Chapter 6: The Night Watch

On Wednesday night, Mara found Boone at the exam table with a tube of glue and a lap full of broken blue pottery.

The clinic was closed, the blinds she never lowered were still open, and the rest of the street was dark.

"The old man dropped these off at lunch," Boone said, without looking up. "He said he wasn't steady enough to do it right."

"You're not a potter."

"I'm a mechanic. It's the same thing with smaller screws."

He had laid the six pieces on a clean towel in order.

Beside them sat a little bottle of gold paint that the widower had bought at the craft store.

"Why gold?" she asked.

"Because it doesn't hide the cracks. It says where they are." He held a piece against the edge of another and frowned. "I saw it in a book once."

She pulled a stool up beside him.

The orange tabby, out of his kennel for the first time, was asleep on Boone's boot.

Boone's hands were enormous and scarred across every knuckle, and he held each piece very gently.

For a while she just watched.

"Wyatt and Dean are on the roof across the street," he said. "Nash is walking the block. I got the inside shift. It's the best one."

"Is it?"

"Nobody here wants to kill me."

She laughed before she could stop herself.

The glue slipped, and Boone swore under his breath.

A thin line of it ran across the back of his hand, and he sucked in a breath and dropped the piece.

"Don't move," she said.

"It's fine."

"Boone."

"It's just glue."

"It's cyanoacrylate, and it's bonding your thumb to your wrist."

She took his hand in both of hers and turned it to the light.

She worked the edge of a scalpel under the glue, careful and slow, and he went very still.

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