Chapter 8
eight
. . .
Armin
I sit on the edge of the bed, and I watch Mia’s back rise and fall. She’s slept the better part of the past three days.
Morphine overdose, according to the blood test. She’s dizzy and tired when she’s awake. Not her usual self. Doesn’t talk back enough, not for Mia.
I hate it.
I reach out to cradle one of her curls in my fingers the way I used to, then think better of it and leave her be.
I pace over to the kitchen. I’d made her an extra little pot of coffee when I first woke up, hours ago.
Now it's cold. I pour it into a mug and down it myself and set about emptying out the pot so I can brew a fresh one when she wakes up.
No blood infections, no broken bones. No obvious corneal damage from the rubbing alcohol, though I want to get her to an eye doctor to be on the safe side.
Mia’s used up another one of her nine lives, but she’s mostly okay.
I’m not. I get the coffee set up for another round, whenever she wakes up, and then pace back to the window to peer out the blinds. Nothing of interest outside.
She insists the morphine was them, not her. I wonder.
I love her, but I don’t know her.
I want to check out the injection site, make sure it’s healing, redo her bandages, tend to those awful scrapes on her heels. She needs rest, though, more than anything, while the morphine works through her system. So I hold off.
I retreat to the loft’s office. I can never think straight when I’m around her. Even when she’s asleep.
I leaf through the update file delivered along with the medical assistance. HPG is holding up their end of the bargain: supplies, intel, safehouse. Me, I don’t know if I’m holding it down over here, if I can keep Mia safe. While she’s unconscious, maybe.
When she wakes up, it’s another story.
I pause at the file photo of Mia’s attacker. Stefan “Iso” Mueller. Hired by Manning, the Assistant DA, his pockets lined with Harvey’s sex trafficking money, drug money. Some light local real estate fraud. Basically the same racket Harvey ran in East Greenwich.
Harvey Blagas was always a smart, slippery bastard. And here he was, not in town for two months yet and already getting some crooked lawman to do his dirty work.
Still, if it was Harvey’s assassin who’d nabbed Mia off the street, and not Manning’s loser, she’d be in an urn by now instead of sleeping in the next room.
In all my years as sheriff in East Greenwich, I’d never come close to putting Harvey away. God knows I tried. Especially after Hailey’s death. I made it my mission. And I failed.
“What are you thinking about?”
I jumped. She’d snuck up on me. Wrapped up in the shiny sheet from the bed, leaning on the doorframe of the study.
Her cheek is still swollen and bruised.
“I should have killed him. That’s what I was thinking.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No way. It was a misunderstanding. He forgot to call and book the hours, whoever he was. That’s all.”
“You got tased, and shoved in a trunk, chained up. Forcibly drugged. Beaten.”
“Hey, some nights are rougher than others.” She shrugs a bare shoulder. “Girl’s gotta earn a living.”
Nausea rises in me, turns my stomach over. I hate it when she talks like that, about her job. But more than that, she’s lying to me. Passing off her overt kidnapping like it was all in a night’s work.
“You don’t, and you know it.” My voice betrays how angry I am. I can’t hide it.
We’ve had this discussion before. I want to support her. I’ve begged her to let me do it. No strings attached, no questions asked. I would pay any amount of money for her to quit working for Harvey. I’d give her everything, anything she wanted.
And she won’t let me.
But I’ll be damned if she doesn’t at least tell me why. Why she’s protecting Harvey, keeping close to him. Refusing to inform on him.
Hell, maybe she’s in love with him. Every fascist prick has a wife, don’t they? Maybe Mia’s aiming to be his.
Another wave of nausea hits me. And beneath it, an awful fear. I don’t see Mia clearly because I don’t want to. I’m in way over my head with her.
She gets a faraway look in her eyes. Her hand slips from the doorjamb, and I rush to her side, prop her up with one arm around her waist.
“I’m okay.”
But she’s not. She leans into me, unsteady, her footing unsure. I help her over to the little couch in the study and sit her down. I force myself to go back to the desk chair, to put that distance between us.
Because we need to talk, and to do that I need to think.
And I don’t think with my brain when I’m touching her.
“The DA is ready to move on Harvey’s indictment. He’s looking for testimony. That’s why Manning got you.”
“He’s the one killing witnesses before they can make their statements?”
“Yeah. It’s Manning’s hit man, not Harvey’s. Don’t get me wrong, Harvey’s got one too. He was at the Aerie, clocking you yesterday. But Harvey’s guy’s a high-profile assassin. Imported. When he goes to work in this town, we’ll know it. Harvey doesn’t threaten privately.”
“Manning’s doing it for him,” she says.
“He’s got a good side hustle going with all that new cash Harvey sends his way. Protecting his investment.”
She picks at the adhesive tape in the crook of her arm. “Gotta put the kids through college, I suppose.”
“Mia.’
She avoids my gaze, studies the arm of the couch instead.
“I hate this sofa.” She scrapes at it with one fingernail. “It feels wrong. Is this…what do you call it? Millennial gray?”
“Mia.”
She sighs, already exasperated with me—folds her arms across herself and cradles her face inside so that she’s nothing but a pair of glaring eyes.
I’m pissed and I’m thrilled: she’s gearing up for a fight. She feels better.
Or at least, she’s starting to.
“Why are you protecting him?”
“Just trying to keep my job. I know you think you can swoop in and buy me off. Which, honestly, is more than the DA would offer.”
“Harvey’s a bad man, Mia. I don’t have to tell you. And you could put him behind bars. We could get out of this cesspool. Anywhere you want to go. You name it.”
She strains to pull her legs up onto the couch. The bandage has fallen off one of her heel scrapes, and it’s exposed: red, raw, and angry.
She brushes my words off with a wave of her hand. “I’m not informing. You can pack up and head back home. I’ve decided against it. I’m a sex worker. Harvey’s my handler. This is my life. It’s that simple, Armin.”
I don’t say anything. I lean forward.
“I see you judging me,” she says. “Go ahead. And go fuck yourself.”
I prop my elbows up on my knees and wince.
Yet another bruise from my feeble reign of terror over Manning’s budget kidnapper.
There’s still Harvey’s high-dollar killer knocking around somewhere in this town.
Spotted again yesterday, according to the HPG file.
“I’m not. I’ll accept whatever you decide.
I’m not here to trap you, or to enforce some bullshit laws that only protect the perpetrators. I came to protect you.”
I stop short of I love you. It goes beyond that. Those words are too small to describe what I feel for Mia. I don’t think it’ll move her, anyway. I didn’t show up in Halo City to force my own agenda. And I’m not here to emotionally extort her.
Despite what she might think.
“You’re all I care about in this godforsaken city,” I say, quiet and even. And it’s true.
She cracks.
She cracks, and I regret pushing her towards it.
It’s brief but I catch it, the stark change in her expression, that tough exterior run through the wringer and replaced with despair.
My heart breaks for her, with her, but then again, just about every third day with Mia breaks my heart one way or another.
It’s my job to hold it together any which way I can.
I can’t quit her. I’ll never give up on her. I don’t know why, but I know it’s true.
I groan my way up from the chair and take a seat next to her on the couch.
I’m battered too, from my little stunt: my body bruised all over, my back knotted and seized, the knuckles of my right hand bloodied and refusing to scab over.
We’re quite the pair of broken toys. I don’t dare to hope that she’ll come to me. But I offer it.
And she does.
She gives up the tough act, and folds herself into my arms, slips in and nestles close and hides her face against me. And she sobs.
Tears prick the back of my eyes. I’d do anything to free her, to make her whole. Even if she never wants to be mine.
Prison is not punishment enough for Harvey Blagas. I want the man’s head.