She does.
The four men holding Volkov down let go of him one at a time. Slow. Controlled. He stands wearing cuffs. He’ll be taken to Seattle now.
Reeves’s men walk him out past Mrs. Callahan’s booth, where she and Dani sit.
Mrs. Callahan picks up her cinnamon roll. She looks at Volkov, then at me. “It’s about time.”
With his arm around Roz, Jesse walks her back to the kitchen. Gideon sits at the counter with Mason, studying Volkov’s weapon and not touching it. Wells stands at the front window watching Volkov be driven away. Cole is in the booth I came from, stacking the paperwork in a neat pile.
I steady Sophie with one hand at her elbow. With the other, I touch the center of my vest because the bruise has decided to be a problem now that the adrenaline is dropping.
She sees my hand. Her expression changes. “Logan. You took a?—”
“Vest. Held.”
She doesn’t believe me. She’s lifting my shirt to check the vest. I let her because I’m not winning this argument and because every man in the room is watching Sophie Wilde unbutton my shirt over a vest in the middle of her workplace, and not one of them is laughing.
She finds the impact crater in the panel and the place where my skin will soon be a deep, dark purple. She breathes out and doesn’t cry.
Instead, she lays her forehead on my sternum, under where the round hit. Her hand comes up to my shoulder and holds on. “You protected me.”
“I said I would.”
Roz brings me a chair. She pushes me into it with her hand on my shoulder, and Sophie sits on the mat at my feet with her back against my shin.
A few minutes later, Doc Hensley arrives with his medical bag. He’s been at this since before any of us were born and doesn’t ask permission to walk behind the counter.
He checks Sophie’s wrist, then looks at my vest.
“You first,” he tells Sophie. “His vest held. He’ll be purple by lunch. You need stitches.”
He cleans and stitches Sophie’s forearm at the booth in the front of the diner. Four stitches, neat, country-doctor work he could do with his eyes closed. Sophie watches the needle straight on and stays in the booth.
Doc Hensley turns to me. “Shirt off.”
I take the shirt off. He inspects the vest, undoes the side straps, lifts the panel, and places two fingers on the bruise blooming across my sternum.
I don’t flinch. He doesn’t soften the pressure.
“Vest did its job. Skin’s intact. Ribs are bruised, but nothing seems broken. I’d like to get an X-ray today or tomorrow just to make sure. You’ll be ugly for a week, sore for two. Ice it tonight. Painkillers if you need them, but I know you won’t take them.”
“I won’t.”
He hands me my shirt. “Your father would be proud of you, Logan King. I’ll tell him so the next time I see him at the cemetery.”
He leaves the diner. Sophie looks at me from the booth. The wrap on her wrist is white against the dark wood of the table.
“My house,” I say.
She nods.
I drive us home.
Sophie sits in the passenger seat with her bandaged wrist in her lap and her eyes on the road. I hold her hand. We don’t say anything until we’re inside with the door locked.
She places her good hand on the front of my shirt. “You took a bullet for me.”
“The vest took a bullet for you. I just happened to be wearing it.”
