Kevin. Fucking Kevin. Sitting a few feet away from Grace and Mae and Annabeth.

Considering various ways he could crack their spines.

“I’ll kill him,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Go on, Grace. Please.”

“So he finally works up his nerve and gets up from the bar and comes over to the table to try out whatever pathetic pickup line he’d use, and then, then your certifiable mutant friend comes out of nowhere and drags him out of the restaurant by his hair. In full view of thirty people, he banged the man’s face off a hydrant several times.”

“Oh, my,” I said.

“’Oh my’?” she said. “That’s all you can say. Oh my? Patrick, the hydrant was just on the other side of the window from our table. Mae saw the whole thing. He smashed that man’s face in, and she watched. She’s been crying all day. And that poor, poor man, he—”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Some friends of his pulled up in a car and that…fucking lunatic and some midget henchman of his just stood back and watched as they dragged the man into a car and drove off.”

“That ‘poor, poor man’ Grace, is a contract killer for the Irish Mafia. His name’s Kevin Hurlihy and he told me this morning he’d hurt you to fuck up my life.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.”

A long hard silence hung over the line between us.

“And now,” Grace said eventually, “he’s in my life? In my daughter’s life, Patrick? In my daughter’s?”

“Grace, I—”

“What?” she said. “What, what, what, what? Huh? That freak in the trenchcoat, he’s supposed to be my guardian angel? He’s supposed to make me feel safe?”

“Sort of.”

“You brought this into my life. This violence. You…Jesus!”

“Grace, listen—”

“I’ll call you later,” she said and her voice was distant and small.

“I’m at Angie’s.”

“What?”

“I’m staying here tonight.”

“At Angie’s,” she said.

“It’s possible she’s the next target of the guy who killed Jason Warren and Kara Rider.”

“At Angie’s,” she said again. “I’ll call you later maybe.”

She hung up.

No good-bye. No “take care.” Just a “maybe.”

It took her twenty-two minutes to call back. I was sitting at the table, staring at photographs of Hardiman and Rugglestone and Cal Morrison until they all blurred in my head and joined as one, the same questions nagging my brain, the answers, I knew, lying in front of me, but floating simultaneously, just beyond the limits of my vision.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“How’s Angie?” she said.

“Scared.”

“I don’t blame her.” She sighed into the phone. “How are you, Patrick?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Look, I won’t apologize for being pissed earlier.”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“I want you in my life, Patrick…”

“Good.”

“—but I’m not sure I want your life in my life.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

The line hummed, empty, and I found myself eyeing Angie’s cigarette pack, wanting one very badly.

“Your life,” Grace said. “The violence. You seek it out, don’t you?”