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“What do youallowed to do this?” I asked

“Well” Avery bit her lip, looking torn “See…”

She looked like she didn’t want to tell me

That’s when I kneas bad

“Spit it out,” I ordered as I squatted down and hefted the giant keg of beer into place

Or, at least, I tried to It wasn’t budging

Mainly because I was five-foot-three, a hundred and fifteen pounds soaking wet, and barely had tiet a run in, let alone any squats

Meaning, the ninety-pound keg wasn’tby itself At least not today

“Come around here and help me,” I ordered

Avery did, walking around the bar of the strip club that I worked in and grabbing one side of the keg

Together, we hefted it into place

Then I got to work hooking up the connections

“Okay,” Avery started again “I’ to blurt out my idea, okay?”

I gave her a droll look before starting to line the glasses up the way I liked them

Just as Avery was about to open her , the door to the bar opened and then banged shut, and I grinned

“Hi, Lynn” I smiled “You’re early today”

“Meeting soround, Kilgore’s—or the outskirts of Kilgore’s—newest strip club, said

Actually, it was an old club

One that apparently Lynn had won off a guy in a poker game, decided he would like to turn it around, and had restored it to its vintage glory

When he’d opened it a few o, I didn’t think he expected it to do as well as it did

The door banged again, and Bruno walked in

Bruno was someone I didn’t know all that well, but when I looked at hi he was of the same caliber as Lynn and my father were

My father was ex-CIA and a whole lot of other things Lynn was a whole lot of other things—those were my dad’s words, not mine But really, I didn’t actually knohat Lynn did

I’d heard quite a bit about him over the course of my life, and I still hadn’t quite pinpointed what it was that he did—or didn’t—do

Bruno was much the same

And someone I tried to avoid at all costs Not because he was creepy or anything, but just because he was kind of scary, and I tried not to get noticed because getting noticed led totheir noses into my life when I didn’t want them to