by Nick Petrie
“Not the right ones,” she said. “After Leonard vanished, my best guys were Deacon and Banjo and my dad. That’s why they were on that big run with you. I need a leader of men.”
She was sweating in the steam, strands of hair plastered to her neck and forehead. Looking right at him.
“What about my empty file, at the Pentagon? You’re not worried about that anymore?”
“Recon Marine with a Silver Star? Who protected the client’s profits with his heroic recent actions on the mountain?” She looked at him now, tall and lean and ropy, the towel wrapped around his waist. He felt like a horse getting his teeth checked at auction. Elle seemed older than her twenty-five years. “You’ll do just fine,” she said. “There’ll be a pay raise, of course.”
“Of course.” Peter stepped past her, out of the bathroom, leaving wet footprints through the office and the kitchen to the back porch, where his skin steamed in the cool, dry night air. His old canvas duffel still sat in shadow on the driveway. He felt his lungs open up again, and the tension in his shoulders began to ease. The damp towel began to cool around his waist.
She came through the door behind him. “We can discuss the money,” she said. “For now, can we agree that you’re coming to work in the morning? There’s a lot to do.”
“I have to meet the police,” he said. “I don’t know how long that will take.”
“My phone is filled with voice mails from reporters,” she said. “Coverage could be very good for the company, depending on how it’s presented. Are you comfortable talking to the press?”
Peter wasn’t going to talk to anyone but that trooper, real or fake.
“How will you spin my empty Pentagon file?”
She shrugged. “It’s classified,” she said. “You can’t talk about it. From a public relations standpoint, it’s actually a plus.”
He thought of what Henry might have been like at her age, especially if he hadn’t been carrying the burden of his war. Smart, capable, driven. She couldn’t do anything about her missing husband or her dead father, so she was moving forward in the best way she knew.
He thought about what she’d said when she’d hired him. Three kids to feed and thirty men relying on her for a paycheck.
He doubted she needed him, but she thought she did.
He’d help if he could.
For Henry.
As long as it didn’t get in the way of his main project.
She touched him on his bare shoulder, her fingers warm on his rapidly cooling skin.
“We’ll talk about it,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She walked past him toward the back gate, trailing a hand behind her. He felt the softest tug at the fabric wrapped at his waist. He heard the click of the latch on the closing gate at the exact moment his towel dropped to the ground.
Shit, he was definitely awake now.
18
The lightweight hammock June had sent him was one of the best gifts he’d ever received. It was so light he never felt it in his pack, and she’d included a rain fly to hang over it on wet nights, although he hadn’t needed it much so far. It was his new favorite way to sleep alone.
Sleeping with June was his favorite way to sleep. Although in those few nights together, he had to admit there hadn’t been much actual sleep.
Five nights, he thought. That’s what they’d had, back in March.
Now, in late September, he hoped those five nights were enough to build something solid on.
He dug a T-shirt and some boxers out of his old canvas duffel, then slung the hammock between Henry’s porch posts as he’d done the last three nights. He pushed back through the static long enough to raid the liquor cabinet and pour four fingers of Henry’s good Bulleit bourbon into a heavy glass tumbler.
He took a burning gulp of liquid courage before he picked up Henry’s phone. Suck it up, Marine. He’d written more than a half dozen letters to her, each more than a half dozen pages, but he hadn’t spoken with her in person since spring.
He chickened out with a text.
This is Peter with a borrowed phone. Are you awake?
He’d always tried to keep his texts more or less grammatically correct, but he tried even harder with June, because she’d been an investigative reporter for almost ten years. She was also a night owl who kept odd hours, and it was an hour earlier in Washington State. So she could still be awake.
Before he could get properly settled into the hammock, Henry’s phone rang, loud in the late-night quiet. Peter very nearly spilled his drink, scrambling to answer. “Hey.”
“Is this a booty call?” she asked. “If it is, I might need to change out of these sweatpants.”
In his mind, he could see clearly the smirk on her face, the spray of freckles across the tops of her cheeks. In his mind, she wasn’t wearing sweatpants. She was either wearing her battered old mountain pants and hiking boots, or nothing at all.
“No,” he said. “I called to tell you I was propositioned twice today.”
“Gosh, you must be tired.”
He smiled. “You have no idea.”
He pictured her wide, generous mouth, the long, narrow nose. The bright heat of intelligence in her eyes.
“I’m guessing this isn’t really a booty call,” she said.
He took another bite of bourbon. Might as well get to it.
“Listen, did you get my postcard?”
“Actually, it came today,” she said. Her tone was different. “But it didn’t say much. Do you think you’ll be able to make it up here?”
She was being careful now. They both were.
They’d made no promises to each other. They hadn’t spent enough time together, before. Now it was all too theoretical. Their letters crossing paths in the night.
He knew there was something between them, something real.
But it felt fragile.
“I really want to see you,” he said. “I mean that. This was just supposed to be a quick detour. Favor for a friend. But something’s happened.”
She heard it in his voice. “Tell me.”
He let out his breath. “Remember Henry? From the trail crew?”
“Your friend,” she said. “The bridge builder. Vietnam vet.”
“Right,” Peter said. “Henry’s daughter runs a little security company in Denver. Her husband and another guy went missing with a pile of money, and Henry asked me to come help out for a little while, just a week or so.” He took a slow breath and let it out. “Today, some people tried to hijack a cash delivery. And Henry got killed, along with two other guys I know.”
The phone went silent for a moment, the way they did when nobody was talking. He hated that eerie digital silence. Sometimes it sounded like the other person had hung up.
“That’s not all of it,” she said. “Tell me the rest.”
“Well,” he said. Cleared his throat, swirled the liquor in the glass.
“What, you were there?” He heard the scrape of a chair on the floor, then her fingers clicking on a keyboard. A simple web search would be enough. He heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was there.”
“Jesus, these pictures,” she said. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just talking to you, I’m fine.”
There was a pause. Then, “The Post says four hijackers were killed.”
“Yeah.” He felt the tug in the long muscles of his left arm. The hot spray in his face.
“Listen, Peter,” she said. “No bullshit here. I know who you are, okay? What you can do. What you were trained to do. I’ve seen it up close. Are you really going to make me ask?”
He’d forgotten how strong she was.
“No.” The glass was heavy in his hand, but he didn’t take a drink. No excuses. “I killed all of them. Four bad guys. One with a knife.” He felt it welling up.
“Oh, Peter,” she said.
“I couldn’t sa
ve Henry,” he said. “I tried, but I couldn’t save him.”
“Sometimes you can’t,” she said. “It’s not your fault, Peter. You can’t save them all.”
Something in her voice.
Not pity. Never pity, not from June Cassidy. And not fear, or disgust, which were what he’d worried about the most.
Something else. Maybe some kind of understanding. Some kind of grace.
He felt the weight begin to lift off his chest.
“Was it bad?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“You were protecting your friends?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a choice?”
“No.”
“It was you or them?”
“Yes.”
Her voice was gentle. “You get to choose you, Peter. It’s okay to choose you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
And he did. Right then, he did.
—
“So what are you going to do?” she finally asked.
“What I did for you,” he said. “Find out who’s responsible. Solve the problem.”
“Isn’t that what the police are for?”
“There’s a possibility some police are involved.”
“Fuck,” she said.
“Yeah. And the police have limits,” he said. “Things they can’t do. I have more, ah, freedom of movement. And I’m good at this. Remember?”
She sighed. “You are such a fucking cowboy jarhead asshole.”
“That’s not how I think about it,” he said. “You know who I am, remember? Since the day we met.”
“Can’t you just come here?” she asked, her voice thickening. It was catching up to her now, what had happened. The pictures she’d seen online.
“You don’t mean that,” he said. “Do you?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “I really fucking do.”
“Henry was my friend,” he said. “I have to help. Besides, you’re the one who sent me away.”
“Yeah,” she said. “To get better. To learn to sleep inside. Not get yourself fucking killed.”
“That wasn’t exactly clear at the time,” he said.
“That’s because you’re fucking stupid.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m definitely stupid.”
She sighed. He heard the thump as she set the phone down, then a wet honk as she blew her nose.
He loved her. That was the thing. It hadn’t even taken the five days. He’d known after a few hours, watching her drive full-tilt in her old Subaru down that winding gravel road in California. Or maybe earlier. Sometimes you just know.
What he didn’t know was more complicated.
Could she love him back?
—
“All right, Marine,” June said, coming back on the line. “Tell me how to help.”
She was definitely tough. He said, “I was hoping you could put on your investigative journalist hat.”
“I knew this wasn’t a booty call. What do you need?”
“This was a very specific style of attack,” he said. “I want to know about any other marijuana-related robberies in Colorado. Actually, make it the Mountain West and West Coast. Whether it’s outright legal or just medicinal. If there are any missing persons, any mention of a tow truck or ambulance involved in the robbery. I have a license plate for the police car, a Dodge Charger.” He told her the number. “I’d love to know where that comes from. And some deeper background on the people involved, the company owners and my friends. Maybe this was a personal thing.” He gave her the names.
“Okay,” she said. “Two things from me. One, have you talked to Lewis?”
“He’s coming in the morning, early flight.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m coming, too.”
“No,” he said. “Definitely not.” He wasn’t going to tell her they’d already tried to kill him a second time.
“You might need a getaway driver,” she said. “Besides, it’s not your call. You’ve obviously forgotten that I’m the boss.”
She’d hired him to protect her, back in March. His fee had been ten dollars a week.
“I never got paid for the last time.”
“Oh, you got paid, Marine.”
He smiled. “I was hoping I could be the boss this time,” he said.
She snorted. “Oh, hell no. It takes a woman to run these things.” He heard the wicked smile in her voice. “Plus you know I like to be on top.”
“I do seem to recall,” he said. “Is that two things?”
“That was one thing,” she said. “It was kind of a long thing.”
“Are you talking dirty now?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Trust me, you’ll know. But here’s the second thing. Did you really get propositioned twice today?”
“Why, yes,” he said. “I’m a very attractive man, you know.”
“Were they both women?” she asked.
He grinned. “In fact, they were. One is my attorney. The other was a nurse dressing my wounds.”
“Well, you stay away from those bitches, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Peter said. “You’re the boss.”
“Thaaat’s what I like to hear.”
—
It was well after two when they got off the phone.
Peter left the bourbon unfinished on the porch railing.
Steinburger and Sykes woke him before first light.
19
From his fancy hammock, Peter blinked up at the pair of policemen.
Sykes carried two very tall cardboard cups of coffee. He bent gracefully and set one on the porch floor beside Peter. He wore fresh clothes, jeans, and a black Rockies T-shirt under a black synthetic shell, but he looked, if anything, even more tired. “Time to go,” he said, and nudged the hammock with the toe of his running shoe. “Get dressed.”
It was still dark out.
Steinburger wore the same brown suit from the night before, or maybe it was a different but identical suit. He picked up the squat, heavy glass from the porch rail and took a sniff of the inch of liquor that remained.
“Bourbon?”
Peter nodded. He was still zipped inside his sleeping bag, although he was waking up fast. Steinburger swirled the glass, took a sip, raised his eyebrows. “Not bad.”
Sykes looked at him. “For real?”
Steinburger shrugged. “Shit, Paul, it’s too early to count as morning. The sun isn’t even up yet.”
Sykes shook his head, but he popped the top off his coffee and poured some bourbon into the cup.
“Good to see you guys are committed to top performance,” Peter said. Three hours’ sleep, he figured. All he was going to get. The birds were already making a racket.
Steinburger pulled a folding knife out of his right pants pocket and opened it with the thumb stud. It had a matte-black handle and a black-finish serrated blade, and Peter’d had one almost exactly like it, until the hijacker took it from him.
“Rise and shine,” Steinburger said, holding the knife to the hammock’s sling strap. “Or I’m cutting you down.”
“What is this, the Royal Navy?” Peter unzipped his bag and swung his bare legs down to the cool porch floor. “Should I be calling my lawyer?”
“Absolutely,” said Sykes. He took Henry’s phone from the railing, unplugged its charger, and handed the phone to Peter. “Knock yourself out. But this isn’t that kind of visit.”
Steinburger tossed back the remains of the bourbon, wiped his mustache with the heel of his hand, and set the glass down with a thump. “We’d like to show you something,” he said. “Come on, move your ass.” He pointed the knife at the coffee cup Sykes had set on the porch floor. “That’s yours. Get dressed.”
Peter made sure to put on comfortable clothes, including his old combat boots.
The dark was beginning to fade when they put him in the back seat of a big unmarked Ford Crown Vic. There was a time not long ago when being in the back seat
would have set off the static. It still wasn’t comfortable, particularly not in a police car.
But there was no grate or partition blocking off the front, so Peter sat forward with his arms folded on the seatback, drinking his coffee, shaking off yet another short night’s sleep, watching the light come up on the wide city streets through the big windshield.
Steinburger drove with expert speed, lights but no siren, and thin early traffic moved out of his way. They were headed to a part of town Peter hadn’t seen before. Denver was a city on the Plains, but his eye kept finding the Front Range rising up to the west like a rampart against the barbarians.
They came over the freeway and railroad tracks into the northeast corner of the city. New tilt-up concrete slab buildings with fresh paint, older brick warehouses with offices tacked on like afterthoughts. Signs for wholesale roofing and sheet metal, a corporate distribution center, cannabis cultivation supplies, multiple trucking depots. Wide streets designed for semis, with aggressive drainage for the heavy storms that came down from the Rockies.
Sykes handed back a stained paper bag. “Bagel and cream cheese,” he said. “To go with the coffee. Although you might want to wait until after.”
“After what?” asked Peter.
Steinburger turned onto a side street of smaller buildings from an earlier time. He came to a stop at a deep, narrow lot, vacant but for tall brown grass and a rutted gravel track curling behind a rusting metal prefab shed the size of a two-car garage. The gravel track was partially blocked by a Denver Police SUV. Some development site awaiting financing, or the arrival of the first local Starbucks.
Steinburger rolled his window down to raise his hand to the officer standing guard, who nodded and waved him past.
Peter could smell it already.
Steinburger eased the cruiser down the dirt drive and behind the shed, where a pair of Tyvek-suited techs stood waiting beside their van.
Sykes opened Peter’s door. “Out,” he said. “Take a good look.”
Peter stepped carefully across the gravel to the big American sedan with a familiar profile. It was a blackened shell, paint crackled off the sheet-metal skin, the frame warped from the heat. The glass had melted. It would have been difficult to identify the burnt item sitting upright in the back seat as actual human remains, except for the grinning skull atop the dark column of spine.