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“You think this is how I make a move?” Runner scoffs. “You got no idea, old man. Subtle ain’t my thing, Dealer, life’s too short for all that.”
“Well, you ain’t wrong,” Cal admits. “Have at it then,” he says, before returning to his sandwich.
Runner sits forward, urgency emanating from him as he says, “I gotta know, is it true, while you were after the crime lord, Maxwell Hossen, you ziplined into his condo building from across the street, cut the line, and used it to swing into his window, crashing through it and landing right in the middle of his bedroom?”
Cal grins at me, knowing that story well.
“Yes,” I tell Runner. “That’s all true.”
“That’s a sweet move.”
“I heard you’ve got some sweet moves of your own. I got a glimpse of it firsthand down in Brockford the other day.”
As he smiles at that, I catch sight of Sarah giving him an excitable thumbs-up from across the diner as she makes my coffee.
“You took somebody down with a pen once, right?” he goes on.
I nod. “More than once. The first time was an overzealous security guard. I wasn’t there to fight, or packing my gear to engage in a fight, so stationery on his desk was all that I had available at the time.”
“Happened recently too,” Cal says.
Runner takes all that in. “Pretty much anything can become a weapon in the right hands.”
“Precisely.”
“And you and Cavalno? You made him into what he is, yeah?”
“It would be more accurate to say that we made each other.”
“Huh,” he says, thinking on that for a while.
As he goes to ask something else, Cal steps in, telling him, “Start locking it up, Runner.”
“Fine. Just one more thing then.” He shifts his weight, then eyes me intensely, as he asks, “You’re the hardest person to track in the fucking history of it. I’m hella good, but it were just a tad too easy when I got a lock on you at that bar. You wanted Dealer to find you, yeah? You made it easy on purpose?”
I look at Cal who seems as intrigued by that question as Runner.
“Yes. I left some breadcrumbs for you guys. It was a precaution, a potential Plan B, because I wasn’t sure of exactly what I was walking into that night.”
Runner nods to himself. “Thought so.” He pushes out of his chair. “So, what’s next for Kingmaker once this Gatekeepers thing is over with?”
“That about wraps it up.”
He stills with putting the chair back at the neighboring table. “What? You’re done with it, retiring?”
I catch Cal’s eye and he looks more than a little shocked.
It’s not how I intended it to come out, but with the direct question put out there, I figure I might as well get down to the truth of it all.
Runner notices the intensity coming off him and winces. “So, I’m gonna go.” He smiles at me. “Nice talking with you. You’re gonna be in town for a while, yeah?”
Another awkward question that Cal and I haven’t discussed the answer to.
“Oh, shit,” Runner says, realizing he’s inadvertently worsening the situation. He looks at Dealer. “All right, I’m gone.”
“Think that’s for the best,” Cal grunts.
In the next beat, Runner takes off and I watch him embrace his wife, just before Cal refocuses my attention with a rough clearing of his throat.
