Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(57)

The muscles flexed in Manny’s jaw. “Listen, Ashes? What would really piss me off? You end up dead and I’m not there to stop it. Because if it weren’t for you, I’d have been dead years ago. Same goes for half the guys working for me. You did what had to be done, what nobody else had the balls to do. You called down the fire and you took the heat for it. So you name the time and place, we’ll be there. That’s how this works.”

Peter sighed. “This shows every sign of getting ugly,” he said. “You set up for that?”

Manny snorted. “You forget who the fuck you’re talking to?”

“No,” said Peter. “I didn’t forget. It’s why I’m here.”

“Goddamn right,” said Manny. “When and where?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

Manny told him the number.

“By the way,” he said. “Stella’s single again. If I was you, I’d watch your ass.”

“I was never here,” said Peter. “We never talked.”





26





Four hours later, Peter rolled back down June’s driveway and parked the minivan beside a big black BMW 7 series with a dented rear fender and a long scrape along the driver’s side.

He’d continued north on I-5, waiting for the laptop to run out of power. As the battery got very low, the computer kept shutting itself down, and he had to keep turning it back on until the battery was fully exhausted and it would no longer restart. He was past Edmonds before he finally shut the lid and used the next exit to head south again.

With the navigational help of his phone, he made a quick stop at Dunn Lumber in Wallingford, then limped through REI’s enormous flagship store. It turned out you could carry a lot in a minivan.

His last stop on the way back to June’s apartment was a big QFC grocery store. He forced himself to walk slowly down the aisles, breathing through the rising static as he filled the cart. Gradual desensitization. It wasn’t easy.

The reward was getting to cook a real meal in a real kitchen.

For June, who was the most vivid woman he’d ever met.

He was planning to ask about her dad after dinner. He’d have to tell her he’d asked Lewis to look into her mother. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

But when he opened her door, juggling four full bags of groceries, he saw her sitting on the couch beside a round-shouldered young man hunched over a laptop computer.

“Knock knock,” said Peter.

June looked up. Her fat lip was still purple but the swelling was down even more. She’d clearly showered and changed her clothes. He wondered how she would smell now.

“Peter, what took you so long? This is Leo Boyle, my landlord. Leo, this is Peter Ash.”

Boyle kept his eyes on the screen, but he put up a lazy hand. “Yo, bro.” He looked to be in his mid-twenties, but his hairline was already retreating up the broad expanse of his forehead. He wore factory-distressed jeans and a wrinkled dress shirt that he’d left untucked, trying to hide his soft belly. They were fashionable clothes, Peter supposed, and probably expensive, but a long way from dress blues.

“Nice to meet you,” said Peter. He shut the door with his medical boot, hefted the bags to the kitchen counter, and began to put away groceries. “Can you stay for dinner? Nothing fancy, just fish tacos, Spanish rice, and salad. Plenty of food.”

June shot Peter a smile, her eyes bright.

Boyle glanced at June, then at Peter. His face was soft and undefined, the skin pale and puffy with lack of sleep or too much alcohol or both. “Sure, I guess.”

“Great,” said Peter. “Can I get anyone a drink? There’s beer and wine and mineral water and orange juice.”

“You bet,” said June as she leaped off the couch and perched on a stool to ogle the supplies. “Oh, man. I’m hungry. And thirsty. Is that Lagunitas Copper Ale? I’ll take one of those.”

Boyle clambered after her. “There’s Grey Goose in the freezer,” he said, staking some kind of claim with his knowledge of the liquor supply. “I’ll take a martini, dirty. No vermouth. Two olives. To the brim.”

“Coming up.” Peter found an opener and set the bottle in front of June. “Glass?”

She shook her head and raised the bottle to the corner of her mouth without the stitches. A small amber trickle made its way down her chin. She wiped it off with her wrist.

Peter found a lonely martini glass in a cupboard of recycled jelly jars, washed out the dust, then took the vodka from the freezer and poured. He fished two ancient green olives from the crusty jar, splashed a little of the brine into the glass, then topped with vodka until the meniscus was crowned at the rim. Clearly the volume of alcohol was important to Boyle.

He pushed the glass carefully across the counter. Boyle lifted the glass without spilling a drop, and took an experimental sip. “Not bad,” he said. As if making this particular drink was a challenge.

Peter opened a beer for himself, then turned on the oven to heat and laid a thick slab of halibut on a pan to come up to room temperature. He brushed it with a little olive oil, then added salt and pepper. “You mind if I use your shower?” he said to June.

June gave him an innocent smile with something else behind it. “I thought you’d never ask.”