LUCE KEPT A COSTCO-SIZED first aid kit in the kitchen of the Morgen, equipped to handle everything from grease fire burns to deep lacerations. She hauled the blue bag from under the cabinet while I ran cold water over my hands. My knuckles were swollen from the fight.
“You should ice,” she said.
“Did you buy that bag?” I asked. “Or has it always been that size in case a saloon brawl breaks out?”
“Funny.”
“Yet you’re not smiling. It wasn’t my plan to get jumped, Luce.”
“And it wasn’t those two assholes’ plan to have you be tougher than they were. This whole kit wouldn’t have been enough to patch you up, if they had their way.” She swabbed my neck with antibiotic gel where I had a cut, probably from when the bodybuilder and I had cracked the glass on the fortune-telling machine.
“Okay. You’re right,” I said. “Those two were more sinew than skill.”
The next guys Broch sent might be better, or at least more numerous. But I decided to keep that thought to myself.
“So will you go to the cops?” asked Luce. “You trust that detective you met last year.”
“John Guerin,” I said. “Yeah. But I don’t know what I can tell him that’s usable. Kend was probably in deep with Broch. There’s no way to prove it. Loan sharks don’t give out receipts.” I looked at her. She peeled the paper wrappers off two Band-Aids and stuck them on the back of my neck. Her touch was warm and I felt her breath on the little hairs at my nape.
“I’m not worried for myself,” I said.
There was a knock at the rear door of the bar. “It’s Leo,” he called.
I went to let him in. The Morgen’s rear exit was one of half a dozen unlabeled doors on that side of the building. I hadn’t shown Leo where it was.
“Did you recon the block when you were here before?” I said.
“And again just now,” said Leo. “Nobody’s watching the place, unless they bought a condo across the street.”
Luce looked at Leo, then me. “You called for backup,” she said.
“Occasionally I use my brain,” I said.
I caught Leo up on events, while Luce put some ice in a Ziploc bag for my hands. Leo stood at the kitchen door where he could see the front entrance of the bar.
“The two guys weren’t tailing you?” he said when I’d finished.
“No. I think they were coming to look for me here, before I practically ran into one of them on the street. So Broch must have learned who I am. And my connection with the Morgen.”
“Or with Dono, which amounts to the same thing,” Luce said.
I nodded. “Freddy Fogh sold me out. I paid him to tell me about Broch, and he probably ran straight to Broch to double-dip.”
“Little worm,” said Luce.
“Ganz warned me: Freddy is what Freddy is.”
Leo spoke without taking his eyes off the front. “Maybe we should talk to Freddy.”
“We?”
“Unless you got other volunteers, Sarge,” he said.
“Freddy’s not the problem,” I said.
“You think this Broch dickwad will try again?” said Leo.
“Jesus,” said Luce.
I flexed my hands. The ice had turned them stark white around the edges and pink in the middle, and seeing them move was a separate thing from how they felt.
“I don’t know if Broch will take another run at me. He wanted to warn me off, I think. Even if they didn’t put me in a body cast like they planned, his apes still delivered the message.”
“Maybe he’ll back down,” Leo said.
I shrugged. “There’s no percentage in wishing and hoping.”
Leo nodded. “So I’ll watch your six for a while.”
“No,” I said. I turned to Luce. “They know about the Morgen. I don’t like you being here without me, or without Leo, if that works for him.”
“I could eat more wings,” said Leo.
“Fantastic,” Luce said. “Who’ll be looking after you?”
“I’ll have my guard up,” I said. “They can’t tail me. If I have to go anywhere they might be waiting, Leo backs me up.”
“While I hide,” she said.
I turned to Leo. “Give us a minute.”
He looked a little startled, but he nodded and wandered out to the front of the bar. I closed the swinging door with the Plexiglas porthole behind him.
“I’d ask what’s wrong, but that’s a dumb question after the past couple of days,” I said to Luce.
“It’s multiple choice,” she said, lowering her voice. “There are hired thugs coming to my bar. Leo’s going be your bodyguard, and he’s so twitchy I wonder if that will be more or less dangerous for you. And every rock you’ve turned over makes Kend and Elana look even worse. The lousiest thing is that you’re happier than I’ve seen you in weeks.”
“I’m happy with you.”
“Yes. And I am with you,” she said. “But there’s always part of you that’s somewhere else. You know that’s true, even if we haven’t talked about it.”
My hands were throbbing. I made my fingers move the right way to open the bag and pour the mash of ice and water out into the big dishwashing sink.
Luce touched my arm. “This trouble with Elana—you’re focused on it. Completely.”
“It’s just how I’m used to thinking,” I said. “Tactically. I’ve spent years going from mission to mission. That doesn’t mean it’s more important than you.”
“I’m not jealous,” she said. “I just don’t want you to have blinders on. Your kind of tactics might get you into a mess that even you can’t get out of. Already you’ve broken into two places and been involved in an assault. If it escalates—”
“I won’t let it. I’ll tell Guerin what I know, or suspect. Maybe I’ve missed something that he can piece together for the D.A.”
“Thank you.”
“In the meantime Leo and I will keep our guard up. He’s good, Luce. He’s struggling when it comes to normal life. But I trust him to stay cool.”
Luce looked at the closed swinging door. After a moment she stepped forward and put her arms around me, and we stood there holding each other for a long moment.
“We talked about going away,” she said. “Could that be soon?”
“It could.”
“It’s a slow time of the year right now. And you aren’t waiting for Eberley any more.”
I leaned back to see her eyes. They were the steely color of the Sound waters only a thousand or so feet to the west of us. And somehow warmer than the Caribbean.
“How you’d know I didn’t get the job?” I said.
“You haven’t mentioned it in two days. It wasn’t hard to guess. Sorry.”
“I’m that easy, huh?”
Luce just smiled and angled her head for a kiss. When we parted I took a long breath to clear my head.
“Let’s leave on Sunday,” I said. “You pick which direction we go.”
“I’ll spin a bottle.”
She went back to her office, and I found Leo behind the bar, examining Luce’s police baton. He snapped his wrist and it clacked out to its full length.
“Not bad,” he said. “Beats an iron pipe.”
“If we’re going to keep Broch from steamrolling me, I’d better have something with a longer reach.” The Glock and the two Smith & Wessons from Dono’s oriental rug were back at the house. Carrying around a concealed, unlicensed, untraceable firearm. Luce would definitely count that as escalation.
I knew I could handle being arrested, or even serving time. That wasn’t true of everybody.
“I got other people who can stay with Luce,” I said to Leo.
He looked at me. “Meaning what? You think I’m off the rails?”
“Meaning I don’t want to make things worse.”
“You aren’t making shit. It’s my choice. Unless your other people got our kind of training, you know I’m your best option.” He banged the tip of the baton on the tile floor, collapsing it back into its handle. “And fuck you. You’re not exactly one hundred percent, either.”
I tried bending and unbending my arm. The elbow ached where the bodybuilder had punched it.
“Guess I can’t throw stones at that glass house today,” I said.
“Hell,” said Leo, “if I’d known Seattle was going to be this interesting, I’d have come north a long time ago.”