist. But don’t ever hit her again.”
    Then, to Tammy, “You okay?”
    She rubbed her neck and accepted his outstretched hand as a lift up. “I’m fine.”
    “Oh baby, I’m sorry,” Griff said. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
    “I know you are.” Tammy let go of Josh’s hand and stepped toward Griff.
    I do not believe this,
Josh thought.
They are going to kiss and make up.
    And that’s when he happened to glance down and see the smashed-up body of Scratch.
    “We broke it. Holy mother of—”
    “Damn it to hell!” a gruff voice shouted from down the corridor.
    Josh spun around—it was none other than Charlie Goodrow with a big shotgun at his side.

Chapter Eight
    1
    One of them shrieked; another shouted a brief but potent profanity; and still another gasped. Josh wasn’t even sure who’d shouted—it might’ve even come from his mouth. They all went running—at least that’s what it seemed like—Josh pushing Bronwyn forward through the final door that expelled them into blinding sunlight. They ran as fast as they could to the car, which was parked just outside the garage bay at the side of the Brakedown Palace Gas and Sundries building. Josh noticed that the gas cap was off, but that didn’t matter. They had to get the hell out of there.
    “Where’s Griff?” Tammy cried out, alternately laughing hysterically and whining a bit.
    “Just get in!” Josh said, shoving her into the back of the car. Ziggy, somehow, had already managed to squeeze into the back ahead of them.
    “Hurry up! He’s crazy!” Bronwyn shouted from the front seat.
    Then there was the sound of the shotgun’s blast.
    “Griff!” Bronwyn shouted.
    But Griff came running around the corner with what looked like a kid in his arms. He was laughing hysterically as he ran.
    “Go! Go!” he shouted and then leapt into the shotgun seat of the car, squeezing Bronwyn over into Josh’s driver’s seat. Josh got the car in reverse, and his foot dropped heavily onto the accelerator. The car screeched, and then he tried to put it in drive, but it went in neutral instead. The thought flashed through his mind that the engine would stall, but he knocked the lever into drive, and at that moment, here’s what he saw, frozen in some strange tableau, as if he’d set off a flash camera to stop the action of life for a moment:
    Not Charlie Goodrow running from the back of the Palace, but someone who looked big and slovenly and had a little blond sidekick with him. It registered who it was:
    Dave Olshaker? What the—
    Then the action of life began again, and Dave limped and half-jogged toward them. “I been shot!” Dave shouted, clutching his ass. “I been shot!”
    “Sons of bitches!” his sidekick shouted at them.
    “Tammy! I love you, baby! Come back to me!” Dave howled, then fell to the pavement, his hands still nursing his butt.
    But the Pimpmobile was already heading out onto the service road, kicking up dust and gravel in its wake.
    2
    “This is just too much to process,” Bronwyn said when Josh finally slowed the car down, having driven off the road a little and out behind a hill at least twenty miles away from the Brakedown Palace.
    “What the hell was Olshaker doing? What the hell?” Josh asked, glancing in the rearview mirror at Tammy, who glared back at him.
    “Don’t look at me,” she said. “I dumped him a long time ago. I guess some people just never give up.”
    “He’s a prick,” Griff said. “But looks like he got shot up in the hiney.”
    Sometime between spinning out of the gas station and getting out onto the dusty road, Josh had realized what Griff had brought with him.
    The Unspeakable Scratch.
    “Little bastard,” as Ziggy started to call it.
    “You stole that thing?”
    “Come on. It’s not just a thing. It’s the Unspeakable Mystery of the Ancient Aztecs,” Griff said, holding his prize up on his lap, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Hello, my