“Ouch.” The bartender held out a hand. “Nathan Conroy. This is my place.”
“Adrian Wall.”
“Well, Adrian Wall”—Nathan tilted a glass under the tap, then slid it on the bar—“welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.”
Adrian stared at the glass of beer. It was such a simple thing. Moisture on the glass. Cool when he touched it. For an instant, the world seemed to tilt. How could things change so much so fast? Handshakes and smiles and cold beer. He found his face in the mirror and couldn’t look away.
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Nathan put his elbows on the bar and brought the smell of sun-cooked leather with him. “Seeing what you are and remembering what you were.”
“You did time?”
“Vietnam POW. Four years.”
Adrian touched the scars on his face and leaned closer. Prison mirrors were made of polished metal and not so great for showing a man his soul. He turned his head one way, then another. The lines were deeper than he’d thought, the eyes wider and darker. “Is it like this for everybody?”
“Thoughtful making? Nah.” The bartender shook his head and poured brown liquor into a shot glass. “Most just want to get drunk, get laid, or start a fight. I see most everything.” He knocked back the shot, clacked it on the bar as the door grated and light flashed in the mirror. “Don’t see much of that, though.”
Adrian dragged his gaze from the mirror in time to see daylight spill around a skinny kid. He was thirteen or fourteen, one arm shaking from the weight of the gun in his hand. Nathan slipped a hand under the bar, and the kid said, “Please don’t.”
Nathan put his hand back on the bar, and everything about him got serious and quiet and still. “I think you’re in the wrong place, son.”
“Just … nobody move.”
He was a small boy, maybe five and a half feet tall with fine bones and uncut nails. The eyes were electric blue, the face so familiar that Adrian felt sudden pressure in his chest.
It couldn’t be …
But it was.
It was the mouth and the hair, the narrow wrists and the line of his jaw. “Oh, my God.”
“You know this kid?” Nathan asked.
“I think I do.”
The boy was attractive, but drawn. His clothes might have fit two years ago but at the moment showed dirty socks and a lot of wrist. His gaze was wide and terrified. The gun looked huge in his hand. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
He stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind him. Adrian slipped off the stool and showed both hands. “Jesus, you look just like her.”
“I said don’t move.”
“Just take it easy, Gideon.”
“How do you know my name?”
Adrian swallowed hard. He’d not seen the boy since he was an infant, but would know his features anywhere. “You look like your mother. God, even your voice…”
“Don’t act like you know my mother.” The gun trembled.
Adrian spread his fingers. “She was a lovely woman, Gideon. I would never hurt her.”
“I said don’t talk about her.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“That’s a lie.”
The gun shook. The hammer clicked twice.
“I knew your mother, Gideon. I knew her better than you think. She was gentle and kind. She wouldn’t want this, not for you.”
“How would you know what she’d want?”
“I just do.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you have a choice.”
“I made a promise. It’s what a man would do. Everybody knows that.”
“Gideon, please…”
The boy’s face pinched up, and the gun shook harder as his fingers tightened on the grip. His eyes grew bright, and Adrian, in that instant, didn’t know whether to be terrified or sad.
“I’m begging you, Gideon. She wouldn’t want this. Not you and me. Not like this.”
The gun rose an inch, and Adrian saw it all in the boy’s eyes, the hatred and fear and loss. Beyond that, he had time for a single thought, and it was the name of the boy’s mother—Julia—that slipped, once, through Adrian’s mind before thunder spat out from behind the bar and slapped a red hole on the boy’s chest. The impact pushed Gideon back a step as his gun hand dropped and blood spread thick as oil through the weave of his shirt.
“Oh.” He looked more surprised than hurt, his mouth open as he found Adrian’s eyes, and his knees failed.
“Gideon!” Adrian crossed the room in three strides. He kicked the gun away and dropped to his knees beside the boy.