Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

the weather and the people, and not necessarily in that order. The music was playing from a jukebox.

The door opened, and the blonde girl came in. Everyone turned to look at her. That was normal behavior, checking out the newcomer. But when the heads swiveled back on necks, they did so slower than they normally would. There were a couple of reasons for that. The most obvious one being the location and corresponding demographics.

Port Morris, Alaska, has a year-round population of five thousand and change. A big town in the southeastern corner of the state. On a very cold and slushy day in February there might be a seven to one ratio of men to women. In late summer during salmon season the population swells by a couple of thousand, and the gender imbalance is more like two hundred to one. So that was one reason why everyone turned to stare at her.

The other reason was that she was good-looking.

Not good-looking like a cute neighbor, more like special-looking, like a model from the city. The kind of face and figure that people get lost in. Mysterious looks that attract fashion magazines, and guys with haircuts and skinny jeans. Photogenic looks that translate weirdly when experienced in three dimensions. Which made the fact of her very existence in Port Morris something along the lines of a big surprise, or an extreme event, like what they call a black swan.

The third reason why everyone was looking at her was because she was anxious, and in a hurry.

By default, most creatures pay attention to rapid movement. And the blonde girl was moving at speed. She came in quietly through the front. Kind of hunched over and nervous. By the time she rounded the other side of the bar she was moving faster. She skirted the outside of the room and hurried into the women’s bathroom. The door swung shut behind her.

A minute after that everyone went back to what they were doing, which was playing pool, mouthing off, and drinking beer. In my case I was drinking a chocolate milk shake. Not because I don’t drink beer, only because I hadn’t yet finished the chocolate shake I’d ordered with my pot roast at the diner.

It was Guilfoyle’s shot and he was a slow shooter. I watched him measure up the geometry and the physics. He had an annoyingly painstaking technique of checking the angles, crouching and peering down the pool stick at the ball. Lining it up. Squinting and then calculating the white ball’s line to the pocket, and then checking if it was going to hit at an angle likely to scratch, given the inertia and the spin. Besides being the captain of a salmon boat in the summer, Guilfoyle was a physics teacher at a community college back in Seattle.

He was still lining up his shot when the giant came in.

There are some big people in Port Morris, massive guys who do nothing all year but pull on ropes. Sometimes it’s salmon, sometimes it’s king crab, other times it’s herring. But this guy was something else. He was maybe six foot seven and about the same at the shoulders. He had a big beard and long hair pulled back in a pony tail. He wore a black leather jacket and had a spiked wristband around his massive left wrist. He was the kind of guy you’d expect to have a spider web tattoo up his neck, maybe with a couple of tear drops out of his eye, announcing how dangerous he was.

But he had no tattoos, just pure natural menace. When he came into the Porterhouse, everyone’s neck did another swivel to the door. But the giant wasn’t looking at everyone, he was looking right at me. Staring straight into my eyes. Then he started coming at me fast. Not running but taking very big strides.

For a couple of seconds I stood there holding the pool cue and wondering what was going to happen. I’d never seen the guy before, but that didn’t change the fact that he was coming at me with intent. Like every other guy in the room, I had a beard. When I came on board the Sea Foam with Guilfoyle I had been clean-shaven. Four months later I had a beard.

So there I was, standing and looking at the incoming giant staring straight at me, about to arrive with speed and force. And it occurred to me that he wasn’t really coming at me, wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking through me to his real objective. I was just a guy with a beard to him, and he was looking for something else, which was past me at the bathroom. So, I stood aside and let him brush past, which in hindsight was an error. It just prolonged the inevitable. The giant went straight to the women’s bathroom and pulled the door open.

Then we all heard the blonde girl scream.

Everyone in the place stopped what they were doing and stared at the bathroom door, vibrating on its hinges. Everyone except for me. I wasn’t staring, I was moving. Guilfoyle said something, like a warning. But I was already pulling the door open. Inside there was only the giant’s back. Like a wall of black leather. He was reaching into one of the toilet booths. It looked like he had the girl by her hair and her throat, which meant his hands were occupied. She was gasping, trying to scream. The giant was silent. I hammered him in the right kidney. Once, twice, very fast and hard. Then again and another time. That’s usually enough, but not in this case.

The guy kind of leaned against the side of the booth, which shook the whole structure. Then he tried to turn. No doubt he was planning to swat me away, like a minor annoyance. But he didn’t have the chance. For one thing, he was stuck in the toilet booth entrance. For another, I gave him