Just as he passed the San Luis Obispo city limits, his cell rang, the display screen simply reading: DAD.

“Where are you?” his father asked.

“SLO, but I’m heading back now.” SLO was local slang for San Luis Obispo.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re coming there.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Logan noticed the distinct hum of tires coming from the other end of the line.

“Why?”

“Barney talked Tooney into letting us take him to the hospital.” Cambria was too small for its own hospital. The closest was in SLO. “He’s worried Tooney might have some internal bleeding, and he doesn’t want to take a chance. Me, he says, I only need a few stitches.”

That last part was such a matter-of-fact add-on that Logan almost missed it, but the second it sunk in he hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “What do you mean stitches?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Over the line, he could hear Barney yell out. “He knocked his head against a storage rack when he tried to help Tooney stand up.”

“Dad! What the hell?”

“What the hell what?”

“What the hell were you doing trying to help him up? You’re eighty years old!”

“I’m not eighty for three more months!”

“Dad!”

“What was I supposed to do? He couldn’t get up on his own.”

Logan rubbed a hand across his eyes. “How many stitches?”

“None yet.”

“I mean, how many does Barney think you’ll need?”

“I have no idea.”

Logan knew there was no use arguing with him. “Which hospital?”

3

Logan watched from the window of the Hamilton Memorial Emergency Room as the others arrived. But it wasn’t just Barney, Tooney and his dad like he expected. The rest of his father’s buddies—Will Jensen, Jerry Kendrew, and Alan Hutto—walked in right behind them. They referred to themselves as the Wise Ass Old Men, or WAMO. Which, of course, didn’t make sense to Logan at all since the M and the O should have been reversed.