Chapter Thirteen Blue
Chapter Thirteen
Blue
The axe is calling my name from the trunk of my car, and I’m two seconds away from answering.
I’m sitting in Dr. Finch’s waiting room like some kind of unhinged patient, which I suppose I am, bouncing my leg so hard
the floor is probably developing stress fractures. The receptionist—a sweet elderly woman who definitely doesn’t deserve to
witness my mental breakdown—keeps shooting me concerned glances over her reading glasses.
“Blue?” she ventures carefully. “Dr. Finch can see you now.”
I practically leap from the chair, nearly knocking over a potted plant in my haste. The familiar chaos of Jay’s office should
be comforting, but today it’s sensory overload. Every scattered paper, every precariously balanced book stack, every abandoned
coffee mug—it all screams disorganization while my brain demands control.
“Blue!” Jay looks up from where he’s attempting to excavate his desk from an avalanche of patient files. “You look like hell.
Also, you’re early. Like, really early. I don’t have another appointment for twenty minutes, which means—” He stops mid-sentence,
taking me in from head to toe. “Oh. Emergency session. Got it.”
I drop into my usual chair, my hands already twitching toward my pockets where I keep my knife sharpening stone. Old habits.
“I need to officially come out of retirement,” I announce without preamble.
Jay blinks. Once. Twice. Then he very deliberately sets down the file he was holding and reaches for his emergency flask.
It’s not even noon.
“Okay,” he says after taking a healthy swig. “Let’s unpack that statement. What happened between yesterday and right now that
made you decide to”—he gestures vaguely at me—“whatever this is?”
“I let her leave.”
“Saylor? You let Saylor leave Maison Rouge?” Jay’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “That’s . . . that’s actually progress, Blue. That’s what we talked about. Letting her make choices.”
“It was a mistake.” I’m on my feet now, pacing the narrow space between his desk and the wall. “She’s out there right now,
wandering around Grimlock without protection, and all I can think about is systematically hunting down every single Crow until
there’s nothing left but feathers and blood.”
“Systematic hunting.” Jay jots something down in his notebook. “That’s very organized thinking for someone having a breakdown.”
“I’m not having a breakdown.”
“You called an emergency therapy session because your houseguest went sightseeing. You’re definitely having something.” Jay
caps his pen and leans back in his chair. “When you say you let her leave, what exactly do you mean?”
“I mean she demanded freedom to explore town alone, and instead of doing the rational thing—locking her in her room until
the Crow are extinct—I agreed to let Hans drive her around.” I rake my hands through my hair. “Hans, Jay. A man who once tried
to comfort a crying witness by offering her his sandwich.”
He claps his hands. “Congrats. You’re actually making progress. You let her leave even though it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Well . . . It’s another reason I’m here visiting you,” I admit. “I’m close enough that I could run to save her before you
could make another cup of coffee.” The heart of Grimlock is small.
“Hans seems competent enough when it comes to basic protection duties.”
“Hans is competent at following simple instructions. ‘Carry this body.’ ‘Drive here.’ ‘Don’t let the witness escape.’” I stop
pacing to face him directly. “He’s not equipped to handle someone as smart and unpredictable as Saylor. She’ll see right through
any attempt to manipulate or control her.”
Jay makes another note. “You seem particularly agitated by Saylor’s . . . independence.”
“I’m agitated by her complete disregard for personal safety. She has no idea what she’s dealing with. The Crow aren’t some abstract threat. They’re real, they’re hunting her, and they won’t hesitate to torture her for sport before they kill her.”
“But you took care of the immediate threat. The two men who came to her apartment—”
“Were scouts. Advance team. The Crow have at least two, maybe three dozen members, all of them trained killers, all of them
patient enough to wait for the perfect opportunity.” I resume pacing. “And I just handed them one by letting her wander around
town like she’s on vacation.”
Jay watches me wear a path in his carpet, his expression transferring from concerned to calculating. “Blue, can I ask you
something?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“When was the last time you cared this much about someone’s safety?”
I freeze mid-step. “I care about everyone’s safety. That’s the point of what I do.”
“No, you care about justice. About eliminating threats. About protecting the innocent in general.” Jay leans forward. “But
when was the last time you personally, specifically, couldn’t function because one individual person was potentially in danger?”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“Because I promised Peter.” The words taste like ash. “Because she’s his daughter and I failed to protect him. Because—”
“Because you have feelings for her.”
The accusation slices through my core. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Jay pulls out a fresh notebook—apparently my psychological state requires additional documentation. “You’ve been
agitated since the moment you brought her to Maison Rouge. You kidnapped her instead of finding literally any other solution
to the protection problem. You’re sitting in my office having a panic attack because she went shopping or whatever people
do in small towns.”
“I’m not having a panic attack.”
“Blue, you’re sweating through a merino wool sweater in sixty-degree weather.”
I look down at myself. He’s right. When did that happen?
“Even if—hypothetically—I had feelings for her, it wouldn’t matter.” I sink back into the chair, suddenly exhausted. “She’s Peter’s daughter. He trusted me to protect her, not to . . .” I trail off, unwilling to finish the thought.
“Not to what? Care about her? Connect with her? Potentially find happiness with her?” He’s being gentle, which somehow makes
it worse. “Peter is dead. He’d want his daughter to be happy. He’d want you to be happy.”
“You don’t understand.” I grip the arms of the chair hard enough that the leather creaks. “We . . . before I knew who she
was, we . . .”
“Had sex.”
“Christ, Jay. And no, we didn’t have sex.” I look away. “I may or may not have gone down on her. And yes . . . I had every
intention of fucking her the next night, but then all this shit went down and—” I take a deep breath. “But no, we didn’t have
sex.”
“Oral sex counts as sex, Blue. You’re allowed to acknowledge it.” Jay sets down his pen and gives me his full attention. “So
you two were intimate before you knew about her connection to Peter. That complicates things emotionally, but it doesn’t make
you a monster.”
“Doesn’t it?” The question comes out quiet. “What kind of man sleeps with his best friend’s daughter? What kind of man then
kidnaps her and holds her prisoner in his house?”
“The kind who’s trying his best to navigate an impossible situation.” Jay reaches for his stress ball, which is apparently
hiding under a stack of medical journals. “You had no way of knowing who she was when you met her. And everything you’ve done
since then—questionable methods aside—has been to keep her alive.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“It makes it human.” Jay squeezes the stress ball with both hands. “You know what’s not human? Deciding that the only way
to deal with this situation is to break your murder sobriety and go on a killing spree.”
“It would be effective.”
“It would be temporary. You kill the Crow, another organization takes their place. You become the monster again, and you know
you won’t be able to stop once you start.” Jay hurls the stress ball at the wall with surprising force. “Or have you not thought
that far ahead?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I say. “Saylor isn’t going to run from what I am. If anything, she wants me to embrace it.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wants me to teach her how to kill people, Jay. Hands-on instruction in the fine art of making problems disappear permanently.”
I lean forward. “So technically, I wouldn’t be breaking my murder sobriety. I’d just be . . . consulting.”
Jay blinks slowly. “I’m sorry, come again?”
“She wants to hunt down her father’s murderers and make them pay. And she’s asked me to train her.” I lean forward. “So technically,
I wouldn’t be breaking my sobriety. She’d be doing the killing.”
Jay stares at me for a long moment, then reaches for his flask again. He takes a much longer pull this time, then sets it
down and looks at me like I’ve just told him I’m opening a lemonade stand. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to become
a homicide instructor for Peter’s daughter so she can personally redecorate Grimlock with Crow entrails?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds—”
“Completely fucking insane?” Jay interrupts. “Because that’s what it sounds like, Blue.”
“She’s going to do it with or without my help,” I say defensively. “At least this way, she’ll do it right. She’ll survive.”
Jay sets down his flask and looks at me with the expression of a man who’s just realized his patient has found the most elaborate
loophole in recovery history. “And you think this is . . . healthy?”
“I think it’s what she needs. She’s been carrying this rage for years. It’s eating her alive.”
“So you’re going to teach her to be you.”
“I’m going to teach her to be better than me.” I lean forward. “She won’t become what I became because she has something I
never had.”
“Which is?”
“A reason to stop.”
Jay considers this, his fingers drumming against his desk. “You know what? This is actually . . . not the worst idea you’ve
ever had.”
I blink. “It’s not?”
“Think about it. You stay clean. She gets her agency back. And when this is all over and the Crow are dead . . .” Jay’s expression shifts into something that might be professional interest. “Well, I’ll have a new client to work on her post-homicide adjustment issues.”
“You’re not horrified?”