Sam’s brow was a bunch of wrinkles. “Orange-peel? Like, the plaster?”
Okay, he’d totally let himself get carried away. “Yes, that.” He focused on his salad, chasing down a piece of chicken that tried to hide under a lettuce leaf.
“So, when do you move? Oh!” Sam leaned forward, face lit up. “Let’s borrow my boyfriend’s truck.”
“At the beginning of the month. You’re helping me move?”
“Is that all right?”
“Well, yeah.” He didn’t want to move on his own if he didn’t have to. He’d figured Vance would help if asked, but otherwise he’d be calling his brothers, which he’d rather avoid. His siblings were so overprotective, and he didn’t want to hear the crime statistics in his new neighborhood as casual conversation, or Andrea telling him what to put where. The problem with family was that they had an unshakable belief that their opinions were not only welcome, but correct.
So he and Sam made moving plans, and ate, and then out of the blue Sam said, “Two of the bashers made bail.”
Dalton’s fork halted halfway to his mouth. He stared at it a half second before turning his gaze on his friend. He’d been hoping none of the assailants would make bail. It had been set very high due to mandatory sentencing laws, but apparently not high enough.
“I can’t believe they came up with that kind of cash,” Sam said. “Two hundred fifty thousand?”
“Whoever bailed them out only has to come up with ten percent.” He set his salad-laden fork down on his plate, suddenly uninterested in eating.
“Oh, yeah.” Sam looked at his food, playing with french fries and ketchup, throwing on some salt. “Nik—my Indian friend?—he said those two are grass-seed farmers’ sons, so they have a lot of money. Anyway, I guess one of the guys that got out is the one that had the baseball bat.”
Well, just knock the wind out of him. Dalton stared across the table, nails biting into his palm.
Sam heaved a sigh. “And I testified at the grand jury the week before last.”
Not worse news, at least. “Really?” He hadn’t had to testify, since Sam’s account would be more or less the same and could easily sway the grand jury into sending the case to trial. But why hadn’t Sam mentioned testifying last weekend? Probably still traumatized. He shifted, realigning suddenly itchy shoulders.
Sam nodded and took a huge bite of his burger, killing all follow-up conversation for a minute. Did that mean he didn’t want Dalton to ask? But he’d brought it up . . . “How was it?”
Sam chewed faster, head tilting back and forth with the motions of his jaws, before gulping down his food. “It was horrible.”
Definitely why he hadn’t mentioned it before. “You didn’t see any of them, right?” Dalton’s knowledge of pretrial processes was a little hazy, but he was sure his brother Luke said they wouldn’t have to see any of those guys before trial. If there was a trial—if all the bashers plea-bargained, there wouldn’t be.
Sam shook his head, hair swinging with the motion. “The judge said they can’t go near me or Miller or the witnesses as, like, a condition of their bail. Ian couldn’t come in with me, but he waited outside. He’s being really protective.”
Totally understandable. Dalton nodded.
“One of those guys?” Sam continued, leaning forward intently. “Is the son of a county sheriff. Some guy Ian knows—so do Jurgen and Nik—and he’s pissed about that.”
“Oh my God.” Dalton knew there were “bad” cops out there, but still. “Who?”
Sam scrunched up his face into a worried frown. “Honestly? I didn’t ask. I just couldn’t. All Ian said was that the guy’s father, the sheriff, refuses to bail his son out of jail.” Slowly, he eased back, until he was slouching into his chair, hunched toward his food and playing idly with fries in ketchup again. “I don’t like to, you know, dwell too much on it.”
Dalton didn’t ask any more, because if the defendants did go to trial, he’d have his own experiences to dwell on. Not to mention witnessing the crime in the first place. He pretended to eat while trying to think of something to say that wasn’t either awkward or just ugly.
The conversation got back on track when he dredged up one of his planned diversions: stories about his cat, a seriously grumpy orange tabby named Blue. People could garner thousands of hits a second on the internet from showing pictures of their cats, so he should be able to distract one guy with the tale of how his cat had gotten his name.
“After getting him from the kid at the grocery store,” he said, feeding Sam’s avid interest, “I took him to a vet, and when the receptionist asked what his name was I just . . .” Smiling, he shook his head, still a little appalled at how—and what—he’d named Blue.
“What?” Sam was nearly leaning into Dalton’s food.
“I don’t know why, but I told her, ‘His name is Blue Balls.’”
The distraction was successful, even if it meant seeing a few mouthfuls of chewed-up potato as Sam laughed himself into tears.
In the weeks following the old guy’s death, hangover had become its own entity, but unlike the inmates, Tierney didn’t detest and try to hide—or hide from—it. Sure, it made it physically harder to get through the day, but it also reprioritized feelings and actions and rendered other people’s opinions as inconsequential. It focused Tierney on the immediate necessities of staying awake, successfully following conversations, and not puking. A state of emotional subsistence. Hangover muffled all of life’s sharp edges in bubble wrap and cushioned him from the real world. That place where he longed for someone to lean on.
Like Dalton. He’d nearly texted the guy about ten thousand times in the last four days, but why? To rehash that colossal fucking disaster they’d shared?
He didn’t have time to figure it out, and he’d be damned if he let the uncertainty stop him from doing his job.
So, on Tuesday morning when the snooze alarm went off for a third time, instead of slapping it into silence again, Tierney gave in to the necessity of getting out of bed. Seven was a brutal start time for a meeting, but that’s what happened when all the big chiefs decided they needed to attend. He turned on the lamp, which set off the headache he’d been expecting.
Sweet. There was the hangover, right on time. This is going to suck.