Chapter 21
Shaw
Iwatched Spade cross the parking lot, her stride a little slower than usual.
She had a duffel slung over one shoulder, and from where I stood behind the glass of the entryway, I could see she was carrying more weight than what was in the bag.
She stopped under the sickly blue flicker of the outside light, checked the street behind her, then buzzed my unit.
I pressed the door release and waited. She was up the stairs in less than ten seconds, boots landing soft on the rubber-treaded steps. I opened the door before she knocked. The air between us felt like the split second before a fistfight: all anticipation, no momentum.
She looked me over, then past me, like she was looking for a squad of detectives. Her eyes were even flatter than normal. I saw the knuckle split on her right hand, the old jacket zipped up to the throat, and the new tension in the line of her jaw.
She said, “I’m back on the saddle,” she said. “Selene is cool with it all.”
I stepped aside and let her in.
Inside, the apartment was cold and underfurnished, just the way I liked it.
Two chairs at a table that didn’t match either, a secondhand couch with stuffing pushing out the armrest, and a desk along the back wall.
No books, no family pictures. The window shades were drawn, but she went to them anyway and peeked outside.
I watched her posture soften by a single micron when she saw there was no one parked across the street but a battered sedan with a Lyft sticker peeling off the rear window.
She set the duffel down by the door and left it there, like maybe she’d have to grab it in a hurry.
I closed the door and bolted it. She didn’t flinch. She was already reading the room, mapping out the possibilities. I liked watching her do it, the way she held every risk in her head and then dismissed them, one by one.
She turned to face me. The silence was solid enough to lean on.
I said, “What’s going on?”
Her hands went to the zipper on the jacket, but she didn’t open it. “You.”
“I’ve got bourbon,” I said. I pointed at the bottle on the kitchen counter. “Or coffee, if you aren’t planning to stay the night.”
She shook her head. “Not going anywhere.”
I poured two fingers and set the glass at the edge of the counter. She didn’t touch it.
She took three steps closer and said, “The place needs a woman’s touch.”
I shrugged. “Never liked clutter.”
“Never liked evidence,” she corrected. She looked at the desk, at the locked box, then at the spot under the couch where I kept a backup weapon. “You always expect company?”
“What’s happening here, Spade?”
She sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, hands steepled. She looked at the ground. I could feel her winding up, getting ready to say something that would put the night on a new course.
I sat across from her in the other chair. The bourbon glass sat between us.
“Do you really think we can make this work?” she asked. “And don’t give me any of this we can try bullshit. Is it going to work or not?”
“We both know it will.”
“I stay with the club, and you keep catching the bad guys. That's how this is going to work?
I nodded. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“And we fuck like we have?”
“Yeah.”
“My fetish for killing bad people?” she asked.
“Don’t get caught by someone other than me,” I said.
I stood and went to the table for the folder I’d been working on all night and dropped it in her lap.
“The department will be looking for a woman. Six-one, two hundred pounds, in her thirties, with military experience. I’ll stay on the case and keep it cold. ”
“I’ll change my MO,” she said.
We then sat in silence, the bourbon going down easy, the world outside muted by cheap glass and the hum of old appliances. For the first time in months, neither of us had anywhere else to be.
I watched her profile in the low light. I wanted to reach out, touch her jaw, feel the sharp angle of it under my palm. But I didn’t.
Instead, I said, “You know there’s no going back.”
She finished the drink and stood. “I know.”
She walked to the window, checked the street again, then let the shade fall. She turned back to me and said, “If you want me to leave, say so.”
I shook my head. “I want you to stay.”
She looked at me for a long second, then picked up her bag and set it on the floor beside the couch. She kicked off her boots, then dropped down onto the cushions, arms folded behind her head.
I turned out the lights.
We sat in the dark, both listening for the sounds of pursuit, neither willing to be the first to sleep.
Outside, the city kept spinning. Inside, everything had changed, and neither of us wanted to name it.
She said, “Good night, detective.”
I listened to her breathing even out, waited for her to fall asleep, and tried to imagine a morning where she was still there.
***
She slept like a soldier in hostile territory: one eye always open, body curled around the axis of her bag, jacket balled up as a pillow.
I watched her from the kitchen, drinking black coffee and waiting for the world to tilt again.
When she woke, she didn’t stretch or sigh or make any of the small sounds people do when they feel safe.
She just sat up, blinked at the ceiling, and ran both hands through her hair.
I poured a second cup and left it steaming on the counter, then sat in the nearest chair and waited for her to speak.
She started with, “You ever have a nightmare so real you wake up with your teeth in your tongue?”
I shook my head. “Just heartburn.”
She smirked, then got up and padded across the linoleum to the bathroom. The door didn’t latch, so it stayed half open. I heard her piss, then heard the shower start. She came out fifteen minutes later, naked, and hot as fuck. She sat on the couch, and I moved to my knees in front of her.
“Is it always going to be like this?” she asked.
I parted her knees, and before I buried my face between her legs, I said, “Always.”