Page 41 of The Man Made of Smoke

“Walking.”

“Happy to walk you then.”

She looked sad. “No duet?”

“Maybe another time.”

The two of us walked arm in arm. There was nothing openly romantic about the gesture. If anything, I thought she might be a little unsteadyon her feet and wanting to hide the fact from me. Was this how she spent all her evenings, I wondered? Not that it was my place to judge. She was a grown adult. And the last thing she probably needed right now was another man trying to tell her what to do.

She hadn’t mentioned where home was, but I figured she’d be in her mother’s old house, and we drifted that way naturally. It wasn’t far, just a little way along a quiet lane on the edge of the village. As we reached the driveway, she unlinked her arm from mine.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry, by the way. I realized I hardly asked about your dad at all.”

“That’s okay. I don’t feel like talking about him anyway.”

“No? How come?”

“I guess I’m pissed off.” I shrugged. “What he did. What he didn’t.”

I put my hands in my pockets, choosing my next words carefully.

“Everything he’s left me to deal with.”

“Oh, Dan.” She put her hand on my arm. “It’s natural to feel that way. But he was a good man. He loved you. You know that deep down.”

“I guess so.”

“Has there been any news?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said softly.

“Maybe. Good night.”

I headed back down the lane.

Now that I was alone, I noticed how quiet it was here. The night breeze seemed much colder than it had a minute ago, and I pulled my jacket around me as I walked, my breath misty in the air beneath the streetlights.

There were bushes toward the end of the street, and I registered the man there a fraction of a second before he stepped out in front of me. I held back a pace out of instinct and raised my hands in a fence: a loose boxing stance, but with my palms open and my demeanor less aggressive. It had come in useful on the wards from time to time, helping to control the space between me and a potential assailant.

For some reason, I wasn’t remotely surprised to see Liam Fleming standing in front of me now. He seemed a little shocked, though. I imagined he must have stepped out in time to collide with me, and he looked taken aback by the speed of my reaction.

“Whoa.” He raised his own hands slightly. “Calm down there, Dan.”

“I am calm.”

Even so, I didn’t immediately relax my guard. Instead, I tried to evaluate the level of threat he represented. His voice was slurred; he was more than a little drunk. And this encounter was clearly a deliberate one. Neither of us was a teenager anymore, but he was still larger than me. And while he was out of uniform right now, he was police, and there was nobody else around. Anything that happened between us here would be his word against mine.

I lowered my hands a little.

“You startled me, Liam.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

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