My chest goes tight.
"Huh."
Parker watches me.
"She asked about you."
My head comes up.
"What did she ask."
"Asked if you were eating. Asked if Ghost was okay. Asked if you were taking your days off."
"What did you tell her."
"I told her the truth. That you look like a man who made a mistake and can't figure out how to unmake it."
I deserve that.
Parker sets the folder on my kitchen table. Takes his hat off. Scratches the back of his head like he's debating whether to keep going.
"Hawk."
"Yeah."
"I've known you six years. You're the best man I've got up in these hills. You don't panic. You don't flinch. You don't make stupid calls under pressure. You made a stupid call. You want to keep sitting here with a dog who won't come inside, that's your business. You want to go get her, the AG office has a safe house on Kirman Avenue and a woman who's expecting the grand jury on the twenty-second."
"She won't want to see me."
"Probably not. That's a separate problem."
He puts his hat back on.
"Your truck runs."
He leaves.
I stand at the kitchen table for about four minutes.
Then I go pack a bag.
Reno is three hours if you're a man who drives the speed limit and I'm not that man today.
I do it in two and a half.
I don't go to the safe house.
I'm not stupid. She doesn't want a man she told to back off showing up at the door of a building where she's trying to start a new life. I go to the federal building downtown because Parkertold me she files her sworn statements on Tuesdays at one, and it's Tuesday, and it's twelve forty.
I park on the street. I sit in the truck in a button-down I found at the bottom of a drawer and a jacket I haven't worn since my discharge. Jeans. Boots. Beard trimmed. I look like a man trying. I am a man trying.
At twelve fifty-eight she walks out the side door with a messenger bag across her chest and her hair pulled back and a cane she's using for the ankle. Her limp is better. Her face is the face of a woman who's been working hard and sleeping badly.
I get out of the truck.
She sees me.
She stops on the sidewalk like I just reached into her chest and grabbed something.
