Now a biker she had known for four mornings was telling her there had never been an empty room.
There had been a body.
You're lying.
I wish I was.
The approaching man was three feet away.
Hank smiled suddenly.
Wide. Easy. A performance.
Come on, sweetheart, he said loudly. "You know your old man needs more coffee."
Sarah understood.
She rolled her eyes.
Dad, you've already had four cups.
The man stopped.
Only for a second.
But he stopped.
Hank pushed the coffee pot toward Sarah.
Kitchen.
She walked.
Not fast.
That was the hardest part.
Every instinct told her to run.
She forced herself past booth six, past the waitress station, past Jimmy Navarro at the grill.
He looked up.
Sarah?
Burnt coffee, she said.
She had no idea why.
She pushed through the swinging kitchen door.
Hank entered four seconds later.
Back exit.
What is happening?
Move.
They crossed the prep area.
Jimmy shouted after them.
Hey!
Hank shoved the service door open.
Cold February air slapped Sarah's face.
A black motorcycle waited in the alley.
Sarah stopped.
Absolutely not.
Hank looked through the narrow kitchen window.
The first stranger had reached the door.
Sarah.
I have never been on a motorcycle.
Then today's educational.
Are you insane?
The service door opened behind them.
One of the men stepped through.
Hank's entire body changed.
He did not panic.
He simply moved between the man and Sarah.
The alley smelled of wet asphalt and garbage and cold rain, and the stranger's shoes made no sound on the pavement that Sarah could hear over the blood rushing in her ears. He was younger than Hank, leaner, with a face that showed nothing at all, and that nothing was what frightened her most — not anger, not excitement, just a flat, practiced emptiness, as though he had done this kind of thing before and expected to do it again. Hank did not raise his voice. He did not reach for anything. He simply shifted his weight, widened his stance, and put his whole body between Sarah and the doorway, and in that movement Sarah understood, all at once, what a lifetime of standing between people and harm looked like: it looked like nothing dramatic at all. It looked like a man deciding, quietly, that he would not move.
Get on the bike.
The stranger stopped.
Sarah got on the motorcycle because there was nothing else left to do with her hands.
The stranger stood in the service doorway with his coat still closed and his eyes on her, and Hank stood between them the way a wall stands between a house and a storm — not angry, not loud, simply there — and the engine was already running, low and impatient, and the rain was coming down in the alley in thin silver lines. She swung her leg over the seat the way she had seen women do in movies, fumbled for the pegs with her shoes, and wrapped her arms around a leather vest that smelled of rain and coffee and gasoline. Hank did not look back at her. He said, "Hold on," and then the alley fell away.
Portland went past in a smear. The wet street shone under the streetlights, and the traffic on Burnside was a slow river of brake lights, and Hank threaded through it the way water threads through stones — not fast at first, just certain, as though he had already ridden this route a hundred times in his head. Sarah pressed her cheek against his back and tried not to think.
Behind them, somewhere in the traffic, a dark car pulled out too fast and then had to brake for a delivery truck. Hank saw it in the mirror. He turned down a side street she did not know, then another, then cut through a parking garage and came out two blocks over on a street lined with warehouses, where the rain drummed on the metal roofs. Sarah's heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her throat. She had never been on a motorcycle. She had never run from anyone. She had never, until this morning, believed that her life contained anything worth running from.
They're still with us? she shouted over the engine.
One of them, Hank said. "Not for long."
He took a left at a light that was turning yellow, then a right into a narrow street between two brick buildings where the puddles stood deep and brown. The car behind them hesitated — it was too wide, or the driver was too careful — and by the time it found the street again, Hank had already turned twice more and was easing down a ramp into an underground garage, where the sound of the rain cut off all at once and the engine's echo came back off the concrete walls. He parked between a pickup truck and a concrete pillar, killed the engine, and sat still for a long moment with his hands on the handlebars, listening.
Sarah unwrapped her arms slowly. Her legs shook when she stood. The garage smelled of oil and damp concrete.
They'll check the diner first, Hank said, "then the streets around it. They won't look here. Not yet."
Who are they? Sarah asked. Her voice sounded thin in the concrete quiet. "You said they murdered my father. You said it like it was a fact you had memorized."
Hank turned on the seat and looked at her, and for the first time that morning his face was not performing anything. It was tired. It was the face of a man who had carried something heavy for a very long time and had finally been allowed to set it down in front of the one person it belonged to.