Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best way to read books txt) 📕

He went to the bar and pushed in alongside Bill Lacey who had just entered with a pair of tall raw-boned men. Similar to the types who had taken Lauren from the nightclub, Danny observed. No fedoras in sight, but maybe it was God Save the Queen Night or something and hats weren’t allowed. You never knew with yacht clubs, there was often a lot of weird shit happening and much of the time it was British related. You’d think they were the only country with maritime traditions. What the hell. Time to stir the pot. Unloading some of the anger consuming him since the fire was an added benefit.

“’Scuse me, gents,” Danny slurred, bumping the two men apart as he bellied up to the bar. “First come, first served, as they say.”

“We were here first, asshole.” One of the men grabbed Danny’s shoulder and pulled him back and away from the bar.

“But I’ve been here since opening,” Danny said as he punched him carefully in the nose. The man fell back against Lacey, who staggered back against the bar and then turned and scuttled for the exit.

The man Danny had hit was white faced with rage and coming back hard when his partner stepped in front of him and grabbed his arm.

“Not now,” he said. He turned back to Danny and forced a smile. “I’m sorry, friend, why don’t you just go ahead and order your drinks and we’ll—”

“You cocksucker,” Danny roared, kicking him in the crotch. “Nobody calls me that.”

The first man reached around and caught Danny a glancing blow on the side of his jaw, and he fell back against the counter and used the leverage it gave him to springboard forward and head-butt the second man under the chin. As he fell, Danny turned and was caught flush on the button by the other combatant and staggered back on top of the first man who was dazedly trying to rise, blood pouring out of his mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue. Danny rolled to avoid a kick and managed to divert it from his balls to his thigh. He caught the foot as the second kick came in and twisted it viciously and the man roared with the pain and staggered and went down. Danny was up and on him, throwing punches as the first man rose and came back towards him. He turned to face the other one and then there was a loud clanging noise and his world went black.

“I’ll say this much for you lot, my life has become much more interesting since we met,” Merlynn said as she bent over Danny who was spread out on the lounge on the aft deck of Legalese. A bucket of pinkish ice water sat in front of her, and she wrung out a cloth and swabbed Danny’s face. A red-faced Clarke was puffing furiously on a cigar and saying nothing. He hadn’t uttered a single syllable since they were escorted out of the bar.

Clarke finally came over and stood above them.

“I think I might just have contained it,” he said through gritted teeth. “You realize if the lieutenant gets word of this, I’ll be suspended. Never mind losing my pension. I’ll end up standing outside of some lousy office building wearing a jackshit security badge and making twelve bucks an hour. Probably be the Ivery Tower with my luck. Tell me, what in the hell were you thinking?”

“Those are the guys,” Danny said. “You know it.”

“No, actually I don’t know it. But even if they are ‘the guys,’” Clarke made elaborate finger quotations in the air, “what in God’s name did you hope to accomplish? Other than to let them know that we’re onto them, if it is them, and we don’t have one iota of proof that it is them in any case.”

Danny said, “I’ve learned that sometimes in life too much thinking can just complicate matters and often the better plan is just to go at them.”

“Just go at them? How old are you, anyway? Fourteen? Just go at them?”

“Keep your voice down, dear, people on the other boats are staring.”

Clarke snapped his mouth shut, the veins pulsing on his forehead.

“Just go at them?” he seethed. “Who the hell do you think you are? Horatio Lord Nelson?” Clarke had been reading nautically.

“I know their type,” Danny said. “They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ll come for me now. We’d never have flushed them out otherwise.”

“And what about Jared — is he going to ‘just go at them’ too?”

“Seems like it,” Danny said. “At least we’ll have distracted those two for a bit.”

Clarke stared at him and then went over and sat in a chair as far away from the sofa as he could get.

“Just go at them,” he muttered, into his glass half empty. Merlynn drew up another chair and sat next to him and patted his hand. His cell phone rang and he pulled it out and stared at the number. The coroner’s office. Great. Just what he needed. A mood lightener. He held the phone to his ear and listened without comment before shutting it off and turning back to the others.

“Still no conclusive ID on Joseph,” he said.

Danny nodded but didn’t speak. Clarke might as well have been commenting on the weather.

The coroner had told Clarke that they’d have to wait for DNA testing and compare the results with a sample from a family member for positive identification. There was enough left to know the remains were those of a male on the medium-to-small side. Even the teeth had been partially melted by the fierce heat. Clarke was not going to tell the others any part of that. They had enough misery to contend with already without him depositing that grim image into their memory banks.

He did tell them one odd thing the coroner had mentioned. Joseph’s forearm was crushed and snapped, perhaps not entirely unexpected in an explosion where objects were moving through the air