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

Willets said, “What isn’t?”

Mustache said, “This is one of Mister Lawrence’s crazy soldiers." He looked at me. “You look like a dumb fisherman, but you’re not just a dumb fisherman. Why didn’t you just say you work for Mister Lawrence?”

I said nothing. I had no idea who Mister Lawrence was. But it looked like a light bulb had gone off in the guy’s head. He’d decided on something and had convinced himself that it was true. I took a stab in the dark.

I said, “Did you expect that we would just let an asshole like you get on with it by yourself?”

He was scratching his head. Like something was really puzzling. “Why the scuffle with the East Coast guy just now? Mister Lawrence said to keep them in check. How does you messing with them help anything?”

I said nothing.

Mustache shook his head ruefully. “You can go back and tell Mister Lawrence that everything’s cool and under control. We’ve got that under wraps.”

I figured I could play along. I said, “Doesn’t look that way to me. That’s not what I’m going to be telling Mister Lawrence.”

He was confused. He said, “Look, you could’ve said something. Mister Lawrence is a good client and I’m fulfilling the task as requested. Okay?” He looked at Willets. Mustache said, “And no hard feelings huh? We’re just doing our job here. What would you do if some special operations-looking guy was creeping up on you?”

I turned and walked to the front of the house. A stack of unopened mail was piled up on a floating shelf near the door. I picked up a couple of envelopes. They were addressed to a Mister Deckart. I looked back at the mustache guy.

“Deckart.”

He didn’t say anything, but it was his name. The other guy was standing now, forlorn next to his superior.

I said their names slowly. “Deckart and Willets.” As I spoke, I gave each of them a good look, like a facial recognition machine scanning and memorizing. I went out the door without bothering to shut it. Then I walked down the steps and into the front yard. The gravel driveway tilted to the asphalt road twenty yards away.

I walked down the road, thinking. Mister Lawrence. A bunch of hard guys in a house in Port Morris, Alaska. Another bunch from the East Coast, according to the hard guys. Now was the right time to get out of town before things actually got interesting. It was time to walk away.

Which I did. Down to Water Street, and then hooked a left.

This was Port Morris, Alaska, not New York City. The taxi office was a ramshackle building that looked like it had only barely survived the winter, and the next one was going to be a close call. The office was up a rickety scaffold of worn exterior wooden stairs. The dispatcher was a big guy in a chair eating boiled crabs. He asked me where I was going. I said, the airport. He nodded and pointed outside. Said the car would be along in a minute.

A minute and a half later I was in the backseat of a yellow cab on the way up to the airport. The driver had thoughtfully placed a box of tissues in the elastic net behind his seat. I took one and carefully cleaned the nose blood from my knife blade. The flight down to Seattle wasn’t for another couple of hours, but I figured I’d pass the time at the cafe. I yawned and pictured myself asleep in a chair.

Six

The airport cafe was warm. Two picture windows faced west toward the sun, hanging halfway up in the late afternoon. Between the horizon and the windows was a single strip runway, empty for now. The cafe was a glorified waiting room. Next door was the only other enclosure on the site, a desk staffed by a man with a walrus mustache. He was wrapped in a flannel shirt. It was a small airport. The guy said the flight was fully booked.

The plane had not come in yet but was expected. The small airplane would land soon and disgorge its nineteen passengers from Seattle. Once they were clear, my backpack would go in the hold. I would go in a seat, along with eighteen others. An hour and fifty minutes later we would hit the tarmac, back in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and the girl would be waiting.

I expected that we would head back to wherever she was staying. Maybe we would have some recreational activities right there and then. Afterwards, we might go out and find some place with live music, beer, and barbecue. Preferably a place with gender diversity and a good mix of beard to no beard. The following day I was planning to visit a barber shop and get a hot towel shave.

End of one era, beginning of the next.

But for the time being I was at a cafe counter in the Port Morris airport, one hand resting on the chipped formica, fingers curled through the handle of a coffee cup, fingertips resting lightly against the hot cylinder. The other hand was resting comfortably on my knee. The airport cafe had two big windows, one straight ahead to the runway, another downhill to the approach road from town.

I was looking right out at the runway. A fancy private Lear Jet had just finished unloading its human cargo. A small group of middle-aged men and women. They were dressed in designer outdoor wear, pulling expensive hand luggage. Moving between the luxurious interior of the silver aircraft, and a waiting luxury mini-bus. It was a German twenty-seater, painted a glossy dark green with a white logo that read ‘Green Gremlin Tours’. A smiling Gremlin sat on the word ‘Green’.

I watched as the bus loaded up and took off, tracked it carving downhill to the south, where it passed another fancy vehicle making the opposite journey.

It was the black Chevy Suburban from earlier, making its way up the hill to the