Chapter 007

Bacon, Sausage & Egg

True to Marco’s word, CAT and I were back at the cabin in time to watch Sol rise. I yanked the door free from its temporary bindings and shoved my way through the remaining tarp, making sure not to pull it free from its top nails. There was no way I was fixing the door right now. Keeping some bugs out was better than none.

I looked around the unfinished space for other telltale signs of the night’s mayhem. Apart from the savaged couch and some extension cords being dragged across the room, everything else seemed intact. One of the benefits of living in an eternal construction site, I supposed. It was hard to wreck something that had never been put together in the first place.

I propped the axe up next to the door hole and slumped onto the couch. My stomach growled. I had plenty of kibble for CAT in dry storage but had put off replenishing my own supplies yet again. I’d have to wait until the diner back in town opened. If I’d thought about it ahead of time, I’d have cadged a couple more beers from Matteo before they dropped me off. I could pay him back on the Lunar Express.

That admission caught me by surprise. I had plenty of experience in squeezing them out of suspects, but much less in extracting them from myself. I was going to space. It would take something stronger than Tycho Gold to wrap my brain around that one. I shambled over to the teak drinks cabinet Hazel and I had scored at the swap meet on the other side of the mountain and came back with a bottle of rye. There was no sense in dirtying a glass.

I took a slug from the bottle as I thought back to that day at the swap. It was before the girls were born, when I still drove that rusted pickup we used to haul lumber out to the cabin. Hazel wore a pair of paint-spattered overalls she referred to as her “country outfit” and had her auburn locks swept up in a paisley bandana. She fell in love with the cabinet at first sight and insisted we buy it for full price, no haggling. I groaned, noting that anything with the word “antique” on the tag was overpriced by default. She remained adamant, proclaiming that it would make the perfect conversation piece to tie the décor together. “Conversation?,” I had teased. “Who said anything about having company?”

And now she was gone. The closest thing I had to conversation was the creaky complaints of the floorboards settling. I took another hit of the Springbrook.

CAT came over and nuzzled his head into my lap. I stroked his ears absentmindedly.

“Food?”

I should have known. Even at his sweetest, his agenda remained the same. I snatched up his metal dish, one of those donut-shaped numbers that was supposed to keep him from inhaling his whole meal at once, and measured out a serving. I topped it with his pills—one for allergies, another for hip and joint health, and one that supposedly produced antibodies that kept his immune system from rejecting his voice box implant—and then doused the whole thing with water.

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I placed the dish on the floor next to the couch. He nudged it toward me with his nose.

“You. Eat.”

I wasn’t aware he was keeping track, but it had been a while.

“Go ahead without me. Gabby’s doesn’t open ’til seven. Try to save some room in case someone drops a piece of bacon.”

It was unbelievable, the cases of butterfingers that broke out in CAT’s presence. In need of no more persuasion, he dug in. I leaned back on the couch and allowed my eyelids to collapse under their own weight. The split board in the frame moaned in protest but held fast. Sleep seemed like a tantalizing inevitability. But I still had work to do.

I fished the coaster out of my pocket and tossed it onto the shabby pressboard coffee table I’d salvaged from the landfill. “We’ve gotta make up for your conversation piece somewhere,” I’d told Hazel in response to her protests when I tried to load it into the truck bed. “Or else there’s no sense in making a budget to begin with.”

“It’ll certainly give our guests something else to talk about,” she’d countered.

I had to figure out what I was going to tell Wilder. Coming back to him hat in hand was a bitter pill to swallow, made palatable only by Denaro’s promise to double my fee. As much as I hated to admit it, the cash was, in fact, important. The modern state of freelancing made it next to impossible to get bills paid. There was always someone younger, someone hungrier willing to undercut my rate. My reputation wasn’t what it once was, and my implosion on the witness stand wouldn’t help my prospects moving forward. If I could suck it up and book the gig, maybe I could start to drag myself out of this rut. Set my affairs straight. Catch up on bills, maybe even get ahead on them for a change. No more catching Mr. Spano in the act of taping another pay or quit notice to my office door.

It also didn’t hurt that this was my chance to banish the specter of Frankie Denaro from looming over my life once and for all. Working for his wife was supposed to be a one-time deal, one I’d accepted in a moment of weakness. It certainly wasn’t intended to serve as a stepping stone toward bigger and better things within the family. Hopefully this would square our accounts so I could get back to hunting down criminals, not cashing their checks. Besides, it wasn’t like I was actually working for Denaro. I was just looping him in on what I learned on Wilder’s dime. If their interests happened to align, who was I not to profit from it?

CAT’s empty bowl jangled as he scooted it along the floor with his nose, eradicating the few crumbs that remained inside with tactical strikes from his tongue. I imagined him trying to do the same in zero gravity, tumbling aimlessly while snapping at the specks of food that orbited around him in every direction. It isn’t like we are really going to space, I reminded myself. I don’t even need a passport.

I pulled out my comex to make sure I’d saved Wilder’s contact info properly. A call would have to wait until a decent hour, sometime after I’d demolished a short stack and home fries at Gabby’s. Eggs over easy. Bacon and sausage. Fuck it. If I was going to break my own rules, I might as well do it in style. Now I just needed to figure out how much to charge Wilder.

With a deliberate swat of his paw, CAT flipped his food dish. The crumbs must have run out.

“What do you figure the going rate is for a soul these days, bud?”

He looked at me and tilted his head quizzically. He was just as clueless as I was.