Wide Open by Deborah Coates

made it to the celebration.
    She tucked forty dollars and her driver’s license in her back pocket and headed downstairs.
    Her father was waiting for her in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. He tossed something at her. She had to back up a half step to catch it.
    It was a cell phone.
    “It was hers.” Her father cleared his throat. “I thought … I haven’t shut it off or anything. You need one. You’re not going to be here that long. And … ah, shit, just take it.” Like she was arguing with him.
    He went on into the kitchen. Hallie turned the cell phone over in her hands. Nothing special about it, probably the free one that came with service. She flipped it open, turned it on, and scrolled to the address book.
    Nothing.
    No names, no phone numbers, like Dell had never even used it.
    Her father was at the kitchen sink, wiping his hands on an old kitchen towel that used to be blue but had faded to a random gray from countless washings. It was almost completely threadbare in spots, and there was an old burn streak along the edge from some ancient kitchen disaster. It still did its job, though, drying wet hands and dishes, and her father never got rid of anything as long as it had some use in it.
    “Don’t be—,” he began, and stopped. Then, “Be careful.”
    “I’m always careful,” she said.
    He laughed.
    *   *   *
     
    The Bobtail Inn— TRUCKS PARK AROUND BACK —was five miles from the nearest town. Nothing but an open-span pole building surrounded by the biggest gravel parking lot in three counties. It was a little before eight when Hallie pulled up, and the lot was already half-full. Half a dozen young men in cowboy hats and Wranglers were leaning on pickup trucks near the north entrance. They each had a longneck in their hands, and when one of them threw his head back and laughed, his neck showed tan against the bright white of his shirt.
    It was so familiar, laughter pouring out open doors, tires crunching on gravel, boys in precision-ironed shirts, girls in denim miniskirts and cowboy boots. Nothing would ever be the way it was. But this place? This was a place Hallie understood.
    Dell and Eddie flanked her as she crossed the lot, close enough that she could feel them both. She’d called Brett and Lorie on the way, and though they wouldn’t be here yet, she wasn’t waiting, wanted that first cool gulp of beer right from the bottle.
    She wasn’t more than two steps inside when someone grabbed her arm and yanked her sideways.
    “Hallie Michaels.”
    Pete Bolluyt snagged her right up tight against him, his hand gripping her elbow hard enough to bruise. “Imagine running into you here,” he said. His voice like molasses, all slow drawl, but the iron grip on her elbow told Hallie he was wound tight as a coil of barbed wire underneath. But then, he always was, even back in high school, like he was always waiting for something that never came.
    He wore a big black cowboy hat, a black and silver shirt, and the biggest damn belt buckle—
    “Let go of me, Pete,” she said.
    “Or—?” He grinned at her.
    She looked him in the eye and stomped on his instep as hard as she could. A muscle ticced under his left eye. He let go of her arm.
    She took a step back.
    He looked the same and yet, different, a glittery … something in his eyes that Hallie didn’t remember from before. His face had thinned down, cheekbones sharp and prominent.
    Hallie noticed these things only peripherally. What had captured her attention, drawn it like a missile sensing heat, was Pete’s belt buckle, which had exactly—exactly—the same symbol etched in silver that Hallie had seen at the base of Dell’s neck. Hallie’s breath caught in her throat.
    “Heard you been asking questions,” Pete said.
    “What?” Hallie pulled her attention from the buckle—what was that symbol?
    “Asking questions—about Dell, about her death, about the company,” Pete said.
    “‘The Company’? What is