XV
“The prisoner transport just dropped off Mr. Higgins and the body of Tommy McCarthy,” Moore confirmed, his tenor voice a bit tinny over my own PDD. “You’re not here, though. Where are you?”
“Dr. Rose Lillingston’s office.”
“Dr. Lillingston?” Moore’s tone immediately changed. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m as well as can be expected,” I answered into the handheld transducer. I stood in front of a radiator in the small and cozy study on the first floor, empty save for myself, experimentally stretching this way and that until my muscles twinged in discomfort.
“Pulling your punches again, are you?”
“You did tell me last night you didn’t have the patience for my bald-faced honesty.”
“Yes, well, I think I’m in a better frame of mind for it today.” There was a hint of displeasure in Moore’s voice, but only a hint.
“Bruised rib, perhaps. Gunner sliced his hand. He’s getting a few stitches.”
Moore grunted.
“I was thinking,” I continued, deflecting Moore’s animalistic grumble. “This Sawbones fellow—if he’s actually a doctor, as the name implies, he could have easily been the one to supply McCarthy with the strychnine tablets.”
“It’s a reasonable assumption,” Moore admitted at length, and I could imagine him stroking his beard as he thought aloud. “But why murder the abomination you spent all night building?”
“Gunner said Tick Tock, and by association, Sawbones, are trying to take me out—the point agent on this investigation—at all costs. He suggested that they might also be attempting to cover their tracks in the process. McCarthy knew I was a lightning caster, and he went out of his way to see himself fitted with bronze, not silver, in order to pick a fight with me. Sawbones could have told McCarthy these tablets were anything in order for him to ingest enough to cause asphyxiation. None of them could have anticipated that Gunner would be with me. Perhaps Sawbones was banking on McCarthy making quick work of me, followed by the inevitability of his own mortality—thus, no loose ends to reach him or Tick Tock.”
“This is becoming messy.”
“Through no fault of the Bureau, sir.”
“We’ve rounded up half a dozen suspects, and in less than twenty-four hours, half of them are dead.
” Moore blew out a breath that distorted over our communication devices and the hiss of static hurt my ears.
“D.C. has been so far up my ass for answers this afternoon that I haven’t been able to sit properly. ”
“Investigations take time.”
“Not when we can successfully link Milo Ferguson to utilizing a prototype weapon on a federal agent. The same weapon that is now cropping up en masse across the biggest metropolis in the United States.” Moore swore under his breath and then grew quiet.
The radiator kicked on, sputtering and hissing steam, fogging the window overlooking the street.
I reached out, touched the glass, and an ice spell unfurled from my fingertips, covering the window in an opaque glaze.
I moved the transducer away from my mouth, leaned forward, and blew warm air on the pane.
Then, with my fingertip, I wrote something very childish:
C + S
“Still there, Hamilton?”
I blinked rapidly, raised the transducer, and answered, “Yes, sir.” I wiped the love note from the glass.
“What are you thinking?”
The doctor laughed suddenly, her voice rising in volume as she opened the door at my back.
I turned around to watch Gunner put on his bowler while thanking her, and then he looked at me.
Dr. Lillingston, a longtime medical practitioner for the Bureau, was indicating to Gunner’s bandaged hand while speaking, but he hadn’t stopped staring at me from across the study.
My heart pounded against my breastbone. “I’m thinking….”
C + S
And then Gunner smiled at me.
“I need more time,” I said, the words choked up in my throat.
“Time is an indefinite resource, Hamilton.”
“Sorry—what?”
“Time,” he repeated. “Nothing I can do about it—have as much as you want. Although, I will suggest you not dillydally, because once D.C. has finished turning my asshole inside out, they’ll be coming for you.”
“I have to go.” I cleared my throat and added, “Interview Mr. Higgins, please. I’ve a few avenues left to explore.”
It was late afternoon when we returned to The Buchanan, but winter made the days terribly short, and dusk was already settling upon New York.
I tossed my coats, hat, and both mine and McCarthy’s PDD to the settee, and moved to one of the parlor windows.
I drew up the sash, put my hands on the sill, and breathed in cold air that smelled of unfallen snow.
C + S
What had gotten into me? Everything, perhaps.
Gunner, ready to kill a man in cold blood to defend me, and the terrifying reality that my marksman was still a mortal man who bled like the rest of us.
But also the unabashed affections, the lovemaking, the suggestion that Gunner would somehow, someway, give me whatever I asked for— a real courtship —if only I would vocalize that need.
If only I learned to trust myself, forgive myself, love myself.
If only I had the courage to say to Moore, to Bligh, to society: this is who I am.
Who I am .
I took in a shuddering breath and blinked away hot tears.
But it didn’t matter the lies I told and why I did. It would never change that who I was—was a monster.
“Gillian?” Gunner’s voice was low from where he stood a few steps behind me.
“Please give me a moment,” I managed to say with a reasonably leveled tone.
Gunner said nothing more, and after breathing in enough cold air to leave me light-headed, I registered the clink of glasses and slosh of liquid.
I passed a hand over my face and turned so I was sitting on the sill to watch him.
Gunner had made himself comfortable—no suit coat, sleeves rolled back—and was mixing two drinks from the small liquor collection I had on the mantel.
“Bitters?” he asked at length.
I crossed my arms and said, “Behind the absinthe.”
Gunner nodded and finished the concoction. He picked up two glasses, returned to the window, and offered one to me. “Gin cocktail. Sans lemon peel.”
I thanked him and took a sip. “It’s good.”
Gunner combed his fingers through my hair. “Your disquiet worries me.”
I shook my head, staring at my shoes. “These anxieties aren’t anything new.”
“But something has set them in motion.”
I counted the buttons on each shoe before whispering, “Sometimes I can’t breathe.
I—I hear sounds from memories, and they repeat over and over and it makes me sick.
” I took another sip of the cocktail and realized my hand was shaking.
“It’s gotten worse since meeting you. And now it sounds like I’m blaming you. ”
“Are you?” There was no malice in Gunner’s question. Just straight and to the point, as always.
I shook my head. “Of course not. It’s only… when you look at me, when you see what I’ve lied about…. It’s as if I managed to convince myself, for years, those lies were truths. And now the house of cards has come down, I’m looking at the wasteland my life really is, and I don’t know what to do.”
Gunner set his glass on the sill, pulled me to stand, then took my glass and set it beside his own.
He closed the window, brought me close, then settled his hands on my hips—those two warm weights grounding me in the here and now.
I leaned into him, wrapped my arms around Gunner’s neck, and pressed my face against his chest.
“I want to tell you,” I said.
“Are you ready to?”
“No….”
“Then I won’t push it further. Let it go, Gillian.”
Gillian ….
Gunner drew a hand up, eased one of mine from his neck, and held my hand in his own.
He began to sway from foot to foot, in tune to no music, and asked, “Are you familiar with Soldier’s Heart?
They say it’s an invisible illness. Many soldiers who survived the war began to exhibit peculiar symptoms of distress, despite being physically sound. ”
“Like what?” I whispered.
“A fatigue of sorts. Some described the war on loop in their brain—never shutting off. They feel as if they were reliving it over and over. Others expressed being unable to sleep or an accelerated heartrate even when standing still. I know you were only a boy during the war, not a soldier—”
My knees locked and I dug my other hand into his nape.
Gunner stopped speaking abruptly, leaned back, and tilted my chin up so our eyes met.
I viciously shook my head. “ I can’t .”
Gunner wiped under my eyes with his thumbs and kissed my forehead. “Okay,” he said simply.
I pushed him away without warning and walked across the parlor while clearing my throat. “Forget about this moment.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then pretend ,” I snapped, turning to face Gunner.
His eyes narrowed as if he’d been slapped.
I growled under my breath, scrubbed my face with both hands, then said, “How did you know about the strychnine tablets?”
“Strychnine isn’t a secret.”
“It’s method of poisoning,” I corrected. “How’d you know?”
“Strychnine is used as a muscle stimulant,” Gunner answered. “It’s also used to kill rats. Are you angry with me?”
“No,” I retorted, although from my tone, God himself would call me a liar. “But you have a practical understanding of it. I know. I saw it on your face. Don’t lie to me.”
Gunner didn’t move, didn’t breathe—he was so still, in fact, he might have been a victim of Medusa.
Then, without warning, he squared his shoulders, rolled down his sleeves, and said, “A man I loved died from an overdose of strychnine.” Gunner collected his coat he’d left beside mine on the settee, pulled his arms through, then said to me, “I never lie.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, turning as he passed me and headed for the door.
“To take a walk.”
“Constantine—”