Hank turned enough for the man to see the patches on his vest. The stranger’s gaze lowered, then came back up. He was younger than Hank, with a narrow face and a pale mark under his left eye.
“Morning,” Hank said.
The man said nothing.
Sarah picked up the coffee pot.
She walked past booth six, past the stack of clean menus, past the service station where somebody had left a jar of strawberry jam without its lid.
Ordinary things.
She fixed her attention on them because ordinary things did not ask her to believe her father had been murdered.
Jimmy Navarro looked up from the grill.
“You okay?”
“Burnt coffee,” she said.
He frowned at the pot in her hand.
She pushed through the kitchen door.
Hank followed four seconds later.
“Back exit.”
“What is happening?”
“I’ll explain. Keep moving.”
He did not grab her. Later, she would remember that. In the middle of everything, he kept a careful distance, as if he understood that another hand on her arm would make her scream.
Jimmy came through behind them.
“Sarah?”
Hank opened the service door.
A motorcycle stood in the alley, a helmet hooked over the passenger seat. Water shivered on the black tank. The air smelled of rain and the bakery two doors down.
Sarah stopped.
“No.”
Hank took a key from his pocket.
“Helmet first.”
“I don’t know you.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never been on one of those.”
“Today’s educational.”
The service door opened behind them.
The man with the mark beneath his eye stepped into the alley.
Hank moved between him and Sarah.
No shouting. No theatrical widening of his stance. He simply occupied the space the stranger would have to cross.
“Get on,” he told her.
The man looked at Hank’s vest again.
“Hank Reeves.”
“Then you know enough to stop there.”
“Cutter says this isn’t your fight anymore.”
The name changed Hank’s face.
Sarah saw it happen, saw some final hesitation leave him.
“It became my fight in 2002.”
The second man appeared in the doorway.
Sarah put on the helmet.
Her hands shook so badly she could not work the strap. Hank reached back without taking his eyes off the men and fastened it with two quick movements.
Then he swung onto the motorcycle.
“Hold on.”
“To what?”
“Me.”
She wrapped her arms around him.
The engine caught, thunder trapped between brick walls.
They left the alley hard enough to pull a frightened cry from her chest. Cold rain struck the exposed skin beneath her chin. A delivery driver sounded his horn. Hank took the corner, straightened, and joined traffic with the terrible confidence of somebody who had already considered every way the morning could go wrong.
At the next intersection, Sarah looked back.
A black SUV pulled out behind them.
“That’s them.”
“I know.”
“How are you this calm?”
“I’ve had twenty-four years to be nervous.”
He crossed Burnside, turned twice, and entered a parking garage beneath an office building. They climbed past a level smelling of exhaust and wet concrete, then another, until he stopped behind a wall beside the stairwell.
When the engine died, Sarah could hear herself breathing inside the helmet.
She got off too quickly and nearly fell.
Hank caught her elbow, released it immediately, and stepped back.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down.”
Her shout bounced off the concrete.
Somewhere below, tires squealed on a painted ramp.
Hank listened.
Sarah tore at the helmet strap until it came loose.
“You have thirty seconds before I start screaming.”
He took a folded photograph from the inside pocket of his vest.
Its edges were white with wear.
He placed it on the motorcycle seat instead of handing it to her.
A younger Hank stood beside a blue pickup in sunshine. He had less beard and more hair. Another man leaned against the truck with one boot crossed over the other. He was laughing at whoever held the camera.
Sarah’s mother stood between them.
Not the careful woman Sarah knew, with sensible shoes and a grocery list folded inside her purse.
This Diana wore cutoffs and a faded concert shirt. Her head was tipped back. One hand rested against the laughing man’s chest.
Sarah knew his face.
She had never seen it before.
Both things were true.
“That’s Michael,” Hank said.
Sarah touched the photograph without picking it up.
The man had her eyebrows.
Not roughly. Not in the vague way people found resemblance when they wanted it.