Chapter 27
Dinner with the Martinez family was chaotic but wonderful.
Peter was glad to see that Ellie seemed to be doing all right, spending most of her time interacting with the two-year-old twins.
Luna, eight years old in a bright pink fleece and pigtails, peppered the guests with questions.
Marta, eleven, sat with her legs curled up beneath her, reading a Garth Nix book at the table, although every once in a while she’d pipe up with a sharp observation that showed she’d been paying close attention to the grown-up talk.
It was after eight by the time the dishes were done. As they were saying their goodbyes, Ellie pulled Peter aside for a fierce hug. “You were right,” she whispered, face pressed into his chest. “They’re good people.”
“What, better than me?” he asked softly.
She pushed him away with an epic eye roll. “Omigod, meatball. Totally better. Like, not a contest.”
“How are you doing without your phone?”
She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
It was nearly nine by the time they reached Stella’s little house and dropped June at the back door with the old paper maps from Reed’s apartment, the foil-wrapped phones, the cassette tape, and the player.
She wanted to get back on her computer, crack the burner, and start digging into this Messenger thing.
She would also reach out to the three guys who had reacted strangely to KT’s questions.
After she locked the door behind her, Peter left with Lewis to see a man about some guns.
—
They took I-5 south to the 405, traffic light and fast at that hour. Peter pushed the Tahoe hard through the rain.
They hit Highway 169 and turned southeast, away from the city lights. Peter said, “This thing with Ellie and KT is turning into a real mess. You know you can sit this one out, if you want.”
Lewis had been shot four times the winter before. The recovery had been long and difficult.
“Naw,” he said. “I’m good, brother.” Putting some street into it.
“I’m serious,” Peter said. “I know it messed with you, getting hurt like that. It would mess with anyone.”
Lewis looked at him, his dark face nearly invisible in the darkened vehicle. “Would it mess with you?”
“Of course it would,” Peter said. “In fact, it did. You remember when my PTSD was so bad I could barely go inside without a panic attack. All those years in uniform, kicking in doors, going house to house, it fucks with you.”
“But it didn’t stop you.”
“No,” Peter said. “But this isn’t the bad old days, when you and your crew were running and gunning. You’ve got two boys now. And Dinah. What about them?”
Lewis turned forward to look through the windshield for a moment, the wipers slapping back and forth, the road dark and wet before them.
“That night in the snow,” he finally said, “Charlie and Miles learned who I really am. What I’d been back in the day, what I’m capable of now.
When I woke up in the hospital, I realized I’d been working real hard to hide it from them.
To protect them, I guess. But that wasn’t the right way to go.
The right way is to show them how a man can be, what he can do, when he’s got good reason. ”
“When he loves his family,” Peter said.
Lewis nodded. “But it’s more than family, ain’t it? It’s everybody else, too. A man’s got to stand up and be useful in this world. Use his skills. Make a damn difference.” Lewis looked at him now, eyes bright in his dark face. “You taught me that.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you jarhead motherfucker. You did. So here I am.”
“Well,” Peter said. “I appreciate you, brother.”
Lewis nodded again. “Long as we having us a moment, I notice you pretty tightly wrapped. Ready to beat that photographer to death with his own camera.”
Peter stared out at the lights of Maple Valley. His words felt stuck in his throat, or somewhere lower.
Finally he said, “I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to protect them both.”
“Yeah,” Lewis said kindly. “Put you right back in the sandbox, didn’t it? Losing one of your people got that white static all fired up.”
Peter sighed. He’d lost a lot of guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Young men under his command, men whose lives were his responsibility. Men with wives and families. It never got easier. But this was different.
“KT didn’t sign up for war,” he said. “Ellie didn’t sign up for any of it. And now…”
Lewis nodded. “Her momma’s dead and her life’s turned upside down. But it coulda been worse. She could be in the hospital or in a pine box. Instead she’s with Manny and Carlotta. They good people, brother. She’ll get through it.”
Peter hoped that was true. “Except that man from KT’s house is still out there. And the voice on that tape? Whoever these assholes are, they’re planning something big.”
Lewis clapped his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “That’s exactly why we here, Jarhead. Put our skills to use. Need be, put some bad dudes in the dirt.”
“Roger that,” Peter said. “But that thing you said before? I just want to be clear. I’m your role model?”
Lewis flashed that tilted smile and whacked Peter on the chest with the back of his hand. “Sheeeit, I knew you was gonna make it weird.”
“Good talk,” Peter said. “Let’s go buy some guns.”
—
At Summit, Lewis pointed him east into the unincorporated foothills, trees looming midnight green at the roadsides. Aside from a few lonely subdivisions carved out of the woods, there was little sign of humanity. The night grew darker. The trees grew taller, closing in.
They slowed through Ravensdale, then again through Kanaskat, which was barely a wide spot in the road.
The subdivisions were long behind them. Out his window, Peter could see the flat blackness of the Green River behind the trees, with flashes of white at the gravel bars.
They passed logging trucks parked in dirt turnouts, their booms and trailers looking like prehistoric creatures in the wet night.
As they gained elevation, the rain turned to sleet.
The Tahoe thumped across a narrow bridge, the river now on their right. Lewis looked at his phone. “Next left, coming up fast. Might be hard to see.”
Peter slowed, then slowed more. Even so, he was past the turn before he saw it, just a small gap in the trees.
He braked, reversed, then cranked the wheel.
Someone had used a bulldozer to cut a road into the slope of the hillside, angling upward.
A long time ago, judging from the size of the trees grown up beside it.
Heading up into the darkness, bouncing over the rutted gravel, he was glad the vehicle was four-wheel drive.
“Tell me who we’re buying from,” Peter said.
“Couple of small-time ex-army peckerwood brothers I knew back in the day. Worked for the company armorer, repairing weapons. Knew their stuff. Now they in business for themselves. Got a machine shop way up in the woods, stamp their own AK receivers, build new guns with replacement parts sourced from Poland and Bulgaria.”
“Ghost guns,” Peter said. “No serial numbers, totally untraceable.”
“You got it. Worth serious scratch, if you don’t end up getting killed by your customers. So these guys play rough, they don’t like outsiders, and they paranoid as hell.”
“You don’t know anyone else out here?”
Lewis snorted. “Jarhead, these mountains are full of wingnut groups. You got your race-war militias and eco-anarchist collectives and everything in between, and they all armed to the teeth. Even the damn hippies got AR-15s. And every last one of ’em thinks the moon landing was faked and the president’s an alien.
But I’ve known Nickels and his brother since the Army, and far as I can tell, all they care about is money, and we got plenty of that.
Not to mention, we ain’t got time to make new friends. ”
“We’re just going to knock on their door?”
“I messaged ’em from the plane. Nickels said they might part with a few things if the price was right. They call him Nickels because he carries a roll of coins in his pocket, always ready for a fight. And he never did like me much, anyway. You best keep that .357 ready.”
“Did you forget we only have the one pistol? What are you going to use?”
Lewis smiled brightly. “I’m gonna give them the Denzel Washington.”
“What the hell is the Denzel Washington?”
“Just follow my lead, Jarhead.”
The land opened up and yellow lamplight filtered through the evergreens ahead.
The road came to a crest and they arrived at a clearing carved out of the trees.
A two-story log home moldered beside a large sheet-metal pole barn.
In the mud yard, three big Dodge Ram pickups stood high on knobby tires, gleaming in the rain.
“Tap the horn,” Lewis said. “Stay in the truck. Keep the engine running.”