Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (best life changing books txt) 📕

I saw the sand around him expanding as he drew long breaths. “I’m gonna kill you, woman. You hear me? I’m going to come back from this and kill you slow. I’ll film that, too.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” I asked. “Tell us what else you know so we can end this, for god’s sake.”

“Fuck you.” Dimitri spat blood on the sand.

“Dimitri, come on,” I said.

“Nah. Fuck all y’all,” he sneered. “You want to kill me, go ahead and kill me. I’d love to be the reason you didn’t find her. I hope she’s dead out here somewhere with her bones baking in the sun like fucking breadsticks.”

Ada stood and I cried out for her not to strike or kick Dimitri again, but instead she went to her Porsche and brought out a small black backpack. From it she extracted a bottle then walked back to Dimitri’s head. I watched in quiet horror as she squeezed a syrupy liquid all over him. I smelled honey on the wind.

“Stop! Stop! What the fuck is wrong with you!” Dimitri tried to tilt his head out of the stream. The honey gathered in folds and slopped over his ears, making thick brown beads on the sand.

“You know what kind of ants they got out in the desert?” Ada said to me. She scooped the excess honey off the side of the squeeze bottle and licked it off her finger. “You’re the smart one. You might be interested. I was googling them while I was sitting in the car waiting for you slowpokes to arrive. They got about fifty different types of ant around here. There’s the harvester ant. The carpenter ant. I guess those are the working ants. The guys who get shit done. But then there’s the fire ants. They just fuck shit up. There’s the regular fire ant and the red imported fire ant. They’re the ones that inject venom into you. By the time anyone finds this guy, his head will be the size of a beach ball.”

“Ada,” I sighed.

“You know what eats ants?” She bent and looked Dimitri in the face. “Tarantulas. You know what eats tarantulas? Rattlesnakes.”

“She was seeing some cop,” Dimitri said. “That’s all I know.”

Sneak and I glanced at each other.

“She was having an affair?” I asked.

“I caught her with a second phone. She tried to deny it. Say it was a friend’s.”

“This cop,” I said. “Was his name Al Tasik?”

“I don’t fucking know, man,” Dimitri said. “I never knew his name. I saw him with her once. He had a stupid-ass military cut, like a flat-top.”

“Blond hair? Fifties?”

“No, brown hair. Young. Like twenties.”

“How’d you know he was a cop?” Ada leaned on the hood of her car.

“I’m from the hood—I know a goddamn cop when I see one. He walked like he had a stick up his ass. And one time I caught her on my laptop looking up a police station. San Jasinte. I figured that’s where he worked.”

I beckoned Ada and Sneak to our car. Ada slid into the driver’s seat, which didn’t surprise me. The air was stifling inside the vehicle. I wound down my window and tried to suck air in from outside.

“Who the fuck is Al Tasik?” Ada asked, watching me in the rearview mirror.

“A cop in West LA. He’s been very interested in me since I came in asking about Dayly. I don’t know why.”

“You got another cop on the inside who can tell you why?” Ada asked. “A cop might be useful in all this. Track the guy with the flat-top. Tell you where the investigation lies, if there is one.”

I said nothing. My stomach was stirring.

“You said Dimitri is gang affiliated.” Sneak turned to Ada. “He might have found out about the affair and had some of his friends come after Dayly. We should question him about that next.”

“I don’t think we should question him about another goddamn thing,” I said. “We need him out of that hole before he gets heat stroke, or a collapsed lung from the pressure of the sand on his ribcage.”

“Your tone sounds a little like you think I’ve done the wrong thing this morning.” Ada’s eyes in the mirror were like fireballs. “I came out here and labored in the sun for hours to help you.”

“You dug that hole yourself? I thought it must have been your goons.” Sneak glanced out into the desert, looking for them.

“Girl, you think I can’t dig my own fucking hole?” Ada shifted in her seat to take Sneak in. “What the hell you think I was doing before I was rich enough to have goons do that for me? This is my bread and butter. I love this shit. I don’t need Mike and Fred coming out here kicking heads for me, ruining my fun. Why the hell do you think I’m here? Because of you shitbirds? I’ll take any excuse to make a fool scream for his life.”

“That aside,” I said, “your tactics, while much appreciated, are a bit aggressive for our taste.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sneak said. “I say we rev the engine a little. Make him shit his pants.”

“He’s not wearing pants.” Ada smiled.

“We need to check out the San Jasinte lead,” I said. “Find the guy with the flat-top. See what he knows. San Jasinte is the same place on the front of the parachuting pamphlet. It’s not a coincidence.”

“Where the fuck is San Jasinte?” Sneak asked.

I was scrolling on my phone, looking at maps. “East. Miles from anywhere. Another day. Right now we pull Dimitri out of that hole,” I said.

“You two idiots get out of here,” Ada said. She was leaning forward, smiling at him through the windshield. “I’ll get him out in a few minutes. I think I can see a big ol’ ant headed his way.”

Dear Dayly,

In your last letter, you were talking about my reasons for killing all those people in the Inglewood heist. You said, “I don’t think that translates into