Page 23 of Kid Gloves

After, she lies collapsed on my chest doing post-incident commentary at the ceiling—"on a rubber floor, Wade" "the floor met standards" "we have beds, plural, we're bed-having adults," and I count her vertebrae with one hand and say nothing, because if I open my mouth right now it's all coming out at once, nine years of fenced-off acreage, and she's had enough weather for one day.

"Hey." She props her chin on my sternum, hair a full incident report, eyes still lit. "The thing you said about the fence. The one nobody gets to interrogate." Her finger taps my chest once, right over the noise my heart's making, which is not regulation. "I'm going to interrogate the fence. Fair warning. Slowly. For years, possibly. I have questions backlogged."

Years. She says it like a small word. I run my hand up the ladder of her spine and watch her eyes go heavy, and I think about every threat assessment I've ever written and how not one of them covered this: the way a person can walk through your gates carrying a chewed lead rope and a mortgage and just — re-zone you. Redraw the whole map. Porch light, jacket, word, marker, and now the fence itself.

"Approved," I say. "Pending review."

"Everything's pending review with you."

"You're not," I say, before the gate can close on it, and her breath goes still against my chest for three full seconds, and then she kisses the spot her finger tapped and doesn't make it a joke, which from her is a vow with witnesses.

The brindle pup, recovered enough to be insufferable, crawls out of the pile, crosses the blanket, and falls asleep in the warm canyon between our ribs. Delaney's hand comes down over her like a lid on a jar.

"Stay till morning checks?" she asks the ceiling, casual as a war.

"I'm on shift," I say. "It's on the schedule."

"It is not on the⁠—"

"I'll amend the schedule."

She goes quiet. Then she grips — arm across my chest, no gliding, both hands, exactly as warned — and sleeps like something that finally got to put its full weight down.

I stay awake a long time in the red light, doing the count. One pup, fever broken. One woman, holding on. One incident, 0141 hours, unlogged and unloggable.

Incident #23, I file it, in the only cabinet that's ever going to hold it. No corrective action possible.

None sought. None wanted. Closed.

Chapter 9

Delaney

Iwake up at dawn in a whelping barn with a puppy in my hair and a Mercer under my cheek, and my first thought (my very first, before shame or joy or the national anthem) is: Gran would have liked this one.

My second thought is that it's Tuesday, and on Tuesdays Loretta gets her produce delivery at six, which means half the county passes her window by seven, which means the number of hours before the town of Iron Creek processes last night into currency is roughly zero. They probably knew before we did. There's likely a plaque already.

Wade's awake. Of course he's awake. I'd bet the mortgage he's been awake for an hour, lying still so I could sleep, running the day in his head like a flight plan. His hand is doing a slow inventory of my spine like he's checking fence posts.

"Morning checks," he says, in the voice. The 0600 voice. It does not match the hand.

"You're going to be weird about this," I tell his sternum.

"I'm never weird."

"You're about to issue me a memo."

A pause. Too long. "It's three bullet points."

He is, I want this in the permanent file, not joking. There's an actual document by the coffee maker at seven, printed, no letterhead, thank God, titled CONSIDERATIONS, and it's the single most Wade Mercer object ever generated: bullet one, schedule integrity is unaffected. Bullet two, program authority remains as contracted. Bullet three, and I watch him pretend not to watch me read it, personal developments to proceed at a pace set by D. Boone.

Pace set by D. Boone. The man wrote me the reins onto a piece of paper because saying whatever you need out loud would've killed him where he stood.

"I have notes," I say, and kiss him against the counter until the memo is a dead letter, and that's how Kowalski finds us at 7:06, and that's how it's 7:06 when the town of Iron Creek achieves confirmation, because Kowalski walks straight back out and calls his mother.

We hold out until Thursday before facing Loretta's, which fools no one and spares nothing.

The diner at eight a.m. is the county's beating heart: feed caps and coffee steam, Deke holding court about the search, two tables of retirees adjudicating everything. The bell over the door might as well be a gavel. Conversation doesn't stop when we walk in, small towns are better than that, it swells, warm and awful, and Loretta comes around the counter wiping her hands like she's been expecting this delivery all week.