Chapter 12
James
Five Minutes Earlier
Detective Eddie walks into the petrol station like a man carrying a door that willnae open and willnae drop.
I watch the shape of it in his shoulders. The way his hands don’t know where to live. I cannae hear him and Sera, dinnae need to. I read mouths fine from the camera’s footage on my laptop, but tonight it’s the silence that tells the tale, the way he stands too neat, the way she goes very still.
Someone fucked up. Or someone fucked us up.
He leaves, and the bell does its cheery wee lie. He doesn’t look back, but I know he knows I’m here.
Then there’s just her under the corpse lights, her face like a chapel after a fire, blackened ribs with the sky showing through. She looks broken, and something in my gut kinks sideways.
Aye, this better not be on me. Did I fuck up? Did I have something to do with the look on her face that puts a knife in my heart?
I pull out my phone and thumb out a text to her: You all right, Prayer?
A bit later, she texts back: Fine.
Aye, and I’m the pope. No lass is ever just fine.
Now she’s got her phone in hand, her thumbs hovering, her jaw set as she stares at the screen. She looked broken before; now she looks carved from the inside out.
Need me? I’m right outside, I reply.
Yes.
I kill the glow of everything up front, leave the back gear in my van humming soft, and pull the curtain. I step out and put every sharp edge I’ve got away and walk in on quiet.
She looks up at my entrance.
“Prayer,” I say, soft as I manage.
Her mouth doesnae do a smile, but her eyes widen in relief.
I step toward her but don’t crowd. I hold the only thing I’ve got that won’t break her even further tonight.
My word. My devotion.
“Tell me,” I say.
She does, and it all spills out about the adhesive, the footage of Eddie’s car, a witness, and Red Hands weaving himself through our work like a smug wee spider.
Aye, so I did fuck up, just not intentionally. It wasnae me the witness saw since I’m nothing but smoke while on the job, and I dinnae wear leathers.
But I gave the police the thread, aye? The good adhesive with the neat edges I used on Farley’s hand. How was I supposed to ken Eddie used that too? And now it seems like Red Hands just pulled that thread like a bastard who enjoys knitting with intestines to paint his own story over ours.
“Fuck, Prayer,” I say when she finishes.
“Yeah,” she says, soft.
“What do ye want to do?” I ask her. “Ye point. I hit. I dinnae move till ye say. I’m just the man who breaks things at your command.”
Her chin lifts a fraction, and she searches my face. The only thing she’ll find is a blade, honed and held out to her hilt first.
Something in her spine remembers and straightens. The queen in the wasteland pulls on her crown, tarnish and all.
She hands me her phone, which shows a local news site. The headline tastes like tin in my mouth when I read it, then I read the rest, slow, careful, like it’ll change if I blink.
Hospitalized. Domestic incident. Street I know far too well.
Michael Devlin.
The name sits on my tongue, and I want to rip it out with pliers. My hand tightens on her phone until the case creaks. The old hymn rises in my head, the one about blood and sins and death, and the monster in me drags its claws across my ribs.
“We need to end him,” she says. “The right way.”
“Aye,” I say. “Tonight?”
“Tomorrow,” she says.
The gears behind her eyes bite and turn. She’s building a gallows of ideas and rope.
I breathe. It’s perfect, the way relief and rage can live in the same exhale.
“But we start with Farley,” she goes on. “We need to pay him a visit and pull the teeth out of Red Hand’s story before it bites us clean through.”
“We could also destroy evidence,” I offer.
There’s the smile I’ve been after. “Seriously?”
“Aye,” I say. “I’ve a solvent that’ll make that fancy adhesive forget its own name, and I can cloud the surface so the polis”—at her confused look, I correct myself—“sorry, police lab gets an inconclusive and a headache. They’ll argue about it for weeks while we run rings round them.
Make it look like they did it to themselves.
A wee bit of condensation here, a mislabeled tray there. ”
“Do you know where they keep the evidence?” she asks.
“In the Property and Evidence room, aye,” I say, already mapping locks and cameras by memory, the taste of old air-con and dust in my throat.
“Basement level of the sheriff’s department, two badge points, one camera with a blind spot where the ducting sags.
Night-shift walloper called Ritchie who spends three hours a watch on his phone pretending to quit vapes.
Code panel that sticks on four if ye press it slow.
One old-school deadbolt that loves a kiss from my wee rake. ”
“Yeah, I only caught about half of that.” Her mouth twitches in approval. “But I can you’ve done this type of thing before.”
“I often break the chain without breaking the chain,” I murmur.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means, either,” she says with a slight chuckle, “but we don’t want to do anything that looks like intent. We can’t get Eddie into more trouble.”
“Anything,” I say and step closer. “Anything for you.”
“Good.” She nods. “Let’s muddy the waters, then. We make it risky to hang Eddie with this. Vincent can’t swing if this particular rope frays.”
The name puckers her lips when she says it. I clock the way her mouth holds it like poison she intends to spit into her holy chalice later.
“And Devlin?” I ask, because the monster inside is pacing already, but I keep my heel on its neck.
Her gaze slides to the petrol station door, to the darkening day, toward a street where a woman bled because we thought we could save her. That look could peel paint.
“We need to find him first,” she says.
“I’ll set that table,” I say. “Then we take his certainty from him first, then his face. Quiet or loud as ye like.”
She nods. “Keep me posted.”
I bow my head the smallest bit. “Aye, my queen.”
She smiles again and breathes out, a thread of sound that trembles and then steadies.
“Thank you,” she says, and the word does something daft in my chest. “For not trying to fix it yourself. For just…being here.”
I am not built for soft, but for her, I find a way. I reach toward her and tuck a strand of black hair behind her ear, my knuckles barely brushing her cheek in a reverent touch.
“Always, Prayer,” I tell her, the low of it catching on the hook in my throat. “Till the world burns or I do.”
She leans into my palm, and I feel it like a sunrise through prison bars, but my Prayer doesnae do soft much either. She straightens, and her armor slides back up, buckle by buckle.
“But James.”
“Aye?”
“No blood in the sheriff’s department. We save it for Devlin.”
“Aye.” The beast sulks, then settles. “Devlin gets all the music. I’ll wait until after your shift when Eddie’s private investigator is watching over ye.”
She nods.
“Where would he run?” she asks herself more than me.
“Men like that dinnae run. They roost and dare ye,” I say. “I’ll catch his scent.”
I turn to go, but I pause with my hand on the door and look back.
Her beautiful face is still a ruin, but it’s ruin with scaffolding. The sort you can build a cathedral from if you’ve the patience to bleed for it.
My favorite kind.
I step into the dark. The van yawns open round me, familiar as my sins.
The monster in me stretches out and purrs on its chain, its tail lashing, pleased for the work.
Soon, we’ll unmake a story. After that, we end a man.
Sleep while you can, Devlin. Dawn’s coming cruel, and my queen’s got her crown back.