Chapter 27
He needed more. Now. Didn’t care how he got it, but he needed it.
But Skim said he wasn’t giving no more hold-overs or freebies.
So he needed cash, and yesterday.
He fingered the hilt of his knife. It’d get him cash. Pull it on some rich ass. He’d give up the cash. No harm, no foul.
I pushed farther, closer to more recent thoughts rather than the stronger ones that had been repeated over and over. For months. Maybe years.
Damn and shit and fuck.
He was supposed to hand over the money. Just hand it over. Nice and easy.
But he didn’t.
And he needed it. More than that ass.
He’d panicked. Struck out.
It’d felt like butter. No. Not butter. Dough. Not like meat, tough and sinewy. Soft. Too soft to be a person.
And then it was hot and slick and sticky all at once.
And then the ass fell. And didn’t move.
He panicked.
I assumed that was when he dropped the knife, because there were no other thoughts on it. Not even the dying man’s.
I looked up at Detective Maza, his dark eyes watchful, his tan skin oddly pale underneath.
Ward said he’d recently recovered from the same Arcanavirus outbreak that had also made Seth Mays sick, as well as several other members of the RPD and crime scene teams. At least everyone had recovered, even if some of them had left their jobs as a result of what had happened.
Including Seth, who Ward kept trying to find work for.
He’d been essentially pushed out of his job for being a shifter.
I wondered if Maza had also acquired a new ability, not that it was any of my business.
“An addict,” I told him, and he nodded with a sigh. “He didn’t even take the money because he panicked.” I grimaced. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he even thought about what was happening until after he’d done it.”
“Not worth much,” Maza replied with a tired sigh. “Any chance you can help with an ID?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Maza grunted. “Hart said as much,” he replied. “But I was hoping to get something.”
“He did think about someone named Skim,” I said.
Maza sat up. “Skim?” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Well, now, that does cut down our options quite a bit,” he offered me a weak smile.
“Knocks us down from pretty much any junkie in the city to a group of about a dozen, which is something I can actually work with.” He stood, then held out a hand for me to shake.
I took it and gripped his hand. “Seriously, thanks,” he said.
“Of course,” came my reply. “Happy to help.”
After he left, I sat at the desk and thought about what had just happened.
I’d touched a knife, gotten thoughts from it, controlled how long and from when they came, and then was able to easily slide out of the memories to provide information to Detective Maza.
A few months ago, that would have been so far beyond my capacity that I wouldn’t have believed it would be possible with years of practice, much less—I did some quick math in my head—almost exactly fourteen weeks. Just over three months.
I was proud of that.
Proud of myself.
That was a new sensation. I’d been glad to complete things before, pleased with good grades, but none of them had ever really felt like an accomplishment. This did.
The company phone rang, and I casually blocked out any possible thoughts before answering.
“Beyond the Veil Investigations. How may we help?”
The bell on the door chimed, and I looked up to see Hart come in, light blue sleeves rolled up around his forearms, probably because summer decided it was going to arrive, and it was quite warm outside.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hi, Hart,” I replied.
“Good news,” he said, coming over and sit-leaning on the corner of my desk.
I looked up at him. “Good news?” I asked.
“We arrested Garraway, Jennings, and Dagget this morning.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Really?”
Hart nodded. “Yep. Got them all.”
I smiled. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Figured you might want to know,” he replied, smiling back. “Might help you sleep better at night, at any rate.”
I nodded.
“We’ll still need you to testify,” he said, then. “So it’s not over yet.”
“Okay,” I agreed. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that I’d have to go to court, but now that he’d said something, it made sense. “When?”
Hart snorted. “Fuck, months, probably. The wheels of justice turn fucking slowly.”
“Oh,” I replied. “Okay.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—the fact that it was over, but it wasn’t over. The fact that I’d have to come back to this again. “Will—?” I frowned, thinking. Hart waited for me to come up with the words. “Will they ask me to read things?” I asked.
“On the stand, you mean?” he asked.
I nodded.
He looked thoughtful. “I don’t actually know,” came the answer. “I—I haven’t actually worked with a touch-psychic in a professional capacity on a case. You’re a rare bird.”
“Rare… bird?”
He flapped a hand. “It means that touch-psychics are unusual. I know there’s precedent for using them on cases, but I’ve never worked with one, and I’ve worked a lot of cases over the years.”
“Oh,” I replied. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information.
Hart shrugged. “Just means that I have no fucking clue what they’re going to ask of you,” he said. “Although with Garraway, one of the charges is kidnapping, so you’ll have to testify to what he did to you.”
I nodded. “I can do that,” I said, then frowned. “Did they also arrest Gennaro and…” I thought for a moment. “Edson?”
“You bet your ass they did,” Hart replied. “And Raj was none too polite about it, either, from what Cass said.”
I felt relief loosen tension in my chest that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding on to. “Thanks,” I said to Hart, really feeling grateful.
Hart offered a small smile. “That’s the job,” he said. “It’s nice when it actually works.”
I completely understood.
One would be forgiven for thinking that after a day on which I proved my psychic abilities and found out that the men who’d kidnapped me and had been responsible for the murder of Yvonne Gates-Adams had been arrested, that I’d be feeling good when I got home.
I had been.
I’d treated myself by ordering a pizza, and had just finished putting half of it away—I’d gotten an extra-large on purpose to have leftovers—when I realized that the euphoria of the day was gone, replaced by a kind of melancholy exhaustion that had nothing to do with the pepperoni, sausage, ham, bacon, cheese, and carbs I’d just eaten.
Okay, maybe some of the exhaustion had a little to do with that, but it was more likely the product of terrible sleep that had only gotten marginally better in the past few weeks.
And maybe a little to do with the dull ache in my arm that was slowly improving, but had been aggravated when they’d removed the fixator, although that hadn’t been nearly as horrible as I’d been afraid it would be.
Ward had come with me, which was very sweet of him, although I couldn’t decide if I was glad he’d come or annoyed that he didn’t think I could do it on my own, even though I was pretty sure if I’d asked him not to, he wouldn’t have.
I’d wanted it to be Raj.
But I hadn’t seen him since the night he’d had that nightmare.
And he hadn’t texted me, either.
So despite our shared sandwich dinner in the hospital, I guess he was still of the opinion that there couldn’t be any sort of us outside of work.
I tried to be okay with that. It made sense, in a logical way. I just… didn’t much like logic when it came to that particular situation.