Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

When she got to his undershorts he warded her off and stepped into the sauna chamber, pulled off his shorts, and sat with a towel around his waist. She came through the door stripped down to nothing but her pale swimsuit stripes, the small skull-and-crossbones tattoo stamped on her shoulder, and two scarlet dimples in her left hip and buttocks where she’d taken the two Iraqi Kalashnikov rounds.

“Put on a towel,” he said, clearing his throat but looking. It had been a long time since Broker had seen a naked woman-except when he was working and they didn’t count.

She smiled with satisfaction, seeing how Broker had to tear his eyes away. “It’s a sauna,” she said.

“Towel.”

Nina returned wrapped in a towel and filled a bucket. Broker tossed a couple of ladles of water on the stones on top of the stove and the first rush of steam rose. He repeated the process until the moist steam cut back and the searing dry heat came on. Trying to ignore the back-beat throbbing in his thumb, he soaped his face and picked up a razor.

She was beside him. “Here. Lie down and put your hand up.” He let her ease him down on the bench and situate his hand. Then she took a can of lather from a shelf, the razor, and shaved him. After she rinsed off the soap, she started in with a big-toothed plastic comb, taking the tangles from his thick dark hair. In the close confines, their skin touched, slick with sweat. Little discoveries.

“I’ll get it cut tomorrow,” he said.

Nina shook her head. “Keep it. With short hair you almost look like a nice guy.”

Broker studied the shiny expression on her face. The way her skin glowed against the redwood. Under her tomboy scruff she was-well, hell, he figured it was time to get out of here. He lurched upright. She raised her eyebrows.

“I’m going to jump in the lake. It’s traditional,” he muttered.

“Never happen.”

He handed her a terrycloth robe, put on his own, and slipped his feet into a busted out pair of running shoes. Unsteadily, he negotiated the front porch stairs and walked down the path to his small beach. The wind had swung to the south and the clouds fluffed up in a South Pacific haze of magenta, pink, and purple. He shivered in the soft breeze. She was right. No way he was going to jump into anything. He dropped his robe and kicked off his shoes and started to wade into the chilly water. His bare feet rebelled at the stony bottom, feeling fragile and vulnerable. He backtracked, put the shoes back on and went back in. Shuddering, he ducked under the water and quenched his flaming thumb in Lake Superior.

He surfaced and his chest heaved, sucking in huge drafts of air, and he felt better. Back on the beach, he stood for a few moments letting the warm southerly breeze chase the water droplets from his body. Then he rubbed vigorously with a scratchy towel.

He watched enviously as Nina nimbly scaled a big hunk of Gabbro-his rock-and peered into the boulder-hemmed pool. “Can I dive here?” she asked.

“Just don’t go too deep. It’s cold.”

She dropped the robe and stood in the first purple flush of twilight. Broker usually referenced attractive women to the movie stars they resembled. His ex-wife Kim had reminded him of Faye Dunaway. Too late he realized she was the Faye Dunaway of Network .

There was no precedent for Nina. She meant to set it. One of a kind, she sprang, a supple mercury-and-orchid jackknife in the magnificent light, and cleanly pierced the water with hardly a splash. Luminescent pools of bubbles marked the brisk sequence of her strokes. She swam out a hundred yards, turned, and swam back to the beach and strode from the surf. Broker took a second look. Water rolled off her skin like icy marbles.

He retrieved her robe from the rock and handed it to her. She dried her short hair with an end of the robe, tilting her head in a girlish pose and, at that moment, bright with cold lake water and with slippers of wet sand on her feet, she looked normal, a good-looking, very healthy young woman with her life ahead of her.

Then she said, “C’mon, I want you to try something.”

Tank stepped from the shadows and squired them up the path. A pitcher of liquid sat on the porch steps cooling.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Mom’s home remedy and Roto Rooter. I’ll show you.”

She picked up the pitcher and led him inside and held up the kettle the dandelions had boiled in. Broker could see his face reflected in the gleaming bottom of the pot.

“Huh?”

She poured a glass of murky liquid from the pitcher and handed it to him. “Your mom showed me. If it cleans that pot just think what it’ll do for you.”

Broker shook his head. Irene had a new hippie trick. He drained the concoction. Woody, like boiled toothpicks.

Through a break in the trees, he marked the blue and green of a patrol car trolling along the highway. He nudged Nina and pointed. She nodded. Okay.

Mike and Irene had potatoes in tin foil on the grill on the front porch. Slipping easily into tandem, Nina teamed with Mike. He pointed and she dragged. A heap of driftwood collected on the beach below the cabin. Then Mike threw on some venison steaks-just three. Irene, the vegetarian, sniffed her nose and tossed a salad. Talk was literally about the weather which was not idle talk next to the big water. Nina spoke little, carefully watching Broker. Tank lay at her feet on his back like a giant, hairy, dead cockroach with his legs sprawled out. Nina slowly petted him and picked wood ticks from his fur, split them on her thumbnail and tossed them into the coals. Their ears adjusted to the night sounds and the sunset flamed out and the air transformed itself into squadrons of fierce tiger mosquitoes that came straight in and stuck like darts.

Time to go inside for repellent.

Broker took Nina into his bedroom and, as he smeared on Muskol, told her to keep Irene in the cabin and to keep Tank with them. He unlocked his gun cabinet and quietly showed her where he kept the double-ought for the twelve-gauge. Then he removed his military issue Colt.45 from a drawer.

He disliked handguns. If it came to a real fight, give him a shotgun or a rifle. But the Colt was a heavy reliable chunk of American history, good for hitting, which was more his style. He cleared it, checked it, and loaded it, easing the slide forward. He tucked it into his waistband and pulled a hooded sweatshirt on to conceal it.

He figured this way: Cops were on the road and he’d only be seconds away down on the beach and the dog would alert him. In the dark, Broker trusted Tank’s instincts and speed more than two trained men. Nina queried him with her eyes, turning them toward his folks on the porch. Broker raised a hand in a calming gesture. She nodded and leaned the shotgun in the bedroom corner behind the door.

They had started standing closer together. “You sure about this?” he asked. For the first time in his life he wasn’t aware of their age difference.

“Don’t fight it,” she replied in a steady voice that matched her steady grave eyes. The sound of her voice tingled in his chest like danger.

Back in the kitchen he took out a glass, opened the icebox, fumbled with an ice tray, threw a couple cubes into the glass, dug a bottle of Cutty Sark from a cabinet and poured in a finger of Scotch. On second thought, Broker, usually a temperate man, poured in another three fingers. He’d need it to loosen his tongue.

Irene smiled a prescient smile as he came out on to the porch. She and Mike always sensed the difference in their son when he put on his gun. The big German shepherd sensed it too with the peculiar clairvoyance of his breed. He moved protectively to Irene’s side and nuzzled her thigh.

“Cops on the road. Something’s up,” said Mike casually.