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and beds? Are you opening a brothel?”

      A short burst of laughter escaped him. “Good idea!” he said. “I have a team and associates. I have a coach and trainer. I usually have a couple of people staying with me two weeks before a race. We travel together for the race and I always give myself a couple of days of training in either a different time zone or altitude. I train almost year-round but hit the training hard before a big race. I used to rent space for my team. I told you, this is my first house. The bedrooms, it turns out, will come in handy.”

      “I can afford the motel,” she said. “I have savings.”

      “You’re a mule,” he accused, but he grinned when he said it. “Let’s make sure Charlie is comfortable—tomorrow is a big day. Most of all, let’s lower his stress if we can—he’s very worried about you. And if you stay here or in a seedy motel tonight, he won’t sleep.”

      “I am always there for Charlie. He can depend on me.”

      “Awesome. I don’t suppose you have a suitcase?”

      She glanced around. “I had a couple of large duffels—I don’t see them.”

      “I have a couple of gym bags in the car. I’ll dump them out so you can borrow them.” He looked at her and just shook his head. “You know, I usually do well with the girls. I make them laugh. I’m charming.”

      “Perhaps the problem is that I’m not a girl,” she said.

      “Perhaps the problem is that you’re obstinate and inflexible,” he suggested.

      “If you find me so thoroughly flawed, why offer all this assistance?” she asked. “It’s a little invasive, you know. I’ve been through worse. It’s a temporary setback, that’s all.”

      “This is an emergency,” Blake said. “You’ll stay the night so Charlie can get some sleep and have a good first day of school. Then we’ll look at the options. Do you own this trailer? Can we move it to the property? Cooper has a hookup beside the bar. He has a trailer he brings out of storage for a guest room when family visits and we could put yours...”

      She was shaking her head. “I rent it.”

      “Then gather up as much as you can and we’ll put the padlock back on the outside. Maybe you’ll come back for more of your things when Winnie is resting. If you need help, I’ll help you. Let’s do this,” he said, getting off the bed.

      He went to his car to dump out his duffels. He took a great deal of time on the easy project so that Lin Su could talk to Charlie if she was so inclined. While he was standing there he heard someone yell. It wasn’t a bad yell, more of a whoop, as if there’d been a touchdown on the TV. Then he heard bottles being dumped in the trash. He saw movement and caught the motion of a person skittering around the cinder-block building. He pulled out his wallet, slipped some bills into each pocket, then threw his wallet in the trunk.

      He reached into the trunk for a tire iron and a large industrial-strength flashlight. It had been a very long time since he felt he could be in danger from a bad person. Fifteen years at least. Really, since he was thirteen or fourteen he hadn’t rubbed up against many scumbags who just flat-out enjoyed hurting people. In fact, in all his years, if he ever had anything that could pass for a weapon in his hands—a brick, a bat, a broken bottle—it was because he was in defensive mode, staying alive.

      He slammed the trunk, turned on the flashlight and headed across the drive to that brick building. The smell of urine and feces was disgusting. Chances were good that it hadn’t been cleaned in years. For the first time he noticed a ramshackle trailer that had a small sign posted. Manager. M–F 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. He’d check that out later.

      He walked around the brick structure, shining his light, and came face-to-face with one of the thugs he’d seen the day Charlie was chased. The guy grinned. His teeth were black and he had a couple of sores on his face. Meth teeth, meth sores. It was the kind of leer that made Blake want to look behind him but he wasn’t falling for that one. The guy slowly pulled his hand out of his pocket, gave a small flick, and the blade of a switchblade zinged into view.

      Blake took a fast step closer to that knife, swung the tire iron and came down on the guy’s wrist. The meth head screamed, dropped the blade and grabbed his wrist. Before he could run or call for his backup, Blake had him up against the bricks, the tire iron against his throat. “Where is it?” he asked as threateningly as he could.

      “Ach. What?”

      “You know what. The box.”

      “Let go and I’ll tell you.”

      Now it was Blake’s turn to grin. “Not a chance in hell. Where?”

      “Bruster’s got it!”

      “Who’s Bruster?”

      “You know. The manager.”

      And probably the biggest dealer in here, he thought. Some things were as predictable as sunrise. It was always the one in charge, the one who seldom got his hands dirty. “And did it get you a hit?” he asked.

      “Not even.” He choked and Blake stepped back a little. He was an addict; it could get messy.

      “Let’s go get you a hit, loser.”

      “You gonna roll me?”

      “I’m gonna buy you a hit if I can get my box back.”

      “You’d do that?”

      “I want the box!”

      Blake turned him around, twisted his arm up behind his back and counted his blessings. If this charged-up idiot decided to fight him, he might have a real problem on his hands. He’d seen three and four cops have trouble bringing down a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound meth addict when he was high. His flashlight was under his arm, light pointing forward, and the tire iron in his hand, ready.

      “Let’s go get it,” Blake said, steering him in the direction of the manager’s trailer. When they stood outside the door, he saw a little trash on the ground right outside the trailer door.

      “There it is,” the guy said, looking down.

      He saw what looked like a small amount of smashed teak wood on the ground and a little unidentifiable trash—paper, cloth, picture, chain. “That’s my box?” Blake asked, incredulous.

      “He wasn’t impressed.”

      “What’s a hit go for in your neighborhood?”

      “Twenty,” he said. “I mean, forty. Fifty.”

      Blake felt himself smile. It had been a long time. He had forgotten how much drugs rotted the brain and what liars addicts were. “Here are your choices,” he said. “I can give you some money and you can run, get out of sight, or you can stay and talk to the manager with me. Or I can beat you stupid with this iron, but I think you already are stupid.”

      “You kidding me? Give me fifty and I’m gone.”

      Without turning the guy around, he pulled one bill out of his pocket. It was a twenty. He shoved the man away from him and he stumbled a few feet. Blake braced himself, wielding the tire iron in one hand and flashlight in the other. The twenty fluttered in the hand that held the iron. “Do you want to disappear with twenty or would you prefer to negotiate?”

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