Blake Pitch's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The barn emptied in twos and threes. Blake stood in the doorway and watched Keith Andrews walk to a black sedan without looking back. Keith had witnessed the whole pact and said nothing. Blake needed to know what that silence meant before it hardened into a decision he couldn't undo. He drove home and told Lovelie he had one more stop. She read his face and did not argue. She handed him his coat and said, "Ask him straight. He'll respect straight." Blake went to the safe in his study first. He took out a small handgun and slid it into the holster under his jacket. He did not plan to use it. He wanted to walk in knowing he could walk out. He stopped at the liquor store on the way and bought a bottle of ten-year whiskey. Not the most expensive. Expensive would look like an apology. This one said thank you for sitting down. Keith's bar sat on a corner where the streetlight had been out for a month. The sign was peeling. Blake pushed through the double doors. Two men at the rail looked at him, then at Keith in the back booth, then back at their drinks. Keith was alone. A short glass in front of him, no ice. Blake set the bottle on the table and slid into the seat across from him. "I didn't tell you about the barn," Blake said. "I want to know how you took that." Keith looked at the bottle. He didn't touch it. "You brought a peace offering and a gun." Blake didn't ask how he knew. "Yes." "Smart." Keith turned the glass a quarter turn. "I watched you sign your name under theirs. You didn't put mine on it." "You didn't want it on paper." "No." "So did I read that wrong?" Keith was quiet a long moment. Then he poured two fingers from the new bottle into a second glass and pushed it across. "My grandfather told me once. A man who owes you and admits it is worth more than a man who swears to you." Keith lifted his own glass. "You didn't ask me to bless it. You did it in front of me. That's different." Blake let out the breath he'd been holding since the barn. "Then we're clear." "We're clear on the block." Keith set the glass down. "There's another thing. The tip you got about my father. I know who sent it. I want your help proving it." Blake felt the gun's weight against his ribs and understood he wouldn't need it tonight. He would need something harder. "Name him," Blake said. "Howard." Blake picked up the glass Keith had poured and drank. The whiskey burned clean. "Then we work together on that too," he said. Keith nodded once. The alliance held. The next fight had just named itself.