This is one of the "Tales from the Shack." It is in LW in order to keep the series together, but in the case of "Needles & Delaney" there is a very strong LW element to it anyway. This is the third in the "Needles and Delaney" series, and while it pretty much stands on its own, I strongly recommend reading "An Angry Man" and "An Unreasonable Man" if you hadn't already read them, I think they are lot more fun that way. Thanks to blackrandi, sbrooks103x, Bebop03 and stev2244 for the beta reads and editing. This would be unreadable without them. There are others who prefer not to be named; you know who you are and you know you are appreciated.
The Shack: An Implacable Man
"Tacos."
I looked over at Delaney. "Tacos?"
She nodded gravely. "It's Tuesday. Taco Tuesday."
"Sh..." I glanced down at the dollar bill-filled pouch on the console that served as our "swear jar" in the truck. "The only taco place near here is Taco Grande."
She sat up straighter. "Casa del Taco Grande! Best tacos in Virginia! Three Cheese Tacos, Chipotle Power Tacos, Cilantro Lime Tacos, Beefy Bean Tacos, Cheesy Bean Tacos! We ought to get the Big Taco Sampler so we can try them all. Twelve Amazing Tacos!"
I winced when she cheerfully quoted their tag line. "Ramone makes better ones at his food truck. And that damn place is always full of stoners. I hear you can order a dime bag of weed right at the counter."
"I know, it's called the 'Happy-Happy Taco Special'." She grinned. "Ramone is on the other side of the county. And you owe a dollar."
"For what?"
"You said 'damn'."
"That's not a fucking swear word."
"Ha!"
"Dammit."
"Three dollars!" She lit up gleefully.
"I'll put in a dollar. Damn doesn't count." Sheree had made that call for us, saying we needed to at least manage to keep enough money to buy food and gas. Sheree had no idea what Delany was planning to use the money for, but she'd agreed to "referee" for us.
Sheree's birthday was six months away. At the rate we were filling the swear jar, I was beginning to think Delany was going to be able to buy her a new car.
From the smirk on Delaney's face, I could see she'd gotten exactly what she'd wanted. She punctuated her victory with an irritating buzz from the circuit tester she was playing with.
"You're gonna run the damn batteries down."
She snickered and gave another short buzz with it before stuffing it in her pocket.
She'd come up with the idea of a "swear jar," and I thought she'd lost her mind, but every time she cussed, she dutifully put in a quarter. She insisted my 'rate' was a dollar, since I was an adult.
I couldn't bitch about it too much.
Hell, it was kind of my fault, anyway. I'd talked to a friend named Kurt who ran his own security services and training company down in Texas, figuring on making arrangements for Delaney to go down for a "crash bang" driving course in a few years as I'd promised her, and instead, he'd jumped on it immediately. An old team-mate of ours, Tony, who occasionally did work for him, was getting married and he'd talked Kurt and his wife Katie into watching over his new stepdaughter while the happy couple went on a honeymoon.
Delaney got to go to Texas for three weeks for what amounted to an abbreviated bodyguard training course, mostly driving, with some shooting and first aid, along with a couple of other girls about her age. Kurt based it off the training they gave to teenage family members in high-risk situations.
Sheree and I had taken advantage of the situation ourselves; it wasn't really a honeymoon, but I'd taken her to Jamaica for a couple weeks. We got a little sunburned in some interesting places.
When Delaney got off the plane in a black T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of a flipped over burning car with three stick figure girls dancing around it and the logo "Camp Mayhem... Drive It Like You Stole It!" she was practically skipping.
She'd fit in.
All the time we'd spent working on cars and driving them around the lot and the old quarry had really paid off. Probably for the first time in her life, she was the cool kid who could answer the questions every time. When they introduced the girls to the cars and told them to look them over, Delaney had promptly checked the tires, popped the hoods and climbed up to check fluid levels. She'd almost broken the evasion course record set by a professional driver. She helped me when I worked at the free clinic on Thursday evenings, so most of the first aid was pretty easy for her, too.
Most of all, though, she'd made friends, real ones. Delaney called her Camp Mayhem classmates, Mackenzie and Tess, on a video call, every Thursday, to talk about whatever the hell it is that teenage girls talk about. They emailed back and forth, mostly pictures of cars, cats and guns. She'd even brought home a picture of the three of them sitting on the crumpled wreck of a car and hung it up in her room.
She'd also brought home the idea of a swear jar. Apparently, Kurt and Katie thought professional bodyguards and drivers should watch their language, so it was a tradition at the school. I was pretty impressed that she'd only had to pay in thirty dollars, until she admitted that she'd only had to pay a quarter each time.
That sounded a helluva lot more like her.
When Delaney had put the swear jar out in the truck, she'd explained she wanted to use it to get Sheree something for her birthday, so I wasn't dead set against. It did seem to drain the cash out of my wallet regularly.
I finally gave in. We both knew I would, since going to Ramone's would take another forty-five minutes. I pulled the rollback into the parking lot and got out, while Delaney jumped down and bounced alongside me to the front door.
The cashier, a pimple covered guy with long fried bleached-out hair sticking out in all directions from under his cap, stared at us dazedly for a long moment, trying to figure out why on earth anyone would come into a restaurant, then he shook his head and started.
"Welcome to... uh, welcome to..."
I sighed. "Taco Grande. It's 'Welcome to Taco Grande,' and you are going to take our order."
"Hehe. Yeah, that. Dude."
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "It's just a little early to be this baked, isn't it?"
"Heh. Yeah..." He grinned, then stopped as he tried dazedly to remember what we were talking about.
"Look, we'll take..." I glanced down at Delaney who looked back at me hopefully. "...a Big Taco Sampler and two large Cokes."
He punched at the register for a while, apparently randomly. I could see two guys in the back snickering, obviously just as stoned as he was. "Uh... Two, uh, Big Sombrero combos, right?"
"Jesus, look..."
I was cut off by the loud buzz of the circuit tester in Delaney's pocket. I looked down at her sharply. She looked back up at me in pretend alarm. "Your ankle monitor is going off." She peered anxiously outside at the parking lot, then looked up at the stoner. "We should really get this to go."
He stared at us both in shock for a moment, then spun and started grabbing handfuls of tacos off the warmer shelf and stuffing them in a bag. He shoved the bag at us with two large cups. "That'll be... uh..."
"Five bucks?" offered Delaney helpfully.
"Yeah, uh, five bucks."
Delaney giggled all the way out to the rollback. I watched her pull herself up into the cab. "Did you enjoy that?"
