“Both.”
“The usual?”
“Sure.”
She turns to put the order in.I watch her work.Kate’s good at this—the bar, the people, the noise.She doesn’t need anything from anyone and she’s never pretended otherwise.
She sets the bourbon down.Our fingers brush on the glass.
The door opens behind me.I don’t turn around.People come and go at the Lamplighter and none of them are my business.Not today, anyway.
“Luke Harper.”
I turn.
Two of them.Mid-twenties.One tall, one wide.The tall one has neck tattoos that crawl up past his collar like they’re trying to escape.The wide one has hands like catcher’s mitts and the flat, empty expression of someone who’s been told what to do and is looking forward to doing it.
I know who sent them before they say a word.
“Javi says hello,” the tall one says.Loud enough for the bar to hear.Quiet enough to sound like a threat.
Javi.The kid from the tattoo parlor.The one whose hand I rearranged with my grandfather’s hammer.Apparently he’s got friends.Apparently those friends are stupid enough to walk into a bar at noon and announce themselves.
“Javi should learn to let things go,” I say.
“Javi says you owe him.”The tall one steps closer.“Says you broke something that belonged to him.”
“I broke something that belonged tohim.”I take a sip of bourbon.Set it down.“That’s one way to look at it.”
The wide one moves to my left.Flanking.Amateur hour.They’re positioning like they’ve seen it done in movies but never in a room where someone might actually hit back.
Kate’s watching from behind the bar.Her hand is under the counter—where she keeps the bat, the one with electrical tape around the grip that she calls “customer service.”
“Not in here,” she says.Flat.Final.
The tall one ignores her.Big mistake.
He reaches for my collar.I let him get close—close enough to commit, close enough that his weight is forward and his balance is gone—and then I drive my elbow into his solar plexus.Short.Hard.The same controlled strike I used on Ryan McCall except this time I follow it with a knee to his thigh that drops him sideways into a barstool.
The wide one swings.Sloppy.I catch his wrist and twist until his shoulder makes a sound like a stick breaking underwater.He screams.I push him into the bar and hold him there.
The tall one is on the floor, gasping.The wide one is pinned, arm bent at an angle God didn’t intend.
The whole thing took six seconds.The bar is silent.Someone’s country song is still playing on the jukebox like nothing happened.
I lean close to the wide one.“Tell Javi we’re even.And tell him if he sends anyone else, I’ll visit him personally.At home this time.Not the shop.”
I let him go.He stumbles toward his friend.They leave the way they came in—louder than they should, slower than they’d like.
Kate sets a fresh bourbon on the bar.Doesn’t say a word.Doesn’t have to.
I sit back down.There’s a cut on my forearm from the wide one’s ring—thin, clean, already beading red.
My phone buzzes.
Marin.
I look at Kate.She’s wiping down the bar, eyes on the cloth, giving me the privacy she’s always given me.No questions.No expectations.No mornings.
