“I think he was scouting us,” Peter said. “Even testing us, seeing how we’d react. Getting a sense of our strength.”
“Maybe waiting for reinforcements,” Lewis asked. “Man seems to like using other folks to do his dirty work.”
Peter nodded. “My guess is, the next time we see him, he won’t be holding back.”
35
Peter
Lewis approached Stella’s place using an inward spiral pattern, Peter and June looking hard for any car with familiar taillights in case the guy had circled back to wait for them. They saw none. Still, they entered the house carefully, guns out, clearing it room by room. It was empty.
They grabbed their stuff and got out fast, leaving Stella’s pistol in the desk drawer and putting the key back where they’d found it. Peter would text Manny in the morning, so he could alert Stella with Peter’s apologies. They’d pay for her hotel room until this was over. He didn’t tell June about killing Nickels’s brother. It could wait until the morning.
Lewis’s backup hotel was the Columbus Motor Inn on Ninety-Fifth and Aurora. It was a lot like the Marco Polo, fifty blocks to the south, where KT was killed, but with the added benefit that some of the parking was out of sight of the main road. Lewis went into the office while Peter and June waited in the car. It was after three in themorning. KT had been dead for less than thirty-six hours. It felt like an eternity.
The room was utilitarian but clean. Before the static could flare too badly, Peter got into the shower and June climbed in with him, her fingers tracing the bruise where the armor had stopped Reed’s bullet. As the hot water warmed them, she wrapped her legs around his hips and they moved together, finding comfort in each other’s bodies. In the night, he woke as she sobbed softly for her lost friend. He took her in his arms and they fell asleep like that, her head on his bare chest, his strong arm around her naked waist, each of them a place of solace and protection for the other.
By noon the next day, they’d collected Lewis, thrown their bags in the car, and driven to Pete’s Eggnest on Greenwood for breakfast. They sat at a window table in the corner out of earshot of the other diners.
June said, “You never told me how it went with the gun guys last night.”
“It went sideways,” Peter said. “They were planning to rob us.”
Lewis snorted. “Motherfuckers would’ve killed us. Lucky it went the other way.”
June gave Peter that look that went clear through him. Like she could see the architecture of his soul. “You had to kill someone.”
Peter nodded. He needed to talk about it, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
June understood. “Why did they want to kill you?”
Lewis shook his head. “They wouldn’t cop to anything. Whoever they’re in with, they’re too scared to talk. But they’re into something, that’s for sure. Jarhead thinks they might be connected to the Messenger. Either way, they had enough guns to outfit a small nation.”
“That’s not good.” June cupped her coffee mug in both hands, warming them.
“It gets worse,” Peter said. “They were making armor-piercing bullets. A lot of them.”
Lewis sighed. “These guys used to be small-time, selling ghost guns to the local wingnuts. But black-tips are a whole different deal. The equipment to make that shit is spendy as hell. Whoever they’re dealing with, they’ve got money.”
“You didn’t get any names?”
“The guy’s mom called the cavalry,” Peter said. “We had to get out of there.”
June looked at both of them. “Those armor-piercing rounds are cop killers,” she said. “You think they’re planning some kind of attack?”
“That tech conference starts the day after tomorrow,” Peter said. “The Seattle PD will have a major presence. Everybody will be wearing body armor. AP rounds would do a lot of damage.”
June closed her eyes. “What would they be trying to accomplish? Aside from murdering a lot of people.”
Peter thought about what the Messenger had said on that cassette tape. “They want to destroy what he called the Industrial Machine, right? Maybe they think killing a bunch of tech moguls would do that.”
“That’s nuts,” Lewis said. “We got too many companies working on too many projects. Even if they manage to kill five hundred people, they won’t make a dent in the tech talent we got in this country.”
“Didn’t you hear that recording?” June asked. “I’m pretty sure theyarenuts. So who knows what the fuck they’re up to?”
That stopped the conversation cold.
After the waiter came to refill their coffees, promising their food would come soon, June caught them up on her progress from the night before. She started with the old maps Peter had taken from Reed’s apartment, their weird multicolored hieroglyphic markings. She gestured at the cluttered breakfast table. “When we get someplace we canspread out, maybe you guys can make sense of them, because I sure as hell couldn’t.”
