I pull out my phone and text Mickey.Blue shirt tan pants. Table by the street. That's him. He's here. I need you. Right now. Not as a cop. As my friend to keep me from doing something I can't undo.
I glance up to see Mickey already moving. He picks up his beer and his plate and walks toward the grill, like a guygetting a refill. He positions himself between me and Ron's table.
"I see him," Mickey says quietly. "How long has he been here?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. He gave me a business card and a story about his missing nephew with drug problems."
"Is Stormy—"
"Sheila's getting him upstairs."
Mickey nods and takes a sip of his beer. His eyes move to Ron and back to me. I can see the assessment happening, the cop brain running parallel to the friend brain, checking out the man, his position, the exits.
"Breathe, Tex. Don't let him fuck up your life. We'll find another way to handle this."
"I'm breathing."
"You're not breathing. You're white-knuckling those tongs and you've got a look on your face that I've only seen once before and it was right before you put Kenny Hollister through a bar window in 2019."
"Kenny deserved it."
"He absolutely deserved it. But this isn't Kenny. This is different, and you know it."
I force my hands to relax on the tongs. I turn back to the grill and flip the chicken because doing something normal with my hands is the only thing keeping me from crossing the parking lot and ending Ron Jackson's life in front of a hundred witnesses.
Ron finishes his plate. He stands and walks to the edge of the lot, drops the plate in the trash can, and turns back. Hescans the lot one more time, slow and thorough, the way a man scans a room when he's looking for one single face in a crowd.
He doesn't find it. Stormy isn't here. Stormy is upstairs, behind a door, because Sheila is a warrior and she follows instructions.
Ron walks to his truck. A Dodge Ram pickup parked on the street. He gets in, but he doesn't leave right away. He sits there for a minute, maybe two, looking at the bar. Then the engine starts and he pulls away, slow, heading west on the beach road.
"Got the license plate," Mickey says beside me. He's already typing into his phone.
I watch the truck until it disappears. My hands are shaking so badly the tongs are rattling against the grill grate. I set them down before anyone notices.
"He said he'll be in the area for a few days," I tell Mickey. "Said he might come back."
"He will. This was a reconnaissance mission. He came to see the place, see the setup, see who's here. He's going to come back when it's less crowded. When there are fewer eyes on him."
"What do we do?"
Mickey doesn't look away from the lot. "Right now? You run your bar. Serve your food. You act like nothing happened. He can't know that you know who he is. The moment he realizes you're protecting Stormy instead of just some bar owner who hasn't seen the kid, the dynamic changes. He becomes desperate. And desperate is dangerous."
I nod. Mickey is always right about these things.
"I'm going to go check on Stormy," I say.
Chapter 29: Stormy
I'm carrying a plate of brisket and beans toward the back door when I see him.
The door is propped open to let the heat out and through the gap I can see the parking lot, the crowd, the grill. Tex is at his station, tongs in hand, talking to someone. A man. Blue shirt, tan pants, wide shoulders. His back is to me but I don't need to see his face. My body has already identified him the way a rabbit identifies a hawk by the shadow it casts.
The plate hits the floor.
I don't feel it leave my hands. I don't see the brisket and beans scatter across the tile. I'm somewhere else already. The bar is gone. The noise of the parking lot is gone. Tex's voice is gone.
Everything is gone except the shape of those shoulders in that doorway, and the sound of boots on a hallway floor and a key turning in a lock.
