Chapter 32
Calloway
The world shrinks to the space between my back and the plaster of Jiya’s bedroom wall. Muffled voices from the hallway form a dull, meaningless hum. Then a single phrase from Ramirez, sharp enough to cut glass, slices through the noise.
“—for the murder of Elisha Briggs.”
They’re arresting her.
My fingers curl, nails digging into my palms. A primal, stupid part of my brain screams to kick the door, to turn this tidy little arrest into a chaotic, bloody masterpiece.
I could take the two uniforms I imagine are there in the hallway before Ramirez even draws her weapon.
Burn this whole scene to the ground and carry her out of the ashes, even if they put a bullet in my back on the way out. A worthy death.
But the fantasy dissolves as quickly as it forms, extinguished by the cold reality on the other side of that door. It’s not just two uniforms and a detective. It’s Ramirez. The one who has been sniffing around my studio, the one whose instincts are sharp and tenacious.
If she finds me here, it’s over. Not just for me. For Jiya.
Death is a clean exit. An arrest… An arrest is a cage.
They wouldn’t just cuff us. They’d put us under glass.
Two specimens. Our lives, our work, picked apart by mediocre minds in cheap suits.
That’s a fate worse than any bullet. And with Ramirez already connecting the dots to The Gallery Killer, finding me in the apartment of another suspected murderer isn’t just a smoking gun; it’s a goddamn fireworks display. She gets us both, gift-wrapped.
The primal urge to fight dies, replaced by the cold, sharp certainty of a predator. The only way to save her is from the outside.
“I want a lawyer,” Jiya’s voice says, slicing through the static in my head. Cool. Steady.
My God, I love this woman.
Then Ramirez again. “We also have a warrant to search these premises.”
The air in my lungs turns to ice. A search warrant. They’re not just taking her; they’re turning her life inside out. And they’re going to find me.
My eyes dart around the room. Under the bed? I’m a killer, not a six-year-old hiding from a thunderstorm. The closet? Please. That’s the first place they’ll look after checking for monsters.
I move to the bedroom door, silent as a shadow. My hand slips into my pocket, fingers closing around the cool, milled edge of a quarter.
I drop to one knee, sliding the coin into the hairline gap beneath the door, wedging it tight near the bottom hinge.
I can’t lock it. That would be a dead giveaway that someone was inside.
But this will make the door stick. It will take them an extra shove to get it open, buying me a few precious seconds.
My gaze snags on her makeup bag. The little black case she’d gestured to last night, a dangerous smile playing on her lips. “A girl needs her accessories.”
I snatch it and peek inside. Vials. Poisons.
Nothing suspicious here, officers.
Heavy footsteps enter the apartment.
“Search everything,” Ramirez commands. “Kitchen cabinets, bathroom, any hidden compartments.”
Zipping the bag shut, I shove it deep inside my jacket. My eyes lock on the window. My only option.
I slide the latch and ease the sash upward. The wood groans in protest. I freeze.
“Start with the living room and kitchen,” a voice says, right on the other side of the door. “I’ll take the bedroom.”
No more time for stealth. I shove the window the rest of the way up. The world pitches as I lean out.
A three-story drop.
No fire escape. No dumpster.
Just an unforgiving slab of gray concrete, waiting to turn my bones into a modern art installation.
Shit.
I swing a leg through the opening, into the chilly morning air. My fingers find the outer ledge, the rough brick shredding skin from the tips. For a single, nauseating second, my body is a pendulum, legs kicking at nothing before my shoes find a three-inch sliver of stone.
The doorknob rattles.
I shove off the windowsill, swinging my weight sideways into the deeper shadows between windows. A jolt of pure agony shoots from my shoulders down to my wrists. A gust of wind wraps around the corner, a physical force trying to peel me from the building.
My right heel skids on a patch of moss.
My body lurches back. A choked gasp rips from my throat as my fingers hook the ledge, nails bending back, sending flares of white-hot pain up my arm. I slam my chest back against the wall, the impact knocking the air from my lungs. My breath comes in ragged, desperate pants.
Too fucking close.
The bedroom door slams open against the interior wall.
I press my ear to the cold brick, straining to decipher the sounds. The wind steals most of it, leaving only fragments. “…check under the bed…” “…closet’s clear…” “…bag everything on the nightstand for prints…”
My shoulders burn. The muscles in my forearms cramp, my scraped fingers trembling against the stone. This is a terrible way to die. So unoriginal. A fall. The last resort of failed acrobats and jilted lovers.
A minute passes. An eternity. I shift my weight, a millimeter of movement to grant my left arm a moment’s reprieve. A tiny shower of brick dust patters down into the alley.
“What was that?” The voice is inside. Near the window.
My heart hammers against the wall, a frantic, trapped thing.
“Wind, probably,” another voice answers. Bless his lazy, unimaginative soul.
“I’ll check.”
Fuck. I stop breathing. I am a shadow. I am a stain on the ugly, poorly maintained brickwork. My right calf seizes, a knot of pure, screaming agony. I bite the inside of my cheek, tasting blood, refusing to make a sound.
The window sash groans as it slides open. A brilliant, accusatory blade of light cuts through, sweeping across the wall. It crawls closer, a slow predator. My muscles scream. The light stops inches from my white-knuckled fingers.
“See anything?” a voice calls from inside the room.
The silence stretches. I can feel the cop leaning out, his presence a heavy weight in the air. He’s scanning, searching for someone who is trying to impersonate a gargoyle.
“Nothing,” he says. “Street’s empty.”
The window slides closed with a soft thud.
I exhale, my breath a white cloud in the cold. The murder gods, it seems, are in a whimsical mood today.
I hang there until the sounds inside fade. Drawers slam. Muffled voices recede. Finally, the heavy thud of the front door closing. Silence. I count to sixty. Then I begin the agonizing shimmy back toward the window.
My fingers reach the frame. I push against the glass.
It doesn’t budge.
I push harder. Nothing. They locked it? Of course, they locked it. The one time Boston’s finest show a modicum of thoroughness, it’s to trap me on the side of a building.
“Fuck,” I whisper. The muscles in my arms are injected with acid. A tremor starts in my biceps and ends in my numb fingertips. “What do I do?”
To my right, six feet away, another window. The living room. Six feet. It might as well be a mile.
I glance down. The fall won’t be instant. It’ll be a shattering of bones, a pulping of organs. They’d find me twitching next to Jiya’s building, a makeup bag full of poison in my jacket. The irony would be lost on them.
My arms tremble with fatigue. I’ve been clinging here too long already. If I’m going to move, it needs to be now.
I take a breath and slide my right foot sideways. The ledge crumbles, sending a cascade of grit to the alley below. My heartbeat thunders in my ears. I think of Jiya’s face. The calm resignation. The slight nod she gave me. She faced it down.
I press myself flatter against the wall.
Badass to the end.
The thought is a jolt of pure, defiant energy. “Don’t you dare fall, Frost,” I mutter through clenched teeth. “She needs you.”
I stretch, my arm straining, fingers brushing the frame of the next window. I hook them under the sash and push.
It slides upward. Unlocked.
I don’t climb through. I fall. I pour myself through the opening, collapsing onto her living room floor in a heap of trembling limbs and scraped skin.
For a full minute, I just lie there, gasping, the pattern of the rug pressed against my cheek, the smell of her filling my lungs.
Then I push myself to my feet, my body screaming in protest.
“I will get you out, my little killer,” I whisper to the silent, empty apartment. “Whatever it takes.”
My fist connects with the door, leaving a faint, bloody smear on the wood. The impact jolts up to my shoulder, a dull ache that’s nothing compared to the fire in my hands. I don’t care.
I pound again, a frantic, desperate rhythm.
“Xander! Open the goddamn door or I’ll start testing its structural integrity!”
A muffled curse from inside. The scrape of deadbolts—one, two, three—and the door swings open.
He stands there, a ghost illuminated by the glow of a server rack from deep within his apartment. His faded t-shirt reads, “There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.” Below it, flannel pajama bottoms.
He squints against the light from the hallway.
“Frost? It’s nine o’clock on a…” His words die in his throat.
His sleepy annoyance evaporates, replaced by sharp alarm as he takes in the sight of me.
The wildness in my eyes, the rumpled state of my clothes, the raw, scraped knuckles of the hand I just used on his door.
“What the hell, Frost?” Xander scrubs a hand across his face. “What happened to you?”
“I’ve had an eventful morning.” I push past him into the apartment. My pulse is a frantic drum against my ribs, a rhythm that started two hours ago and hasn’t slowed.
“They took her.” I spin to face him, my voice tight.
He closes the door, his gaze fixed on me. “Who has her?”
“The police. Ramirez. They arrested Jiya.”
Xander blinks, the irritation dissolving as the words land. “Arrested? For what?”
“Murder.” The word tastes like poison. “Elisha Briggs. They had a warrant.”
In an instant, the sleepy face is gone. Xander is fully present, his expression sharpening into the focused, dangerous man I know. “Shit. Where did they take her?”
“Downtown precinct, I assume.” My hands are shaking, a tremor born of adrenaline and muscular exhaustion. I shove them into my pockets, hiding the tremor and the blood. “I was there. I spent forty minutes impersonating a gargoyle three stories up while they tossed her bedroom.”
Xander moves to the kitchen, a sleek expanse of chrome and granite, and starts the coffee maker with practiced, efficient movements. It’s his ritual. His way of imposing order on chaos. “Tell me everything,” he says, his back to me. “From the moment the doorbell rang. Don’t edit. Don’t embellish.”
“Embellish?” I let out a short, sharp laugh. “My dear Xander, the reality is far more dramatic than anything I could invent.”
The details pour out of me, a frantic, disjointed narrative. The knock. The warrant. The name. Jiya’s face, calm and defiant as she told me to hide.
“She’s careful,” I say, the words catching in my throat. “Meticulous. She doesn’t make mistakes. They can’t have anything on her.”
“Everyone can leave a trace,” Xander mutters, his eyes scanning the screen. “Okay… Accessing the Suffolk County court filings… Warrants usually get sealed same-day, but…” A few more keystrokes. A new window pops up on his screen. “But their firewalls are a joke.”
He goes silent, his eyes moving, reading. I pace behind him, a caged animal, the sound of my own ragged breathing loud in the quiet room.
“Okay, got it,” he says. “Search warrant 78-B, signed by Judge Albright.” He leans closer to the screen, his expression hardening. “Affidavit filed by Detective Sofia Ramirez.”
“What does it say?” I demand, stopping behind his chair. “What’s their probable cause?”
Xander doesn’t answer for a moment. He just stares at the screen, a muscle working in his jaw. Then, he slowly turns his head to look at me, his face grim.
“They have video, Cal.”
The words hang in the air, heavy and cold.