Serious Moonlight(23)

Chilly night air was wrapped in a light fog that had rolled in from the bay; it smelled of brine and clung to the tops of buildings and streetlights like smoky halos. A light drizzle was starting, so I tugged up the buttoned-on hood of my coat and scanned the street. Be aware of your environment, Grandpa always warned me. First Avenue was quiet, only a few cars and a street cleaner. I spotted a familiar elderly homeless man who Joseph said was friendly, and under a fog-ringed streetlight, perched on a newspaper rack like a raven, I spotted someone else.

Daniel?

I blinked, but he was still there, smiling beneath a black hoodie. I couldn’t trust that. Maybe I’d fallen asleep in the employee break room and this was just a mirage. I sneaked a look at my hand and flexed my fingers. One, two, three, four, five—

Not a dream.

“Hello, Birdie,” he called.

“What are you doing out here?” I called back. “You’re not on the schedule.”

He jumped from the newspaper rack, landing gracefully on black Converse low-tops, and walked over to me. “I was running an errand.”

At four thirty in the morning?

“And I thought you might want company on your way to the ferry, what with all the crazy kooks you could encounter out here at this time of day,” he said. “Are you mad? If you don’t want me here, tell me to leave and I’ll go. I’m only realizing just now that I could be perceived as one of said kooks.”

“Are you a kook?”

“A good-intentioned kook?” he said, shrugging slowly with his palms upward. “A lovable kook? Definitely not a chain-saw-wielding maniac.”

“That’s probably what a chain-saw-wielding maniac would say.”

“Touché, Birdie,” he said, snapping his fingers as if he hadn’t thought of that. “If you’d rather not risk it, I totally understand.”

I looked at him, then glanced at the vehicles parked by the curb. “I’m not getting in your car again.”

“My car isn’t even parked here. Come on. Let me walk you to the ferry.”

“It doesn’t run for another hour.”

“Then where were you headed?”

I hesitated, eyes shifting down the block. “Um . . .”

“Oh!” He slapped his hand against his forehead. “Duh. Moonlight, right? Don’t look at me like that. It’s just logical. You told me you lived above it when you were a kid, and it’s the only thing open around here this early besides the Murder 7-Eleven on Pike and Third.”

That stretch of Third Avenue was off-limits, according to my grandpa. Too many shootings. And stabbings. Though, strangely, it might not be as bad as Hatchet 7-Eleven, south of the city, for reasons easy to surmise.

“That’s why I go to the diner when I don’t want to head straight home after work,” he continued. “Coffee sounds pretty fucking good right now.”

How could I get out of this? Did I want to get out of it? My hands were getting sweaty again, which was some kind of bizarre medical miracle, because it was downright cold out here. I busied myself, cinching the belt of my coat tighter around my waist.

On one hand, going to the diner with him could be weird because of what happened the first time we were there together. On the other hand, I really wanted to talk to him about Raymond Darke.

On the third hand, somewhere inside I was inexplicably happy to see Daniel, and maybe that was a problem, because now I was back to hand number one.

“Come on,” he said with a gentle smile. “Let’s have late-night breakfast together. Completely chill. Just two coworkers hanging out who’ve definitely never been handsy with each other.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered as heat radiated across my chest.

“We can even go dutch to keep everything nice and equal.” He tilted his hooded head to catch my eyes, and the expression on his face was kind and good-natured. “Besides, we should talk about you-know-who and our investigation.”

“Which I haven’t agreed to.”

“More reason to talk. What do you say?”

I glanced up and down the block before answering. “All right. Just breakfast. Then I need to get to the ferry. My grandfather will be expecting me. His best friend was a cop, and if I’m even a minute late, he’ll have half the Seattle PD looking for me.”

He squinted with one eye. “I think I should be offended that you’d feel the need to tell me that, but hey. If I were a girl, I’d probably be saying the same thing. You deal with shit I don’t, so I get it. And you can leave whenever you want or tell me to get lost, and I’ll skedaddle.”

“Skedaddle?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m a lovable kook and a great skedaddler. Maybe the best.”

“Is that so?”

“You should see my trophies.”

“Do they say Top Award for Best Skedaddler?”

“A few of them. Some say Ultimate Skedaddling Champion of the Universe, but, you know, I don’t enjoy bragging.”

“Seems exactly what you enjoy doing.”

He laughed and waved me to his side.

We strolled down the sidewalk together, the soles of our shoes slapping against rain-slicked concrete. The city was impossibly empty, a sleeping giant; we were just Lilliputians, tiptoeing around its borders.