Chapter 29 Boone
BOONE
Several more horrifying dominoes fall into place.
“You’ve killed over a dozen people in the last month alone.”
“True…”
I stare at Hopper’s increasingly confused face, at a loss for words. Maverick looks just as lost as I feel, which is a small comfort.
“Aren’t you happy that I’m killing bad guys?” Hopper asks, like a kid who’s proud of the fact that he just washed his dad’s brand-new Ferrari with a Brillo pad.
“Hopper, I’m a cop. A detective.” I rake my hands through my hair. “And I need you to shut up right now because everything you say can be used against you.”
Hopper tsks, shaking his head. “I’m not explaining this right. I can tell.” He checks outside, then steps back into the apartment. “I promise you’ll get a full explanation, but we need to move now.”
The sirens are still closing in as a car screams into the parking lot, rocking to a halt behind Hopper’s car.
Two operatives dressed in combat gear exit, armed with the same rifles as Silas and Hopper. They assess the parking lot as they make their way up the stairs. One of them is familiar.
“That’s Holmes, isn’t it?” I ask Maverick.
“Yes. And our cousin Honoré,” he says without an ounce of surprise.
Oh.
“So you knew about your family and didn’t tell me?”
Maverick looks distraught.
“Hey, now,” Hopper interrupts. “Don’t be mad at Maverick. He just found out.”
Sy greets the black-ops division of the Wildlings and points at the ash. “Tell me we’re not bagging this.”
Holmes nods. “Dex says re-ash, then rinse. It won’t test, and the calcium run-off is good for the plants, apparently.”
“Sweet business,” Hopper says. “You two help us with the carpet up here after?”
Holmes sends a thumbs-up. They make their way back down to the parking lot and make short work of the dozen or so piles of ash, then use a pump sprayer to dissolve the remains.
Fucking. Hell.
The sirens, now mere blocks away, cut out.
Hopper’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it up, quickly reading something off the screen.
“Ryder took care of the inbound officers,” he says, his eyes going back to the one body.
He kneels, unable to leave the guy’s collar alone.
The bottom drops out of my stomach. You can’t just take care of inbound officers.
“This Ryder person didn’t have those officers killed, did he?”
Silas looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No. She just told ’em it was a false alarm. Jeez.”
Yeah, ’cause I’m the crazy one.
“And what about witnesses? The bodies in my fucking apartment?” I ask, working hard to keep my voice steady as I try to reason with a sociopath. “What about the person who called this in?”
Hopper gives his Last Supper tableau one last, forlorn glance, then ashes the bodies with a low, pulsing sweep of his rifle.
“Dex said to re-ash,” the even fucking crazier one says. “They’ll look like stains until we can remove this shitty carpet.”
“Hey.”
I mean, yeah. It’s shitty carpet, but it’s my fucking shitty carpet.
And…wow. That second sweep really does make it look like carpet stains.
That used to be…people.
“Um,” I say, trying to keep down my breakfast taco. “What about the witnesses? Someone clearly saw something and called the police.”
“According to Jake, they were called for shots fired, not for bodies on the ground.” Hopper brightens. “Which is a bit of luck.”
The guy, Honoré, reappears in the doorway. “We’re out of time. We’ll grab the carpet later.”
Hopper gestures at the door, and I hesitate.
“You’re the guy the department has all those myths about. You’re the one who’s been killing the bad guys. For years. Not just this John the Baptist stuff.”
“To be fair, my buddy Anders is responsible for at least half of those.”
That’s when I remember the word Anders used yesterday. Leverage.
No wonder he was so scared. Whoever would go after these guys must be one dangerous motherfucker.
I realize, belatedly, that Maverick’s hands are shaking. Whatever he knew about his family, he didn’t know that.
I feel like a dickhead for being so relieved.
“I don’t think you understand, Hopper,” I say, not sure if he’ll get it. “I can’t cooperate with you. I have to call this in.”
Hopper scratches the back of his head, then pulls up his phone again.
My training screams for me to take control of the situation, grab a gun, make him go to his knees, something. But I know, more than I’ve known anything in my life, that if I try something violent now, I’ll be dead before I hit the ground.
Hopper wouldn’t kill me, but this Silas motherfucker? Yeah, he definitely would.
Surreally, Hopper is whispering into his phone. “Yeah, but you said he would be cool. That he could handle it. That he would understand.”
“That I would understand what?” Hopper sends me a sheepish grin. “Hopper, who are you talking to?”
He hits the speaker option and shoves his phone into my hand. “Here.”
“What is this?” I ask, my brain desperately trying to make sense of things.
He gestures at the phone again.
I speak into the bottom of the phone. “Hello?”
“You need to know that we were gonna handle this in a completely different way.”
I recognize the voice.
I still don’t know what the fuck is happening.
“Joni?” I ask, wondering if I’ve been dropped in some alternate dimension.
“Yes. Remember that conversation we had about not feeling all that bad when the bad guys end up dead?”
“Yes.”
“I may have been trying to identify how you felt about that sort of thing. And…you seemed to understand it was sometimes necessary.”
“In the hypothetical,” I grind out.
“Well, the hypothetical is real. We were going to slowly introduce some concepts over time, but then Preston Whitaker decided you should not be alive anymore.”
Yep. None of that makes any of this any clearer.
“Why does Whitaker have it out for me?” This conversation is one giant non sequitur. “I didn’t do anything. I’m not even the one who got his son to turn on him.”
“I know that. We all know that. But then Maverick posted that selfie of the two of you, and Whitaker put two and two together.”
Maverick looks stricken. I’m so sorry.
I hold out my hand. It’s okay.
“Well, he must have been going on vibes because I don’t know what he put together.”
“Whitaker thinks you’re already working with the Bashes.”
I look at Hopper’s phone.
“Already working with the Bashes?”
“Yes.”
“The billionaire Bashes,” I say, Hopper’s words slowing turning over in my beleaguered mind.
“Yes.” Joni clears her throat before continuing, “The Bashes have destroyed a number of trafficking organizations. They do good work. They’re necessary. And they like you.”
Maverick looks as stunned by this information as I feel.
“Well, that’s fucking great.” I wonder if I’ve lost my mind when I ask, “Why do they like me? Do I seem murderous? Or like I might be in the mood to disregard the years of education and training I undertook to become a detective?”
Ah shit.
“Did they send me to school so they could recruit me?”
Hopper’s already shaking his head. “No, we could see you were really interested in justice. But we’ve been carefully following your career. No interference, just wanted to see the kind of man you are. And you are a very, very good man.”
I turn to Maverick. “And you didn’t know anything about this?”
He shakes his head. “I found out some things by accident, but it’s like I told you, they don’t trust me with anything. They keep things from me.” He looks at Hopper, tapping his temple. “They say it’s not because of the processing shit, but…”
Hopper rocks back and forth, clearly taking issue with Maverick’s words. He opens his mouth to, I don’t know, disagree? Then closes it again. He clasps his hands behind his back and drops his chin to his chest.
“I wish they would have seen the way you took down those guys, Mav,” I say, even with the ambivalence of what he does and does not know. “Brutal, accurate, without hesitation. You’re strong as hell, smart as hell, and you work harder than any person I know.”
Silas pushes his sunglasses up onto his head. “Hop filled everyone in on the drive over. The dads know they fucked up—and they’re trying to fix it.”
Oof. Maverick’s hands, still shaking, ball into fists, and the glare he sends to Silas feels dangerous. Like maybe he’s trying to convince himself not to deck the baby psycho.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Silas says, raising his hands. “They know they owe you an apology. They just haven’t figured out how to go about it.”
“They’re strategizing an apology?” Maverick asks, anger and hurt at war in his voice.
Something about what he says strikes me as funny, and I snort.
Mav whips around and gives me the same glare he just used on Silas.
“Sorry,” I say, grabbing his hand. “People who don’t have access to the full emotional spectrum have to strategize apologies.”
“Uh, I feel every emotion,” Hopper says. He actually looks offended. “Some more than most.”
Silas shakes his head. “I don’t.”
“Whatever.” Hopper, irritated, continues, “Maybe it’s a bit too late, but we are trying to make sure that you understand how important you are to this family. And how much we want you to be a part of the family business, whatever that means for you.”
“You want him—and me—to be part of the murder family?” I ask, shaking my head.
Joni, still on the line, interjects, “The people they’re taking out are the ones who have the kind of money that means that they will never, ever see justice. You remember the pandemic and the rise of fascism in the twenties? Back when money insulated people from consequences?”
“Yeah, except that a lot of them…died suddenly,” I say, my words slowing as their meaning hits me.