see,” she says, nudging her chin at the kitchen table.
I drop my thick frame into a rickety chair, hike up the leg of my jeans.
She sits and pats her thigh. I swing my foot into her lap. She pulls back the dressing on my calf and looks over the wound. Two black stitches hold together both an entrance and exit wound on the outside of my left leg, just below the knee. A memento from the gun of the guy who tried to kill us. Lee did a better job fixing me up that night with a sewing kit at the seedy hotel we ran to while we waited for the Feds than the doctor at Safesite did. Skills she’s acquired over the years patching me up. To look at her handiwork, you’d think she’d graduated from medical school. The truth is, she’s a money whiz and has been doing Pop’s books for the last five years. She’s a semester from completing her MBA at Northwestern—another reason to find the bastard responsible for us being here and put him out of his misery, so we can go home.
“Have you been keeping antibiotic ointment on this?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. “I’ve kind of had other things on my mind the last few days.”
She sets my leg down and goes for her bag near the sofa, giving Sherm’s hair a ruffle on her way back. He doesn’t take his eyes off the cartoon. She pulls a tube of ointment and a box of Band-Aids out of her bag, sets them on the table in front of me. She tears open a pouch and starts cleaning the wound with a Betadine wipe.
“If you don’t take care of this, it’s going to get infected, which will mean a trip to the emergency room,” she warns as she doctors me up.
“Got it, doc.”
She lifts her head, cuts me a look as she yanks down my jeans and slides my leg to the floor. “They report gunshot wounds, Rob.”
I blow out a breath and lower my voice. “You know I’ll do anything to protect this family, Lee.” My eyes flick to the staircase, where the twins’ raised voices waft down. “Except Grant, who I might end up killing in his sleep.”
Her gaze follows mine and she cracks a smile, a little of the tension smoothing out of her face. “You’d think they were still twelve.”
The stone fist crushing my chest tightens. “This is going to be tough on them.”
“It’s not like any of us had a choice,” Lee says, her smile fading.
Christ, how did I fuck this up so bad?
“Looks like the rain is slowing,” she says, standing. “We should bring our stuff in, then I’ll head to the store.”
I look to the one shutterless window and see she’s right. There’s even a patch of blue on the horizon over the roiling sea.
“Grant! Ulie!” I bark up the stairs as I haul myself up. “Come get your crap out of the car.”
They stampede down the stairs, and we grab our bags from the trunk and load them in.
“What’s going to happen to the stuff at my apartment in New York?” Ulie asks, frowning at the large rolling suitcase they gave each of us at Safesite—all our new life’s possessions crammed into one rollaway.
I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t even know for sure what’s happening to the family house in Chicago. Pop is in lockup, and technically not in witness protection, so, though I’m sure the Feds will be raking through it after what happened there, I don’t think they can take it away.
“Maybe we can get word to your roommate to ship everything back to Chicago,” Lee answers.
“Then what?” she asks. “It’s not like I can go home and get it.”
“I don’t know, Ulie,” Lee says, a hint of frustration bleeding through. “None of us knows how this is going to work. But this is what it is now and we just need to deal.”
Ulie’s frown deepens as she drags her suitcase toward the downstairs bedroom. Grant glares at her back as he hauls his up the stairs. So I guess Ulie won that battle.
“Keys,” Lee says, holding out her hand.
I dig the car key out of my pocket and hand it to her.
She squeezes my hand as she takes it and moves to the door. “If I don’t get washed into the ocean, I’ll be back in about an hour.”