"Luc Tremblay?"
"You know him."
"I know of him. Enforcer out of Montreal. Hennessy Jr. kept him on retainer off the books. I've got two sources who put him at a meeting I'm not supposed to know about. Why."
"Because he's probably who sent the text."
My stomach does a slow tilt.
"He's here."
"He's somewhere between Revelstoke and us. Possibly here by now. Possibly waiting."
"Waiting for what."
"A clean opportunity. He's not sloppy. He won't come up a single road in daylight."
"So what do we do."
"We don't leave the cabin. We don't give him a clean line. Marcus is pulling in a team that can move on him first."
"How long."
"Thirty six hours, give or take."
I laugh. It comes out rough.
"Thirty six hours of being trapped with you. Awesome."
"You were going to be trapped with me anyway."
"With an exit ramp, Gray. Now there's no exit ramp."
He looks at me a second. Sets his pen down.
"You're scared."
"I'm annoyed."
"Scared."
"Annoyed is what I do with scared."
He studies me. The kind of look I felt on the porch this afternoon. X-ray vision and no apology for it.
"What."
"You handle it different than most people I've protected."
"How."
"They cry. Or they go quiet. You cook eggs."
"I haven't had the luxury of crying in a long time, Mercer."
That lands. I watch it land. Something moves behind his eyes.
He leans back in the chair. Runs a hand down his beard. His sleeves are still pushed up and I can see the inside of his left forearm where the veins sit under the skin and a small scar runs across the muscle in a clean line.
