by Kit Frazier
“Not just yet,” he said. His eyes were warm, the color of melted chocolate, as he looked down at me. All the discomfort I’d felt between
Puck and his sister began to soften around the edges.
A woman who looked like a garden gnome appeared behind Puck and cleared her throat. “It’s time,” she said, tapping her watch.
“Oh. Right. Faith, come on. You’re up…” Puck said. He slid over and hugged his sister hard, and they stayed that way for a long moment. I thought of something the forensic guy said to me earlier…war buddies.
Faith took a deep breath and rose bonelessly from the bench.
“Well. This ought to be good,” I said to Logan, taking a long sip of the drink he’d given me.
“A cynic underneath it all,” Logan said, and I smiled, feeling my body relax as he settled in close to me.
Ethan was still gaping at Faith as she made her way through the noisy crowd toward the stage. The horde of people surrounding the stage was restless and rowdy, no doubt due to a combination of bad music and a full bar.
Not far from our table, a man I hadn’t noticed before staggered over to Faith as she moved.
A boy, really. His face was handsome the way farm boys are, boyish, with big blue eyes, chiseled cheek bones, and a cleft chin. He was tall and wiry and wore a starched, long-sleeved shirt over faded Wranglers with a telltale faded round rim of a Copenhagen can at the right rear pocket. His John Deere gimme cap matched Faith’s tee shirt.
“Oh, hell,” Puck muttered.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Josh Lambert. We all grew up together, and he still thinks Faith is that same girl he used to take fishin’ at the quarry.”
“Is he her boyfriend?” I said, and Puck shook his head.
“It’s complicated.”
Josh gently took her arm and looked down at the laser scar. From where we sat, I could see a tear slide down Faith’s face. She rose to her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
A goodbye kiss, I thought.
At that moment, Tres came barreling through the crowd.
“Who the hell invited you?” Tres snarled, and Faith’s eyes went wide.
“Tres, don’t. I invited him,” Faith stammered.
Tres nodded, then smiled a too large smile, right before he swung a long, slow right fist that connected hard to the left side of the farm boy’s face.
Suckerpunched and under the influence of enough alcohol to run a hybrid Honda, the kid staggered and toppled.
The kid came up mad, swinging a hard left, and caught Tres under the chin. Tres went down like a sack of wet cement. The buffalo, who’d been at the bar with the strippers, peeled themselves off their barstools and barreled toward Tres.
“You leave her alone!” Josh stood over Tres, fist clenched. Then he turned and scooped Faith into his arms. Faith’s eyes were wide in surprise, not fear, and she said, “Josh, don’t do this ‘
“I had enough o’ this bullshit!” he growled. “You’re mine. You’re parta me and I’m parta you, and if I can’t protect you, nobody can.”
Both the buffalo flanked Josh, chests out, chins down. Josh set Faith aside and squared off on the steroid studs, not caring that he was fixing to get a serious ass-kicking. Fumbling his cowboy hat back onto his head with more force than necessary, Tres climbed to his feet, anger etching deep lines in his shiny face.
“Excuse me a minute,” Logan said and handed me his beer.
One of the buffalo caught sight of Logan and he elbowed the other. Together, they squared off, crossing their arms over their chests, biceps flexed, legs braced in a pose meant to scare the pants off of unsuspecting bystanders and anyone looking to get interested in Tres.
Logan seemed to have tunnel vision, his attention trained on Tres.
Beside me, Ethan pushed up his short tee shirt sleeves and said, “That doesn’t look fair.”
“Which way do you mean?” I said, watching Logan move effortlessly through the crowd.
“Now, there’s no need for violence,” Tres said, reaching a hand out to Logan for a friendly shake.
I thought this skirmish was over but then Tres kicked out, hard, in some kind of karate move and caught Josh in the stomach, knocking him backward, where he sprawled at Faith’s feet.
Several men near the stage noticed and turned to watch as Logan stepped between the hired muscle. Buffalo One grabbed Logan’s left arm. Without a word, Logan turned the other way, driving a knee into Buffalo Two’s groin. Buffalo Two didn’t move, and the only reaction I could see were his eyes crossing, chin dropping. One seemed surprised, but not as surprised as he looked when Logan jerked his arm away and threw an elbow into One’s crooked nose. One dropped, blood spurting through his fingers as he gripped his broken nose.
Two regrouped; Logan swung and drove three punches, catching Two with a left, a right, and a left in his already slack jaw. Two’s head snapped at each blow, and he dropped like his oversized partner.
In a move so swift I barely saw it, both buffalo were face-down in the dust, and Logan squared off on Tres.
Without his henchmen, Tres looked like the emperor caught without clothes.
Tres glared at Logan, but he was breathing so hard his chest looked like someone was beating his ribs from the inside out. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. Clearly a man not used to having the odds evened.
Chino, the creepy tattooed deejay, leaned on the console, grinning in slitty-eyed amusement. His hand slipped under his loose shirt. I froze.
“Logan!” I screamed, but he was already on it.
Logan turned toward the deejay and gave him a John-Wayne-style “Oh really?” look.
Chino shrugged and put his hands up, palms out, grinning a toothy grin.
Logan stepped over Two’s big, prone body, backing out of the circle of onlookers that formed around Faith and the men. Ethan made it halfway through the crowd, chest out and spoiling for a fight, but it was over before it even started.
The crowd roared, juiced on whatever it is that gets people pumped at the sight of bloodshed.
Faith knelt, Josh’s head in her lap as he grinned up at her. “I knew you’d come to,” he said.
Logan reached for Josh, checking his pulse as Ethan plowed through the throng of people.
When he reached Faith, he looked at her for a long moment. Gently, he put his arms around her, pulled her up, and lifted her onto the stage.
I stood there, stunned.
With Tres bested, something came alive in Puck, and like a rejuvenated ringmaster, he motioned to Chino and the jittery lighting guy. At his cue, a warm spotlight surrounded Faith, sparking interesting glints off her bazillion piercings.
No one seemed to notice Faith as she stood alone in the spotlight, hitching her guitar strap over her neck.
Two big middle-aged bouncers parted the crowd, scanning the onlookers, assessing who’d done what to whom. Logan flashed his badge.
The bouncers nodded. The older one persuaded Tres’s buffalo it was closing time. The other stuffed something into Josh’s nose to stanch the blood and led him off the dance floor.
Mission accomplished, Logan came to reclaim his beer. I blinked. “Are you all right?”
Logan grinned.
“That’s it? You’re going to sit here like nothing happened?”
Logan shrugged. “It was over before it started,” he said and took a long pull on his beer.
I sighed and shook my head, bewildered, my adrenaline pumping a strange mixture of fear, excitement, and something else I wasn’t ready to explore.
Ethan made his way back to our table, shoulders squared, chin up. He picked up his beer and downed the rest of it in one gulp.
I rolled my eyes. “Easy, killer, you don’t want to strain your ego.”
With the stage lights situated and the sound in check, Puck adjusted his camera and yelled, “Roll ‘em!’
“Roll ‘em?’ I said to Logan.
“Movie talk,
” he said. “He’s a producer.”
“Everyone in Austin is a producer,” I said, and Logan grinned. “Oh, yeah? What do you produce?” he said, and I blushed.
Logan was sitting close to me, his hand next to mine, and I wondered what it would be like to be on a real date with him. Just him and me no fake obituaries, no loud crowds, no beating up bad guys. No reason to be together except that we wanted to be.
From the stage, Faith began to strum her acoustic guitar, and I frowned. I hadn’t figured her for an unplugged act. As I sat, listening, the rich sounds of the guitar swelled out from the stage, engulfing the crowd. It had a sad quality, but strong, too, and then she opened her pierced lips and began to sing.
Like Ethan, I sat there with my mouth wide open.
Her eyes were large and dark, her skin pale, and despite her outward appearance, she had a kind of innocence about her.
As she sang, her voice was clear and strong and somehow vulnerable. The words seemed to rise out of her from someplace deep and urgent:
“Alone in the dark, she fades into the night
Remembering sunshine and music and flight
There once was a season she knew how to fly
But even birds with broken wings
Still long to sing
She just needs to remember how…”
The rowdy crowd went dead quiet.
Under the hot, dark sky, we all watched and listened, as though we were all witnessing a shared miracle.
I turned to Logan. “Did she write this?”
He took a long pull on his beer and said, “Yep.”
“Wow,” I said, and turned to Ethan, who was still sitting there, wide eyes fixed on Faith, mouth slack, looking like he’d been hit in the stomach.
“Ethan,” I said. “Are you okay?” And then I heard it.
The loud plop of Ethan’s heart as it hit the dirt.
I shook my head. Ethan, it seemed, was a goner.
*
“Come on,” Logan said, and I frowned. “We’re leaving? Aren’t you working?”
“So impatient,” he said, leading me toward the small dock area. The last mooring was empty, and we walked along the weathered planks, our footfalls sounding hollow, the way wood sounds over water.
At the edge of the pier, we stood for a long moment surrounded by earth and sky and water, the music softly enveloping us as though there had never been a fight.
Standing next to Logan, I closed my eyes. In that moment, it felt like we were at the end of the world, looking back.
“How are you getting home?” he said, breaking my trance. I looked toward the bar, where Mia was reading Orange County Two’s palm while Brynn appeared to be examining OC-1’s esophagus.
“I came with Brynn, but she looks a little busy.”
Logan grinned, “Yea, I hate it when that happens. I’ll take you home.”
My breath caught, and all of my nerve endings went on red alert.
He eyed me suspiciously. “You okay? No more gangbangers hiding between your hangers?”
I shook my head. “You set Boy Scouts all up and down the street.” He chuckled at that, and I sighed.
“I need to talk to you,” I said. “I think I may be involved in a co-dependent relationship with your dog.”
“Ah, the dog.”
“Yes, the dog. Logan, I know you asked me to keep up with the search and rescue thing, but I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.”
“Marlowe’s got the best nose in Central Texas,” Logan said, spiking my frustration.
“Everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t see it. It’s like he gets some kind of personal satisfaction from making an idiot out of me.”
Logan laughed, and I hit him with my elbow.
“It’s not funny.”
He grinned. “You’re right. It’s not funny. It’s hilarious.”
“Logan!”
After his bout with hilarity subsided, he looked at me with those eyes the color of melted sin. We were standing at the end of the farthest pier, and he tipped my chin up so he could see my face. “Cauley, you’re doing fine. Most rescue dogs have one handler. Marlowe’s had three. He’ll get there, and so will you. It just takes time, and you have to show him you’re serious.”
“Marlowe’s had three handlers?” I said, doing the mental countdown. Me and Logan and who else?
Logan heard the unasked question and blew out a breath. “She was my partner,” he said.
The silence that followed had a weight to it that I could feel all the way to my bones. I wanted to ask him who she was and if she mattered as much to him as I imagined she did, but I could sense the wall there.
I sat down on the dock, and Logan sat beside me. The water lapped the pilings beneath the pier, and around us reeds and cattails rustled like old petticoats in the warm, wet breeze. I felt like I’d drifted into a lost piece of my past.
Behind us, Faith played on, slipping into a throaty old Etta James song.
“I do believe it’s time for a change,” I sang along. “Aunt Kat used to sing this song to me when I was a little girl.”
Logan gently brushed my hair out of my face. “I bet you were a cute little girl,” he said, and heat lingered where he’d touched me. He gazed down at me intently. “What else did you do when you were a little girl?”
Despite the excitement of the evening, a wave of warmth and pleasure swelled over me like the waves gently lapping the pilings below us. “Actually,” I said, slipping off my shoes, “I used to come here with my dad. He taught me and my sister to swim not far from here.” I looked at him, assessing. “Do you have siblings? I bet you’re the oldest.”
“One younger brother John. He’s a cop in Dallas.
“Ohhhh,” I said, smiling. “Big shock.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yes, Suzanne the Splendiferous.”
Logan grinned. “Do I detect some sibling rivalry?”
I blushed. “She’s my big sister and what my mother aspires for me—former beauty queen, married Mr. Perfect, has three equally perfect kids and can single-handedly bake a cake, plan a dinner party, and refinish the bedroom furniture.”
“Right,” he said, “No sibling rivalry whatsoever.” I gave him a shot to the ribs with my elbow.
“Jeez, killer, take it easy,” he laughed. “I’m just kidding.”
He was quiet. “Is that what you really want? To be like your sister?”
I was uncomfortable with the turn of conversation. Of course there were parts of Suzanne’s life I envied. But not now.
I shrugged. “Maybe someday,” I said.
I slid my bare feet into the water and did a whole-body cringe.
“No matter how often I’ve done this, the chill of the water is a surprise like a cold, hard slap.”
Logan smiled, and he sat, close, our upper thighs touching.. I inhaled the scent of good soap and leather and something else that was pure Logan, and I felt something inside me open and bloom.
The music was quiet and sweet and sad, and he slid his arm around me, large and strong and warm. The awkwardness I’d been so worried about melted into a distant memory.
I laid my head on his shoulder and sighed. “What about you?” I said, suddenly feeling drowsy. “I bet you were a hellion.”
He chuckled. “Actually, I was.”
“So what turned you from your wicked ways?”
“My father died when I was very young. After he died, it was just my mom and me and my brother. We were a handful. And then came along the man who became my stepfather. There aren’t many men like Jack Kinley. My mother lucked out and found two of them.”
My soul went very still. Logan had given me this gift of his confidence, and I held it close to my heart like an unexpected treasure. I had questions, but they would wait. “Like the Colonel,” I said, thinking of my own stepfather.
We were both quiet. The stars shone bright in the night sky, reflecting their other worlds onto the slick, black surface of
the lake.
“When this is all over, I’d like to bring you back here,” he said. My whole body sighed.
“I have a confession to make.” I wanted to tell him I remembered everything about him the way he looked, the way he smelled, the feel of his hands in my hair, the feel of his body pressed against mine when he kissed me early in the summer and that maybe I did believe in love at first sight…
“I missed you, Logan.”
A night bird called from across the lake. It was a stark, lonely sound and hung in the air like a question.
And then it came. A clear, high answer, plaintive and sweet, calling back.
“I missed you too, kid,” Logan said, and I felt him relax against me even as his arm tightened.
And in that moment, there, with Logan’s arm around me, the water lapping the pier, and night insects chirring their late summer songs, everything was right with the world.
Chapter Ten
The next week, in preparation of Obregon’s trial, I spent a disproportionate number of nights jolting awake in a cold sweat, desperately feeling around in the dark for my ears, which, happily, were still attached to my head.
The night sweats were on account of the dreams I’d been having, which all featured Van Gogh, the El Patron enforcer, alive and well and in widescreen MGM Technicolor, making a miraculous recovery from the .45 caliber bullet wound between his eyes.
These nightmares were invariably followed by the frenzied throwing open of closet doors, swishing back of shower curtains, and peeking under the bed, making sure the maniac had not somehow reanimated and come to spend his afterlife in my living room and, that no dead birds were roosting beneath my bed.
Of course, the only thing I found out of the ordinary was the rotating shift of young cops who’d drawn the short straw and got what they called “Pussy Patrol,” the opportunity to spend the night camping out on my corner in an undercover car, making sure both of my ears stayed intact at least long enough so that I could testify against Selena Obregon and El Patron.
I hadn’t heard from Logan since the Pier, but then he’d told me we wouldn’t see each other again until the trial, and I wondered how Puck’s fake obituary had gone over with the shooter. Logan was right: Puck was like a fungus. Give him long enough and he’d start to grow on you.