I didn't sleep in that chair, not really. I watched the window go gray and then pale yellow, and I watched Curtis doze against the counter with his pistol loose in his lap, and I thought about Sutter's man somewhere out there figuring the fastest way into my building.
By morning I'd decided the only sense in any of it was to get Pike out before Sutter arrived to take him out violently. A quiet release wouldn't cost Eddie anything he could point to. A rescue attempt through my kitchen window would cost everybody plenty, starting with whoever happened to be on the landing.
Curtis woke up ugly, the way men do when they've slept sitting up, and he wasn't inclined to discuss it. I told him I was taking Pike down the back stairs and putting him on the street before Sutter's people showed up looking for blood in the wrong hallway. Curtis said that wasn't his call to make.
'It's my kitchen,' I said. 'Eddie can argue with me about it later.' I untied Pike's wrists myself, which took longer than it should have because my hands were shaking from no sleep and too much coffee, and the rope had cut deep enough that he winced the whole time.
Curtis put himself between us and the stairwell door. His companion had gone out before dawn, saying he would find Eddie, and had not returned. That left Curtis alone with a decision he plainly wanted somebody else to make. He told Pike to sit back down. Pike looked at me instead, rubbing one wrist with the other hand. I took his elbow and felt how little strength he had left.
I told Curtis to move. He stayed put, not drawing anything, just standing there as though his size ought to finish the argument. I could have waited for Eddie. That would have let me call this someone else's decision afterward. Behind Curtis, a door opened below us and water rattled into a pail. People were beginning their day beneath a prisoner they hadn't agreed to shelter. I put my shoulder into him.
He went back against the wall more surprised than hurt. I pushed the stairwell door open with my hip and brought Pike through before Curtis recovered. Pike stumbled on the first tread. I caught him against the rail, taking his weight on my forearm. Curtis seized the door behind us and said Eddie would hear who had done this. I turned enough to face him. 'Tell him I took him,' I said. Then I helped Pike down the next step instead of waiting for permission.
Pike could barely make the stairs on his own, so I had him leaning on my arm the whole way down, both of us listening for footsteps that weren't ours. Out back, my car was where I'd left it, and I got him into the passenger seat and drove two miles before either of us said anything.
'Sutter's going to want to know who let me go,' Pike finally said, holding his wrist against his ribs. 'I'll tell him it was you, if that's what you want. Might buy you something with him.'
I told him I didn't want anything from Sutter, I wanted my building left alone, and if telling him my name helped with that, fine, tell him. Pike nodded like a man storing information for later use, and I put him out two blocks from wherever he said he needed to go, and I didn't ask more questions because I didn't want more answers.
Eddie was waiting in my kitchen when I got back, sitting in the chair Pike had occupied, like he'd swapped places with his own prisoner just to make a point. He didn't raise his voice. 'You let him walk,' he said. 'That's fine, Danny. But don't think that room's yours now just because it's empty. It's still ours to use when we need it. You just gave Sutter a reason to come looking instead of a reason to leave us alone.'