Chapter 2 #2
“That you will keep your gun where you say you will,” she answers, glancing toward the counter. “That you will hear anything on this street before I do. That if trouble comes, it's coming for you and I should use that fact instead of pretending I can undo it.”
“It's not coming for you,” I say, the words out too quick for someone who has built a life on measured speech. “Not if I can help it.”
She lifts an eyebrow.
“Then help it by lying down when I tell you to.”
I let the laugh out because it's safer than the other thing pressing against my ribs.
I sit back on the cot and allow the weight of the night to find me.
When she moves, the hem of her shirt rides up a fraction, and my eyes, traitors that they are, follow.
The shape of her is more honest than any confession.
The way she stands, one foot bearing the weight while the other is ready to step, speaks to me in a language I have always understood.
This is a person who knows how to move quickly without breaking things.
“Tell me if you feel feverish,” she says, resting the back of her hand against my forehead, then my throat, a quick check that seems small until you need it. “Your body is already angry. Don't give it a reason to start a war.”
“You talk about flesh like it's a soldier,” I say.
“Flesh fights constantly,” she replies. “You only notice when it loses.”
She turns to the small sink in the corner and rinses her hands.
Water slaps steel and runs away.
The wrist scar catches the light, a white comma paused mid-sentence.
I think about asking, then put the question where it belongs.
I have taught men that curiosity is a luxury.
In my line, it will get you dead or worse, indebted.
She catches me looking and smiles, not coy, just open.
“Burned myself on a caramel when I was twelve. I still love caramel,” she says, flicking water from her fingers and wiping them on a towel that used to carry flour to a bench. “Pain and pleasure are not mutually exclusive. It's a trick of the brain.”
There it is again, the low, warm current under the plain talk.
The sexy lives here, not in cheap lines or the easy peel of clothes.
It's in the way she says caramel and looks at the ovens like they owe her a favor.
It's in the way I'm suddenly, acutely aware of the square footage between us and how easily it could be closed.
“I will make you coffee,” she says, heading for the door like she needs the corridor to remind her what sort of night we are living. “Not the hospital kind. Real. Don't get up.”
I don't promise, because my promises are expensive and I like to keep their value high, but I stay where she left me and listen to her footsteps fade into the larger room.
The quiet that follows is a friend from long ago.
I count exits, then count them again.
I map the approach to the street in my head.
Two doors to choke points, a back stair that goes to the alley, one narrow window that faces a brick wall, another that looks at the side of a church.
I picture the block as it is at three in the morning.
The deli stacked with oranges.
The sleeping pigeons.
A sedan with a man who pretends to smoke while his hands stay too still.
I remove the holster long enough to check the slide and the magazine.
My fingers know the weight down to the last round.
I have two blades, one in the back, one at the ankle.
This is not bravado.
It's simply what the night calls for when you have been marked and you are not fatally stupid.
I set the pistol down again, grip toward me, and take a breath through my teeth when the wound speaks up to remind me of what I owe my body.
The coffee arrives in a chipped white mug that has been washed a thousand times.
She hands it over with a nod like we are two people at a kitchen table learning each other without saying the part that would ruin it.
It's strong and clean and takes the bitterness from the back of my tongue.
“You make much of very little,” I say, appreciative.
“Bakers learn that young,” she replies, and she leans back against the counter across from me, ankles crossed, mug in both hands.
Her gaze runs over me the way mine ran over her earlier.
Not greedy.
Not shy.
As if she is trying on a truth to see if it fits.
“What do you do?” she asks, and it's so simple a question, it almost makes me laugh.
You don't ask wolves if they enjoy running.
“I give advice,” I say, because it's not a lie.
“To whom?” she asks, curious against her better judgment.
“To men who like to think they are in charge,” I answer, and I let the corner of my mouth lift just enough to keep it light. “And who are sometimes correct.”
“Are you a lawyer?” she asks, biting the edge of her mug to hide a smile.
“Close,” I say. “I'm someone they listen to.”
Her eyes flick down to my ribs where the lion sleeps under tape, then up again with a neat, private acknowledgement.
She catalogs, then files it under not my problem, and earns my loyalty faster than any oath.
She hesitates then, a small intake of breath that moves the air.
Her lips part.
I know what the question will be before she asks it.
Who shot you?
It's the first question everyone wants to ask when they see a hole.
It matters and it does not.
In my world, the answer is never a person.
It's a principle.
Loyalty offended.
Territory misread.
Old debt called in.
Sometimes, the name matters.
Mostly, the reason does.
Her mouth shapes the first syllable and that is when the light changes.
It comes through the boarded front like a tide.
Headlights.
Too high and too steady to be a drunk parking badly.
The beam bleeds at the edges of the old paper taped over glass.
The engine sound slides into the room a half second later, low and patient, the note men who hunt prefer because it feels like nothing until it's too close to stop.
Every muscle I keep for special occasions tightens.
I put the mug down without looking at it.
Italian falls out of me the way a curse does when a hammer finds a thumb. “Cristo.”
Elisa’s head snaps toward the sound.
Her eyes go sharp.
There is no panic, only a quick recalculation the way a good driver adjusts in rain.
My hand is already on the pistol, the metal returning to my palm like it always belonged there.
I move to the edge of the window, staying to the side where the board gap will not silhouette me.
“Stay back,” I say, voice low, a command I don't like to use with her but will use anyway.
She does not waste time with questions.
She reaches for the light switch, killing the room in one clean move, and we stand in the dark with our hearts counting different things while the headlights wash the bakery front like a tide that has forgotten how to recede.