29I stared at the man in the hat, saw his hand rise toward the brim. He touched it with four long, tapering fingers. His nails were blunt-cut and a cushion of nicotine-stained callus ran along the inside of the middle finger. The hat came off, revealing a shapely skull stubbled in black and white, the hair a quarter-inch long as if the man before me had shaved both his face and his head at the same time, at least three days ago.
“Another beer?” He repeated the question in English, his accent unmistakably Slavic.
I saw blue eyes behind the lenses of his glasses and facial skin made leathery by long exposure to the sun. I looked at the strong nose, the full lips.
I looked at the face that Woody Hinton would have—if he grew up.
My heartbeat doubled its rate. The man before me was Bella’s
