He set the phone face-down on the dash and watched the back step.
Stricken faces, frozen in shock.
The image came uninvited, the way it always did. The front row of a courtroom three years ago, and a woman who’d made no sound at all when the verdict came in. Two young children pressed against her sides and a third asleep across her lap. Her hands had clenched in the baby’s blankets, but that was the only sign she gave of her distress.
He’d been the prosecutor of record on the case. And he’d won.
What he had not considered once, in the entire two years of building the case and bringing it to trial, was what would happen between the verdict and the sentencing. He’d factored in a great many things. But not that.
He could lay out the case in his sleep and had, many times to himself in the courtroom of his own head where the verdict came back the same every time and the woman in the front row sat there stone still with her children and didn't make a sound.
The voice that came along with that memory had been very loud the first year, and slightly quieter the second, and was now down to a hum he could hear if he stopped to listen. He didn't stop, mostly.
Tonight, in this truck, in this alley, watching the back of Grace's bakery, the voice was quieter than it had been in months.
It was . . . he searched for the right word . . . displaced. As if some other voice had moved into his head and the old one had taken a back seat to it.
He reached for the thermos and poured some coffee into the cap. It was going to be a long night. Might as well start caffeinating now.
His phone buzzed, face-down on the dash. He turned it over.
Are you at the shop or sleeping like you ought to be now that the police are on it?
Am at the bakery.
I thought you said the police would handle it tonight.
I said a deputy would be here. I didn't say I wouldn't be.
I thought only lawyers split hairs like that.
He winced. She was too perceptive for his own good. He made a practice of never telling anyone what he did before he became a bullfighter. I never ended well when he did. Folks either wanted free legal advice or had something snarky to say about lawyers in general.
His phone buzzed again. Are you warm enough?
He stared at the screen and discovered, somewhere around his sternum, a sensation he had not expected to feel tonight, which was the small sharp warmth of being asked.
Yes. Thanks for asking.
Reno.
He waited. Three dots. Then nothing. Then three dots again. Then:
Thank you.
He typed you're welcome and erased it. He typed anytime and erased it. He looked at the back step of the bakery in the dark, and at the deputy's car at the far end of the alley, and at the fine mist of rain that had started falling once more.
He finally settled on typing, Go to sleep, Grace. It’s late.
I will if you will.
I can’t. I have a job to do.
I know.
He set the phone back down.
At one-fifteen AM. Hank's truck rolled up beside his and stopped. Hank got out with a brown paper bag and walked to the passenger door of Reno’s truck.
