The Searcher(113)

“You haveta talk to them, the lads from Dublin. Didja talk to them?”

“Kid,” Cal says. “Slow down. I’m gonna. But I need to work out the best way to go about it, so neither of us winds up with a bullet in our heads.”

Trey thinks that over, biting off skin from around her thumbnail, wincing when she catches her lip. In the end she says, “Didja see Mart Lavin?”

“No. Why?”

“He came looking for you.”

“Huh,” Cal says, mentally kicking himself. Of course Mart would have clocked Lena’s car and headed straight down here, truffle-hunting for gossip, the second he got a chance. “He see you?”

“Nah. I saw him coming, hid in the jacks. He went all round the house, when you didn’t answer the door. I heard him. Checking in the windows. Saw his shadow.”

The kid is starting to twitch with adrenaline again at the memory. “Well,” Cal says peacefully, “good thing my bathroom’s got that sheet over the window.” He takes off his coat and hangs it on its hook behind the door, moving nice and slowly. “You know why I put that up to begin with? ’Cause of you. Before we ever met. I knew someone was watching me, so I nailed that sheet up there to give me a little bit of privacy where it counts. And now it’s coming in useful to you. Funny how things turn out, huh?”

Trey gives a one-shouldered shrug, but her jittering has slowed down. “I know what Mart wanted, anyway,” Cal says, “and it’s got nothing to do with you. He saw Miss Lena’s car here, and he wants to know if me and her are hooking up.”

The look on Trey’s face makes him grin. “Are you?”

“Nope. There’s more’n enough going on without adding that in on top. You want anything? A snack, maybe?”

“I wanta see this.” The kid points at her face. “You got a mirror?”

Cal says, “It looks a lot worse’n it is, right now. The swelling’ll go down in a day or two.”

“I know. I wanta see it.”

Cal finds his beard-trimming mirror in a cupboard and hands it to her. Trey sits at the table with it and spends a long time there, turning her head this way and that.

“We can still see if a doctor can fix up that lip,” Cal says. “So it won’t leave a scar. We’ll tell them you fell off your bike.”

“Nah. I don’t give a shite about scars.”

“I know. You might someday, though.”

The kid makes Cal happy by giving him a full-bore moron stare. “I’d rather look like ‘don’t fuck with me’ than look pretty.”

“I think you got that covered,” Cal says. “You need to get out in the village. Before those bruises go down.”

Trey’s head comes up sharply from the mirror. “I’m not going down there.”

“Yeah you are. Whoever told your mama to do this, we need them to know that she did it, and did it right. That’s why she went for your face: so they’d know. You need to get seen by someone who’ll pass it on.”

“Like who?”

“Well, if I knew that,” Cal says. “Just go into Noreen’s. Buy bread or something. Give her a good look at your face, walk like you hurt all over. She’ll make sure word gets around.”

“I’ve got no money.”

“I’ll give you some. You can bring the bread back here to me.”

“I do hurt all over. I can’t walk that far.”

The kid’s shoulders have a mutinous set. Everything in her is dug in against the thought of waving her family’s dirty laundry in Noreen’s face. “Kid,” Cal says. “You want them coming back to make sure?”

After a second Trey pushes the mirror away. “Right,” she says. “OK. Just, can I go tomorrow?”

The downswirl of fatigue dragging at her voice makes Cal feel like a heel. Just because the kid’s still got fight in her, he fooled himself into believing she was more whole than she could possibly be right now. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Tomorrow’ll work fine. Today you just rest up.”

Trey says, “Can I stay here?”

“Sure,” Cal says. He’s been turning over ways to suggest the same thing himself. Donie would have to be a dumbass of epic proportions to go whining to Austin about their conversation, but Cal learned a long time ago never to underestimate the spectacular natural wonder that is people’s stupidity. And on the off chance that Austin does have someone watching Donie, and they spotted Cal, they know every word of that conversation by now. He thinks of the Austin variants he’s known, and of the things they’ll do to Trey if they feel the need to come back. Until he has the situation under some kind of control, the kid is staying put.

Trey yawns, suddenly and hugely, not bothering to cover her mouth. “ ’M wrecked,” she says, puzzled.

“That’s ’cause you’re hurt,” Cal explains. “Your body’s using a ton of energy on healing. Just gimme two minutes, and we’ll get you back to bed.”

He fetches his hammer and tacks, a chair and a drop sheet, and takes them over to the bedroom window. Trey follows him and collapses on the bed like someone cut her strings.

“I got beat up one time when I was about your age,” Cal says. He climbs on the chair and starts tacking up the sheet over the window.