The Night Crew

'Jake?' she called weakly.

'A

'I killed him,' A

At that moment, Judge stood up.

His eyes were crazy and half of his neck seemed to be missing. But he had one hand clasped to the wound and he pushed up and pivoted toward her, his eyes crazy, his mouth open, the white teeth straining at her.

A

This time he didn't move.

'Asshole,' A

A

Her scalp was bleeding badly; every time she put her right hand to her ear, it came away with a palm full of blood. She pointed the car down the drive, and took it out as easily as she could.

They'd come in and out the same way each time, and that was the way she knew: there might have been a faster way to get an ambulance out to them, but she didn't have time to look.

She tried the phone after five minutes. No co

'My God, everybody's shot,' she babbled as she guided the car to the side of the road. She knew about where she was, gave enough direction that an ambulance could find them.

She called Wyatt, told him.

He was still shouting questions when she dropped the phone.

Chapter 31

A

Creek cut the outboard when they were fifty feet from the berth, reached over the side, released the transom lock and pulled the motor out of the water. The boat's momentum carried it gracefully on, and then Creek pushed the tiller over and it turned, slowed, slowed more, and Glass stepped over the rail onto the finger pier, dropped the bow line over a cleat and snubbed the boat off.

A

Glass was bubbling: 'It was amazing. These things, there was a boat, I mean.'

'Spit it out,' Creek laughed.

'Some of those boats were as big as locomotives. And they were this close,' Glass said, spreading her hands a foot apart. 'One guy got hit in a turn, and he called this other guy an asshole, and they're go

The beating barely showed on her anymore: when she'd gone into the hospital, the doctors were afraid that her brain had been permanently damaged. As it was, she'd been almost herself in a week, and out of the hospital in two. At four weeks, the bruising had faded, and the cuts were healed. She looked like somebody had scrubbed parts of her face with a Brillo pad, and her nose wasn't as straight as it once had been, but she no longer looked like she might die.

She still had headaches, though: the doctors said they might continue for a while. Maybe a long while. On the other hand, they might stop. Any day now. Or something like that.

Creek, a month later, was almost as good as new; was begi

A

The cuts on her face had all been minor. The cut in her scalp had been deeper, and had done something to the hair follicles: a thin, knife-edge line of hair was growing out white. The doctors said it would probably never be black again; but it might. Or something.

But her main problem was Harper.

After she'd shot Judge, she'd turned, and in the light of Judge's flash, had seen Harper crawling toward her, trying to help her. Answering her cries for help. When it had turned out that A

He loved her, he said, but he wasn't coming around. She could feel him avoiding her. She pushed, tried to talk: and only once got him going, after a two-martini di

A

The endodontists helped clean up the boat, and said goodbye.

'Are we going for beer?' A

'God, I hope so. My throat is full of dust.'

'When's he go

'Mmm, I've got no definite commitment, but I'm thinking to myself, probably in the beer can races, next week.'

Behind her, Creek rolled his eyes, and Glass said, 'Creek.'

'What?'

'I felt your eyes rolling.'

'Aw, Jesus Christ,' Creek said.

They went down the street to a diner, and found another two dozen racers around the bar and in the dining room. A

'What we gotta start doing is, we gotta start looking for more feature stuff. There's no good reason we couldn't set up a feature every day just to get the cameras rolling,' Creek said.

'Oh, bullshit, Creek, you know that half the time we can't sell.'

'Cause we haven't been concentrating on the angles. You gotta have the right angle on this kind of thing.'

'I think somebody's calling me,' Glass said after a while.

She picked up her second beer and headed for another table of boat racers, was greeted with a chorus of Heys.

'She gets along with them,' A

'Because she's a macho freak,' Creek said. 'You oughta see her out there on the foredeck. She's like a machine with the pole, going end-for-end, she never loses track. She's go

'What does she think about your gay endodontist pals?'

'Ah, she was sort of suspicious; you know, she's sort of a 'phobe. But those guys are so fuckin' mean that she couldn't help liking them.'

Creek laughed, and looked so basically happy that A

'Nah,' he said, looking after Glass. Then he turned back to A

'Aw, man.' A

'You still in love with him?'

'I don't even know if I ever was,' she said. 'I could have been, I think. But we never had a chance.'

'Aw, he'll straighten out.' He took a pull at his Corona, but his eyes never left A

She shook her head: 'You know what, Creek? He's not coming back. He's just not.'

'I'm sorry, A

'Man, there's only been two guys in my whole life that I ever felt quite like that about,' she said. She tried a smile. 'At least I know I can still feel like that about a guy.'

'Mmm.' Creek looked away, out the window, at the marina, and the forest of masts, waiting for the sea.

Later that night, with Glass asleep in his bed, Creek sat in his cluttered living room reading Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. He turned the last page, sighed, put the book down and his feet up. Thought about a beer, rejected the thought. Finally got a sweatshirt, let himself out, quietly, not to disturb Glass.