Frank suddenly felt Hitch’s full weight — Elena had let go of him.
Her punch came from Dane’s left — hard and fast across the bridge of his nose, catching him in the right eye. Dane howled and grabbed at her.
Frank dropped Hitch and stepped between them, shoving Dane aside. Myles tried to come to Dane’s aid and soon demanded all of Frank’s attention. He landed a dizzying blow above Frank’s eye, splitting his brow. Frank brought his own left up hard under Myles’s jaw and followed it with a quick right to his gut. Myles’s head snapped back, and the air left his lungs in a whoosh. Frank deflected a wild punch and hit him again in the face, throwing everything he had into it. Myles fell on his ass with a thud. He stayed there.
“Myles, Myles, Myles,” Dane said. “What were my orders?”
Myles lowered his head as if in shame.
Frank tried to wipe the blood from his right eye and saw that Dane had Elena pinned beneath him. He stumbled toward them. Dane tilted his head, trying to see around the swelling in his own right eye. Seeing Frank’s injury, he laughed.
“Shall we leave it at an eye for an eye, Detective Harriman?”
Frank nodded.
“Elena?”
“Yes, damn you.”
Dane released her and said, “Myles, help Derrick.”
Elena came toward Frank, but he turned away. He pulled his T-shirt off, which required a set of motions that made his head swim. He held it to his brow to stanch the bleeding.
“Get up,” he heard Elena say to Hitch. “You’ve had enough time to get your wind back.”
Hitch shakily came to his feet.
“Another time, Detective Harriman,” Whitey Dane said as they slowly walked away. “Another time.”
41
Friday, July 14, 3:30 A.M.
The Kelly-Harriman Home
“You need your sleep, too,” Irene whispered as she came into the guest bedroom.
“Can’t,” he said. “Careful — don’t trip over the dogs.”
“Your head still bothering you?”
“I’ll be all right. It’s a good thing I was awake, anyway — he just had a nightmare about the fire. I think all of this is tougher on him than he lets on.”
Seth and Irene had returned from the rink, worried when Frank hadn’t shown up for his game, pulling into the driveway just after Hitch drove off.
Irene had rolled down a window, said, “Get him into the backseat” to Elena, but Frank went inside long enough to wash his hands and face, get another shirt on, and lock up. In the car, Seth had been frightened and wouldn’t let him out of his sight. Frank thought of lying to him and telling him he had tripped over something in the garage, but decided against it. He wasn’t going to lie to Seth if he could help it.
“I had a fight with a bad guy,” he said.
Seth’s eyes widened.
“He kicked the bad guy’s ass,” Elena said.
“Cool! Is the bad guy dead?”
“What a bloodthirsty kid you are,” she said, making him laugh. “No, he isn’t dead, but he knows better than to mess with Frank.”
“Did you help Frank fight him?”
She glanced nervously at Frank. “No, Frank didn’t need any help from me.”
Irene must have heard Elena’s slight hesitation, though, because she looked into the rearview mirror at them.
“Tell me about skating,” Frank said.
While he was waiting to get stitched up, and out of Seth’s and Elena’s hearing, he told Irene the full story.
Now she sat beside him on the edge of Seth’s bed. He put an arm around her, but left his other hand in Seth’s grasp.
“You’re disappointed in Elena, aren’t you?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Frank said. “I am.”
“What about Hitch?”
“So far he’s leaving Elena’s name out of it.” Hale himself had called to give Frank the news that Hitch had walked into headquarters with his lawyer in tow.
“Do you think he could cause her trouble?”
“Maybe. At some point she knew Hitch was on Dane’s payroll. I don’t think she was on it herself or Dane wouldn’t have let her walk away from her job with the narcotics squad — she would have been too great an asset to him. And he would have kept better tabs on her after she left.”
Irene nodded. “She couldn’t have had much dirt on either of them, or they would have seen her as a big threat.”
