Chapter 47
Luke
I’m halfway down Marin’s driveway when I see them.
Not the black pickup. A sedan this time. Dark blue. Sitting across the road. They learned.
I should have been watching. I should have been checking the road before I pulled out, the way I check everything—twice, three times, until I’m sure. But I wasn’t watching.
That’s the mistake. That’s always the mistake. You stop watching and the world reminds you why you started.
I turn onto the county road. The sedan pulls out behind me. Just the shape of it in my mirror, growing.
A second car comes from the other direction. Pickup. Not the black one—a white flatbed, the kind you use for hauling. It swings sideways across the road and stops.
I hit the brakes. The sedan closes the gap behind me.
Boxed.
I sit in the truck for three seconds. Engine running. Hands on the wheel. Three seconds is a long time when you’re counting.
The doors open. Three men this time. Not two. Tall one from the Lamplighter. Wide one with the catcher’s mitt hands. And a third I haven’t seen—shorter, thicker, moving like a man who’s done this before and doesn’t need to prove it.
I kill the engine. Get out.
The short one hits me first. Fast. A right hook that comes from somewhere I’m not looking because I’m watching the tall one.
It catches me above the left eye and opens the skin like a zipper. Blood in my eye before I can blink.
I drop the tall one. Elbow to the throat. He goes down gagging. Same spot I hit him at the Lamplighter. He should have learned.
The wide one grabs me from behind. Bear hug. Arms pinned. The short one steps in and works my body—ribs, stomach, ribs again. Methodical. Professional. Not rage. Business.
I snap my head back into the wide one’s face. Feel his nose give. His arms loosen enough for me to twist free and I drive my knee into the short one’s thigh. He buckles. I hit him again—open palm to the ear. He staggers.
But the wide one is back. Blood pouring from his nose, angry now, and he catches me with a right hand to the jaw that sends me into the side of my truck. The metal is cold against my back. He hits me again. Same spot. My vision goes white at the edges.
The short one recovers. They work together now—taking turns, one holding, one hitting. I get a few in. Enough to matter. The tall one is still on the ground holding his throat. But it’s two on one and they’re fresh and I’m not and the math doesn’t work.
A knee to my kidney. I drop. Gravel under my hands. The taste of blood and dirt and the exact flavor of a man who let himself get sloppy.
The short one crouches next to me. Close. I can smell cigarettes and cheap cologne and the sweat of a man doing a job.
“Javi says this is the last conversation,” he says. Relaxed. Not out of breath. “Next time there’s no conversation.”
He stands. Kicks me once in the ribs. Hard enough to make the point.
They get in their cars. The sedan pulls out first. The flatbed follows. No rush. Three men who did what they came to do and have dinner waiting at home.
I lie on the gravel for a while. Looking at the sky. Counting the things that hurt—eye, jaw, ribs, kidney, hands, pride. Pride hurts the most. It always does.
I pull myself up on the truck’s bumper. Lean against it. Spit blood onto the road.
I glance back toward Marin’s. Think better of turning back. She’s inside with him and doesn’t know I’m two hundred yards from her driveway spitting teeth onto a county road.
Not teeth. Feels like teeth. It’s just blood.
I get in the truck, check what’s left of my face in the rearview. The cut above my eye is deep—not stitches deep, but close. My jaw is swelling on the left side. My ribs ache when I breathe but they’re not broken. I’ve had broken. This isn’t broken.
I put the truck in drive. Pull onto the road.
I need water and paper towels and a gas station bathroom with a lock on the door and enough fluorescent light to see what I’m working with.
Route 9. The Shell station. I pull in. Pull up to a pump. Walk to the bathroom like a man who isn’t holding his ribs together with his left arm.
The mirror in the bathroom is cracked and yellowed and it shows me exactly what I expected. A man who got his ass kicked because he was thinking about a woman instead of watching the road.
I run the water. Cold. Press paper towels against the cut until the bleeding slows. Wash the blood off my hands. Off my neck. Out of my hair.
The door to the bathroom is thin. I hear a car pull in. A door open and close.
I keep cleaning. Slow. Methodical. The way I do everything—measure twice, fix once. Except tonight, I didn’t measure anything and I can see clearly what that costs.