Chapter 8
The bakery's back step looked smaller in the dark than it had on a video screen.
Reno sat in his truck in the alley with the engine off and the heater long since cooled, and he watched the metal door for the eighteenth time in as many minutes.
The deputy Wheeler had promised was parked at the mouth of the alley, where the streetlight let her be seen on purpose.
That was the deal. The deputy was the visible deterrent.
Reno was the second pair of eyes nobody knew about.
He'd argued briefly with Wheeler about being out here at all.
Wheeler had not been opposed so much as resigned.
I can't stop a private citizen sitting on a public street, the sheriff had said, but if you so much as get out of that truck, you and I are going to have words.
Reno had agreed to the terms. Reno had also packed a thermos.
He was working on a theory, and theories worked better in the dark.
The figure on the camera had been left-handed on the tension wrench.
Plenty of people were left-handed. Plenty of people were also trained left-handed for fine work because their right hand was needed for the heavier tool.
The fact didn't narrow down the universe much.
But there had been one other detail Reno had not mentioned in Wheeler's office because he hadn't been sure of it yet, and a man didn't say things he wasn't sure of when a woman like Grace was watching his face.
The figure had favored the left leg coming up the alley.
Not a limp. Nothing that obvious. Just a quarter-second longer transfer of weight on the right side than on the left. The way a man walked when his right knee had been hurt in the past and had healed, mostly, but had taught the rest of him to compensate without thinking about it.
It was the kind of detail Reno noticed because Reno had spent the last three months learning how a body told on itself.
He didn't know what the detail meant yet. He was sitting in the dark with it, the way a lawyer sat with a piece of evidence he wasn't sure how to use.
A car passed at the end of the alley. The deputy's headlights flashed briefly. Then the alley went dim again, and the only light was the orange of the sodium lamp.
He picked up his phone. He set it down.
He picked it up again.
The text had come in three hours earlier, while he was helping Hank carry a vanity through the front door of the Edwardian. Hank had stayed out of the way and let him hold one end of the cabinet without commenting on his knee, which was the closest thing Hank Steele did to a love language.
Got home OK. Lily asleep. Thanks for today.
He'd answered while sitting on Hank's stairs because his knee had reminded him, sharply, that hauling a vanity up a porch was not on his approved list.
Glad. Lock the deadbolt.
I did before I took my coat off.
Good girl.
He'd stared at good girl on the screen for a beat after he sent it and considered that he had spent an entire afternoon being very careful about his words, and now here he was, casual as could be, calling a woman he'd known for six days good girl. He'd almost typed an apology. He hadn't.
Three minutes later:
Reno?
Yes, Ma'am?
Is it weird that I keep thinking about that pause when you didn't tell me what you used to do for a living?
He'd looked at the screen for a long time.
It's not weird. I owe you that conversation.
You don't owe me anything.
I think I do.
When you're ready.
He'd put the phone in his pocket and gone back upstairs to help Hank measure for plumbing fixtures. Hank had taken one look at his face and not said a word, which was the second-closest thing Hank Steele did to a love language.
Now, in the truck, in the dark, he looked at the phone again. There was no new message. He hadn't expected one. Grace would be sleeping. Or trying to.
He set the phone face-down on the dash and watched the back step.
Stricken faces, frozen in shock.
The image came uninvited, the way it always did.
The front row of a courtroom three years ago, and a woman who’d made no sound at all when the verdict came in.
Two young children pressed against her sides and a third asleep across her lap.
Her hands had clenched in the baby’s blankets, but that was the only sign she gave of her distress.
He’d been the prosecutor of record on the case. And he’d won.
What he had not considered once, in the entire two years of building the case and bringing it to trial, was what would happen between the verdict and the sentencing. He’d factored in a great many things. But not that.
He could lay out the case in his sleep and had, many times to himself in the courtroom of his own head where the verdict came back the same every time and the woman in the front row sat there stone still with her children and didn't make a sound.
The voice that came along with that memory had been very loud the first year, and slightly quieter the second, and was now down to a hum he could hear if he stopped to listen. He didn't stop, mostly.
Tonight, in this truck, in this alley, watching the back of Grace's bakery, the voice was quieter than it had been in months.
It was . . . he searched for the right word . . . displaced. As if some other voice had moved into his head and the old one had taken a back seat to it.
He reached for the thermos and poured some coffee into the cap. It was going to be a long night. Might as well start caffeinating now.
His phone buzzed, face-down on the dash. He turned it over.
Are you at the shop or sleeping like you ought to be now that the police are on it?
Am at the bakery.
I thought you said the police would handle it tonight.
I said a deputy would be here. I didn't say I wouldn't be.
I thought only lawyers split hairs like that.
He winced. She was too perceptive for his own good. He made a practice of never telling anyone what he did before he became a bullfighter. I never ended well when he did. Folks either wanted free legal advice or had something snarky to say about lawyers in general.
His phone buzzed again. Are you warm enough?
He stared at the screen and discovered, somewhere around his sternum, a sensation he had not expected to feel tonight, which was the small sharp warmth of being asked.
Yes. Thanks for asking.
Reno.
He waited. Three dots. Then nothing. Then three dots again. Then:
Thank you.
He typed you're welcome and erased it. He typed anytime and erased it. He looked at the back step of the bakery in the dark, and at the deputy's car at the far end of the alley, and at the fine mist of rain that had started falling once more.
He finally settled on typing, Go to sleep, Grace. It’s late.
I will if you will.
I can’t. I have a job to do.
I know.
He set the phone back down.
At one-fifteen AM. Hank's truck rolled up beside his and stopped. Hank got out with a brown paper bag and walked to the passenger door of Reno’s truck.
Reno unlocked the door and Hank slid in.
"How'd you find me?"
"Dillon told me."
"He's a snitch."
"He's worried."
The paper bag in Hank’s lap came from Rose’s diner and smelled like roast beef.
"You gonna be here all night?” Hank asked.
"That’s the plan."
“What’s the plan if the bad guy shows up?”
Reno shrugged. "I told Wheeler I wouldn't get out of my truck. That I would let the deputy handle it."
"You gonna be here tomorrow night too?"
"Probably."
"And the night after?"
"Until Cooper gets back."
Hank watched the back step with him for a while before saying, "Mom used to say a man in love would catch his death in a parking lot before he'd admit he was tired."
"I'm not in love."
"Sure."
"I'm not!"
"All right."
"Don't all right me, Hank."
His brother smirked big enough that Reno could see it in the dark. He exhaled carefully. "I’ve only known her for six days.”
"The way I hear it, when you meet the right woman, six minutes is enough to know it."
"I don’t make any major decision in six days," Reno declared.
"You decided to stop sleeping for this woman in what, two days?”
Reno declined to answer that.
Hank said seriously, “You don't have to make any big decisions about Grace for six months if you don’t want to. All I’m saying is that you should pay attention to how you’re feeling about her."
"At the moment, I'm more interested in paying attention to a back door."
"That too."
Hank insisted that Reno close his eyes and catch a cat nap while Hank kept an eye out for anyone to show up in the alley. To his surprise, Reno slept for almost an hour, and he felt worlds better when he blinked awake. The rain had stopped.
Hank nodded over at him. “Feel better?”
“I do, actually. Thanks for the break.”
Hank shrugged. A pause, then, "Grace called the office today."
"Anything wrong?”
"Nope."
"Then why'd she call?"
"To ask me if you’re eating."
Reno frowned. "What did you tell her?"
"I told her sometimes."
"Hank," Reno groaned.
"What?"
"Don't egg her on. Now she’ll pack me a picnic every night.”
“What would be so terrible about that?” Hank asked pragmatically.
“I don’t want to cause her any more trouble than she’s already got on her plate.”
Hank cracked the window a half inch and as cold air seeped in, said evenly, "I think you should let it happen."
"Let what happen."
"Whatever's happening between you and Grace."
"Hank."
"I know the burden you carry. But you don't have to put it down to pick something else up. You can carry both."
"That's not the way it works."
"You're not the one who decides how it works."
Reno looked over at Hank bleakly. "Who decides?"
"She does. Long as you're honest with her."
"She doesn't know any of it."
"So tell her."
"Not yet."
"Not never, though."
"Not never."
Hank nodded once. Then he reached across the cab, dropped the brown paper bag in Reno's lap and said firmly, "Eat the sandwich. Doctor’s orders.
"I'll eat it later."
"Eat half now. Save half for later."
"You're my mother."
"Eat. The. Sandwich. In fact, I’m not leaving until you do.” Hank crossed his arms over his chest and hunkered down as if he was prepared to sit there all night.
Reno scowled. The only person on earth more stubborn than one Steele brother was another Steele brother.
He ate the sandwich.
The deputy at the other end of the alley changed shifts at four. The new one waved at Reno through her windshield as she drove by, recognizing the truck. He waved back. The sky started its slow shift from black to gray, and he polished off the last of his coffee.
Nobody had come.
His knee had stiffened up to the point where shifting his weight made him hiss between his teeth. His knee declared its intent to make him pay for tonight tomorrow and possibly the day after that.
At five-twenty, Mary walked down the alley from the other end and stopped at the bakery’s back door.
She had keys in one hand and a thermos in the other. He watched her go inside and the door click shut behind her. A light came on in the kitchen that pushed a thin yellow seam under the door. He pulled out of his parking spot under a big spreading oak tree and pulled around front to wait for Grace.
A few minutes later, she drove up and parked down the block in front of an unoccupied storefront, leaving the spaces in front of her shop open for customers.
She wore jeans and an oversized jacket that he was pretty sure had belonged to a man taller than her, and her hair was in a braid over one shoulder. She carried two coffees across the street toward him.
He rolled down the window before she got to him and said, "Mary's already inside, and you shouldn't be out here."
"I shouldn't be a lot of things." She handed one of the cups through the window. The handoff was brief. Her fingertips brushed his and her cheeks turned pink. Neither of them looked at each other.
"Have you slept at all?" she asked.
"Hank came and sat with me for a while last night. I got a decent nap."
"That's not real sleep."
He shrugged.
She said in her best stern mommy voice, which was cute but surprisingly effective, "You're going to drive home, take off the brace, eat something hot, and sleep until afternoon. Preferably late afternoon."
"Yes, Ma'am.” He flashed her a grin.
"That isn't a request."
"No Ma'am."
"And tonight, you’re not coming until midnight. The deputy can cover things until then.”
"Are you giving me orders?" He tried to keep the amusement out of his voice but failed.
"I'm giving you boundaries."
He felt a small burst of gladness that startled him into mumbling, "All right."
“Good.” A pause. Then, stiffly, “And thank you.” She crossed the street to the bakery and didn't look back. He watched her unlock the door and disappear inside.
The sky had come the rest of the way out of the dark while he wasn't watching and was pink as the sun got ready to clear the eastern horizon.
He took a long sip of the coffee she’d brought him. It was the best thing he'd put in his mouth in three days.
The voice he'd been carrying for three years, the one that came with the stricken faces and the woman in the front row, was distant tonight, like a radio playing in another house. He could still hear it if he stopped to listen hard. Tonight, he didn’t stop.
He drove to Dillon’s place tiredly, and it took every bit of the caffeine in the coffee Grace had given him to get him there awake.
Walter was waiting on the porch when he pulled into the drive.
The dog met him at the top of the steps and stood there in the cold morning watching him approach, his tail wagging slowly.
It was the first time, in a very long time, that anything had been waiting for him to come home. He gave Walter a grateful and wistful scritch behind his ear.
“It’s you and me, Bud. A couple of beat up old bachelors.”