6. Justice
JUSTICE
Her mouth is right there.
Pink. Slightly parted. The lower lip fuller than the upper one and chapped from the cold and the constant nervous biting she does when she thinks nobody's watching.
She weighs nothing. A hundred and ten pounds of trembling softness pressed against me like she was designed to fit exactly here, in the crook of my arm, her hip bones against my stomach, her small hands fisted in the front of my thermal.
The flannel shirt I gave her has slipped off one shoulder and the skin there is pale and smooth and I can see the delicate ridge of her collarbone and the fading border of a bruise that someone else's fingers left on her.
My vision narrows.
Her pulse hammers visibly in her throat.
Fast. Rabbit-fast. And I can't tell if it's from the near-fall or from this.
From me. From the fact that I'm holding her off the ground with one arm and my other hand has migrated to the bare skin where the flannel gapes at her hip and my thumb is resting on the soft ridge of muscle just above her waistband.
She's shaking.
Her eyes are wide. Blown pupils rimmed with brown. Searching my face for something. Permission. Danger. Intent. I don't know what she finds. I don't know what's on my face right now but I know what's in my blood and it is nothing safe.
Set her down.
The command fires through my skull. Blunt.
Non-negotiable. This woman was running from a man who put bruises there less than seventy-two hours ago.
She is standing in my garage barefoot and wearing my clothes because she has nothing else in the world and I am the only barrier between her and whoever is hunting her.
She is not in a position to want this. She is scared and displaced and grateful, and if I mistake gratitude for something else I am no different from the men she ran from.
Set. Her. Down.
I do.
Slow. Too slow. I lower her until her bare feet touch the concrete and then I keep lowering, bending my knees to ease the transition, and the descent is a controlled disaster because her body slides down the front of mine.
Her stomach against my ribs. Her bosom dragging along mine.
The hem of the flannel catching and riding up and my rough palm registering every square centimeter of the warm, impossibly soft skin at her waist as she descends through my grip.
Her feet touch concrete. She sways. My hands stay on her hips. Steadying. That's what I tell myself. Steadying her.
Her fingers are still tangled in my thermal. She hasn't let go. She's looking up at me from a foot and two inches below and her lips are still parted and her breathing is shallow and quick.
Let go.
I peel my fingers off her hips. One at a time. Deliberate. Each one a negotiation with something feral and starving that has taken up residence in my body.
She sways again without the anchor. The cold air rushes into the gap between us and it's like dunking my head in snowmelt.
"You're alright."
"I need to run an errand."
"What?"
"In town." I yank the red rag off the floor. Wipe my hands. The motion is automatic, practiced, and it gives me something to look at that isn't her standing there drowning in my flannel with her shoulder bare and her feet in my oil. "Parts. For the truck."
A lie. The truck doesn't need parts. I rebuilt the transmission six months ago and every component under that chassis is hand-selected and functioning within spec.
"Right now?"
"Yeah."
Her face changes. The flush drains out and something careful and closed slides into place behind her eyes. Self-protection. I recognize it because I invented it.
"Okay."
She lets go of my thermal. Smooths the flannel back over her shoulder. Steps sideways out of the oil patch with exaggerated care, looking at her own feet, not looking at me.
"Lock the deadbolt behind me," I say. "Don't open it for anyone."
"I know the drill."
I grab my jacket off the hook by the interior door. Keys from the pegboard. She's already moving back into the house, bare feet silent on the transition strip between garage and hallway. The oversized sweatpants pool around her ankles. She holds them up with one hand.
She doesn't look back.
The door grinds open. January air hits me like a wall. Fourteen degrees. Wind chill probably single digits.
I get in the truck. Turn the key. The diesel rattles to life.
The rearview shows the giant door closing behind me. Automatic. On a timer.
I put the truck in gear and drive down the highway toward a town I have no business visiting on a Tuesday morning, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to hear the leather creak under my palms.
The town of Cedar Bend sits at the base of the mountain like an afterthought.
Population eight hundred and twelve. One gas station, one hardware store, one diner, one bar that doubles as a post office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I know every face in this place and every face knows mine, which is exactly why most of them avoid eye contact.
That arrangement suits me fine.
I park the truck outside Hannigan's Hardware.
Leave it running. The diesel tick is loud in the still morning air.
No wind down here in the valley, which means the sound carries, which means Dale Hannigan is already peering through the front window with his hand shading his eyes before I hit the sidewalk.
The bell jangles.
"Justice." Dale nods from behind the counter. He's got the classifieds spread open. "Didn't expect you till spring."
I pull three boxes of 12-gauge shells off the shelf. Set them down. Pick up a roll of 16-gauge trip wire that I don't need.
"Quiet week?"
Dale squints at me. I don't make small talk. He knows it. I know it. The question hangs in the air between us like an animal that wandered into the wrong clearing.
"Not especially." He rings up the shells. Slow. Deliberate. Dale has been running this counter for forty-one years and he's never once been in a hurry. "Couple of out-of-towners been making rounds since yesterday."
I don't react. I count out cash from my wallet and place it on the countertop.
"What kind of out-of-towners?"
"Suit kind." Dale slides the bills into the register. "Two of 'em. Black vehicle. Colorado plates, but those boys ain't from Colorado. Asking after some girl at the diner. Lorraine said they tipped forty bucks on two cups of coffee, which means they're either stupid or buying goodwill."
Neither. They're establishing presence. Seeding the ground. Making themselves familiar and generous before they drop the real ask. It's a standard locate-and-retrieve playbook. I've seen it before, years ago, in a life I don't think about.
"This girl they're looking for. She got a name?"
"Didn't catch it. Lorraine might know more. You know how she collects gossip like other women collect shoes."
I take the bag. Nod once. Step back into the cold.
The diner is two blocks east. Mabel's. Green vinyl booths and a pie case that hasn't been updated since 1987.
I walk because moving the truck would be conspicuous and I'm already pushing the boundaries of what my presence in town signals.
I come down the road here four, maybe five times a year.
Two visits in one week would make the rounds by sundown.
I see the SUV before I see them.
Black. Chevy Suburban. Current model year.
Tinted windows dark enough to violate state inspection but nobody in Cedar Bend cares about state inspection.
Colorado plates, like Dale said. The plates are probably rental tags run through a corporate blind.
The tires are all-terrain upgrades, aftermarket, which means somebody planned ahead for mountain roads and logging tracks.
Professional.
I don't go to the diner. I go to the barber shop next door. Frank's. I haven't had a haircut in eleven months and I'm not getting one today either, but Frank keeps two chairs by the window and a pot of coffee that'll strip paint off a Buick and he doesn't ask questions.
"Just coffee."
Frank gestures at the pot without looking up from his crossword.
I pour a cup. Take the window chair. The angle gives me a clean line of sight through the diner's front window, across the counter, all the way to the back booth.
Two men. Both white. Both mid-thirties. One is thick through the shoulders in a way that says private security, gym-built, all chest and arms, no legs.
The other is lean. Watchful. He's the dangerous one.
The lean one sits with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door and there's a print under his left arm that any idiot with half a brain would recognize as a shoulder holster.
The thick one has a photograph on the table. He's showing it to Lorraine, who is standing with the coffee pot on her hip and her reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, leaning in to look.
The photo is face-up. Color print. Eight by ten.
Even from across the street, through two panes of glass and thirty feet of morning air, I recognize her.
Different in the picture. Hair done up. Makeup.
Some kind of dress that costs more than my truck.
Pearl earrings. She's smiling in it but the smile doesn't reach those brown eyes and now that I know what her real face looks like, soft and unguarded and half-asleep on my couch with the firelight catching the hollows under her cheekbones, the photograph looks like a picture of a different woman. A kept woman. A doll on a shelf.
The thick one pulls something from his jacket pocket. Holds it up.
Cash. A brick of it, banded. He fans it on the table next to the photograph like he's dealing cards.
Lorraine's eyes go wide.
I can't hear through the glass but I can read lips well enough when someone's mouth is moving slowly for emphasis. The lean one leans forward. Points at the photo. Points at the cash.
Have you seen this woman? There's a reward.
Lorraine shakes her head. Grabs the coffee pot. Walks away.
Good girl, Lorraine.