The Storm King(40)

“Half a flight maybe. I don’t know. Marble looks good but it’s a real bitch once you get down to it.”



“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” Nate stooped to examine Johnny’s injured leg. The bloodstain on his pants had prepared Nate for something awful, and the splintered stalk of bone lancing through rent flesh didn’t disappoint. Compound fracture of the tibia.

“They’re so loud.”

“Holy God,” Tom said, seeing the state of Johnny’s leg.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck,” Owen said.

“Yeah, the second I saw my leg tricked out like a George Romero prop, I thanked God for how amazingly lucky I am.”

“They’ll need to operate,” Nate said. “How are you even able to speak in complete sentences right now?”

“There might have been some self-medicating going on,” Owen said.

“Go and narc on me, Owen. Christ.”

“You need to get that treated, like right now.” A sleepy-looking orderly was ambling toward them with a wheelchair, and Nate motioned for him to hurry up. “And make sure to tell them whatever meds you took.”

Chief Buck came through the automatic doors. His rain gear was slicked with water, and his expression was as dark as the sky.

“You, too, Johnny?” He grimaced at the wound, then glanced at Tom. They stared at each other for a moment, and Nate watched something pass between them. The chief wrapped his arms around his son and Tom hugged him back.

“I’m so sorry about Loki,” the chief said.

“Loki?” Nate asked.

“Tom’s black lab, you asshole.” Johnny’s voice was saturated with disgust. “Poor dead Loki.”

“Your dog died? I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“You don’t know anything. And he didn’t die, he was murdered. The bastards drugged him or something and put him behind the back wheel of Tom’s cruiser.”

“So you—”

“I—ran over him. After I called you, to tell you about Grams, I was on my way here. And then, when I pulled out of the garage—I—” Tom’s voice wavered as he kept his eyes fixed on some imaginary point. “The second I felt the car lurch, I just knew. He was my—” He swallowed and closed his eyes. “He was a good dog.”



Nate realized that Tom’s eyes were red and his clothes were covered in mud because he’d been burying his beloved pet.

“I was heading over to help him when I fell down the stairs,” Johnny said. “It probably shocks you to learn I’m not usually up and about at five in the morning.”

“I wish you’d told me, Tom. I’m so sorry.”

Tom shrugged and looked away.

The orderly and a nurse eased Johnny into the wheelchair and pushed him toward triage.

Tom and Owen trailed Johnny then settled into chairs across from where Nate had been seated. He was about to join them, but the chief’s grip on his arm stopped him.

“How’s Bea?”

“Not good, Chief.”

“Is she awake?”

“No. If she does wake up she’ll wish she hadn’t.” A tsunami of agony awaited Grams if she returned to him.

“I’m going to see her. Don’t go anywhere.” Chief Buck exchanged words with the nurse at the intake desk and disappeared through a set of doors.

“Did they hit you last night, Owen?” Nate asked as he dropped into his chair.

“Not this time.”

“They got me instead,” Tom said. “I was an idiot for thinking they’d leave me alone.” He spoke without heat, as if his front door had been egged and not his dog murdered. But his eyes were wide and gleaming with tears.

Medea’s carnage played mutely from the waiting room’s television. Roiling mud where a highway had been, parking lots filled with submerged cars, Coast Guard rescues from foundering ships. All of the footage, blurred and choppy and water-slicked.



These were scenes from the lives of the unlucky. Edited, packaged, and broadcast to places where electricity still ran in lines through the walls instead of in bolts that splintered the sky. Viewers, from the comfort of their couches, were the fortunate ones. But luck doesn’t last forever. In the carousel of disaster, Nate knew that everyone gets their turn.

“It’ll be okay,” Owen told Nate. He’d leaned across the space that separated them. “No matter what happens, it’ll all be okay.” It was a platitude people used as a placeholder for something better, but Owen delivered the words with conviction.

“I don’t think so, O,” Nate said. “Not this time.”

“When my mom had her stroke, I didn’t know how to handle it.” Owen shook his head. “Dad was gone by then, and I had to deal with all of it. The doctors, the bills, the rehab. Everything. It seemed totally impossible. Because it was new, and horrible, and changes everything in your life. But people do stuff like this all the time. People who aren’t as tough and smart and well-off. Because we’ve got to, you know?”

“Yeah.” The big guy was trying to help, and Nate couldn’t fault him for that.

“And the thing is—the thing to remember—is no matter what happens, you get used to it. You can survive it,” Owen said. “I mean, if I can do it, believe me, you can.” He hazarded a smile.