Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(56)

Lily clambered over into the valley, plainly uncharmed by the beauty of the place. She glared as she leaned over to pant, bracing her hands against her knees. So much for the calming aspect of this side trip.

“Would you mind turning around for just a second?” he asked.

Her brows snapped together. “Come again?”

“I asked you to turn around.”

She looked affronted. “I got that part. What I don’t get is why.”

He sighed. “I have to take a leak,” he explained. “Do you mind?”

“What? You’re kidding me. You dragged me all the way over that so that you could piss on your favorite tree?”

He turned his back and got down to business, letting her mutter and fume. It was a long one, after all the coffee. By the time he was done and all buttoned up, he’d decided she deserved an explanation.

“Tony used to bring me and Kev up here, when I was a kid,” he said. “When it wasn’t snowed in, we’d come up on weekends. Every time we came, we would hike up here and take a piss under that tree. It was, I don’t know. A thing, with us. With Tony. A ritual, I guess.”

Her expressed softened. “Ah.”

“Anyhow. That’s why. Sorry for dragging you along.”

She didn’t have a single sharp word for him as she struggled across the rockfall back to the winding deer path.

“So peeing there makes you feel closer to him?” she asked.

He shrugged. Didn’t really want to examine it. Impulse was impulse. You squelched it or you followed it. A guy could twist his brain into knots if he thought too much about that stuff.

“At home, there was this place in Riverside Park,” Lily said. “My dad and I used to go there before . . . what happened to him. We’d play cards. He’d do his work stuff, I’d read comic books. We ate salami on hard rolls from the deli on Ninth Avenue. Mint Milanos and Snapple.”

“Yeah,” Bruno said, warily. “And this is relevant exactly why?”

“I go there, once in a while, to the park,” she said. “I buy Mint Milanos and Snapple, and sit there with my laptop, with whatever term paper I’m writing.” She forced out a breath. “When I can stand it.”

Bruno stared at her. His throat was getting tight. “Let’s go.”

“It’s OK, if it makes you feel better,” she said softly. “I get that. It connects me to him. My memories, anyway. Of how he was.”

“Don’t get all misty on me,” he said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“No? How do you figure?”

“Oh, gee.” He snorted. “Snapple? Urine? World of difference.”

“Because you’re a guy. They are connected bodily functions, right? Depends on which end of the mechanism you’re looking at.”

He held up his hand. “Don’t go any further with that. Please.

“You’re the one waving it in my face. Like a flag.” Her eyes dropped to his crotch. “So to speak.”

He set off, hoping she’d let it go at that. At least feeling sorry for him had put her in a softer place. That had to be a good thing.

“Why that tree?” she called up. “What was special about it?”

“That wasn’t the kind of question you could ask Uncle Tony,” he replied. “Two possible answers. Best-case scenario was a grunt.”

“Ah.” She scrambled behind him, panting. “Worst-case scenario?”

“The back of his hand across my face.”

Her crunching footsteps stopped. “Sounds like a swell guy.”

He stopped to let her catch up, thinking about Tony. How he’d pitched out of a window hugging a bomb to save them. How he’d made Rudy and his thugs disappear. Yeah, Tony had been a bad-tempered, violent man. And even so. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He was a swell guy.”

She stumbled, thudding to her knees with a gasp, and no wonder with those oozing scabs. He lunged down the slope, grabbing her elbow.

She yanked it back, almost rocking off balance again. “Hands off!”

What the f*ck? “You’re still mad?” he asked. He felt almost hurt. “I thought we were having a tender moment.”

A grin flashed on her face as she struggled back up to her feet. “We were. Just don’t touch me with that grubby paw until you wash it.”

Oh, for God’s sake. He struck off again, but the stupid grin on his face lasted him almost all the way to the top of the bluff.

Mt. Adams was fogged in. A froth of gray clouds were piled up like dirty cobwebs in the canyon between the bluff and the slope of the nearby volcano. Bummer. Seeing the mountain was the payoff for all that effort. He led her to the lee of the cliff, where the worst of the wind would miss her, and left her huddled there to find the next best spot.

There were text messages for him on the Virgin phone. The first was from Aaro. Short, succinct, rude. A phone number, and then:



Det. Sam Petrie, PPB. Knock yrslf out butthead





The next was from Kev. Even briefer.



WTF? call me now





And another, from Sean McCloud.



W8ting 4 news ??





Scariest call first. He hunkered down, pulled out one of the new cell phones that Aaro had brought for him, stuck in his own chip. True, once the cop had a warrant out for his arrest, he’d be able to identify where the signal had originated, but by that time, he and Lily would be long gone. And hopefully this whole situation would be already resolved.