Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rue
Hugo’s sleeping the sleep of the concussed and the innocent when I ease out from under him so I can explore.
First up is the kitchen, where I set the high-end kettle to boil.
While the water heats, I give in to my curiosity and wander through the rest of the main floor, a little too delighted to get a peek at how Hugo lives.
He’s got a full office setup: a sturdy, unpretentious desk with two huge monitors, a comfortable-looking chair, shelves full of books and knickknacks, and framed diplomas on the wall.
The walls themselves are covered in light-colored vertical wooden slats, which I recognize as expensive soundproofing panels.
Dang, he’s serious about keeping his clients’ confidentiality.
The scream of the kettle interrupts my snooping, and I hurry back to the kitchen and pour the water into two cups, pick two fancy tea bags at random, and add honey to one.
I use the time while they steep to look through Hugo’s trash and recycling.
Nothing interesting, unless you count the lack of candy wrappers or empty fast food bags.
When the four minutes are up, I pluck out the tea bags and return to the couch to find Hugo upright and squinting into the faint light.
“Hey there, sleepyhead.” I lift the mugs.
He rubs a hand over his heavy-lidded eyes. “You made tea?”
“I did. Is that okay?” I bite my lip, aware that I didn’t ask permission before ransacking his kitchen.
His lips tick upward. “What’s mine is yours.” Just as quickly, they fold into a frown. “Except the stir fry. Not for you.”
“Awfully selfish with your leftovers, Dr. Mohr,” I tease him as I sit down.
“Not selfish,” he mumbles. “Shellfish.”
It takes me a second to catch his meaning. “You know about my shrimp allergy?”
“Duh.”
I pause with the mugs still in my hands, trying to recall when we had that particular conversation. But we’ve had so many, and I don’t want the tea to get cold.
“Honey or no honey?” I lift the white mug, then the green one.
“Honey.”
The word comes out on such a wistful sigh that my brain hears it as an endearment at first, like it’s Hugo’s pet name for the girl next door.
But it’s his drink order, of course. I set the white mug on the table next to his end of the couch and carry the green mug to what’s become my side.
“Feeling any better?” I ask.
He peers at me over the rim of his mug, the steam curling around his face and framing his blue, blue eyes. “God, no,” he says with a little laugh.
I resist the urge to press the back of my fingers to his forehead to check for a fever, as if that’s what’s ailing him. Mom doing that when I was sick is one of the few nice memories I have of her, so it’s my first instinct when someone in my orbit—okay, Fi—needs caretaking.
Instead of touching the injured part of my neighbor, I curl my hands around my mug. It has a woodsy, smoky scent that teases my nose and stirs something warm under my ribs.
“Do you want to move to your bed for the night?”
Despite his injuries, those blue eyes turn molten. “Are you coming with me?”
My mouth falls open at the surprise invitation, and at my knee-jerk reaction not being an immediate “no.” The opposite, in fact.
He blinks, and concussed Hugo is back again. “How else would you be able to check on me every three hours?”
When did my neighbor’s voice make me so…
tingly? Yes, the concussion has him speaking in a slow rasp, but there’s also a richness there that feels new.
Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I heard that nasal whine that used to make me crazy.
I’d say the concussion knocked it out of him, but I don’t remember being irritated by it over the past few weeks.
Maybe we’ve spent so much time together that I don’t even notice it anymore.
“I’ve shocked her into silence,” Hugo murmurs, taking a sip of his tea.
I laugh, but it’s strained. “Nice try, but you were right. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
He shrugs, and it’s the most can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying thing I’ve ever seen him do.
“By the way, did you hear?” I ask, eager to stop thinking about his bedroom.
“I hear a lot of things.”
“Yes, yes, and they’re all confidential.” I huff, but it’s amused, not annoyed. “Stiletto Guy? Marcus Navarro? Got drunk and crashed headfirst into his china cabinet last night. Died almost instantly.”
His eyes narrow. “Almost?”
A laugh slips out of me, and I want to clap my hand over my mouth to call it back. “Bleeding out from a punctured lung takes a little time, my friend.”
“Mmm,” he says slowly. “Good for… good.”
“Agreed,” I say a little too vehemently, reaching into my bag for the box of frosted animal cookies. “Want one?”
His battered face lights up with a grin. “Really? You’d share?” When I nod, he selects a rainbow-sprinkled rhino and uses one finger to slide it into his mouth. Then his eyes droop. “I can’t… think right. My broken is brain.”
“It sure is, buddy.” I pat my lap, and he accepts my invitation, curling back around me as he drifts off. Once he’s out, I pull out the pupillometer and lift his left lid, then his right one, jotting down the readings and the time on the back of the list of instructions.
Felicity calls halfway through that second three-hour sleep shift. I’ve got my laptop perched on the knee not occupied by Hugo’s head and am catching up on work as best as I can one-handed while my other hand lazily strokes down his back from time to time.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Why are you whispering?” she whispers.
“Why are you whispering?” I whisper.
She guffaws at top volume. “Because you are! Are you not at home?”
“Technically, no. Hang on.”
A glance at Hugo confirms that the boy is passed out; his eyelids don’t so much as flicker when I ease his head off my lap and settle it carefully on the couch.
Before I slip out of the room, I grab the afghan tucked into a basket in the corner of the room and drape it over him, tucking it under his feet.
The duplex can get chilly when the sun goes down, and as I found out earlier (and haven’t been able to forget), he’s not wearing socks.
I grab a second blanket from the basket and go onto the back porch, figuring that’ll be the most private spot for a conversation while still keeping me in shouting distance.
“Let me guess,” Fi says as I walk down the steps into Hugo’s unsurprisingly well-maintained yard, pulling the fuzzy red material around my shoulders.
“Dr. Huge-o Bore finally snapped and you’re in the trunk of his car, being driven to a remote cabin in the woods so he can make you his mountain bride. ”
“You’re a tiny bit correct.” I cross the yellow-brown grass to the fence separating my half of the property from his and lean against the wooden slats.
“Is it the mountain bride part?”
“It is not,” I say. “Hugo has a concussion and needs someone to sit with him, so I’m hanging out on his couch tonight. And before you ask, no, he doesn’t seem to have anybody else who can do it. It’s me or possible death by head injury.”
“Okay.”
Her skeptical response hangs there until I sigh. “Go ahead and say what you’re going to say.”
“You like him.”
“I—”
“It’s okay if you do, obviously,” she says. “Just… be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
She snorts. “You’re fucking a stranger at your future crime scenes, and you’re playing house with the guy who wants to make you his mountain bride. None of that is careful.”
“I’m not… We aren’t…” I struggle to latch onto something I can refute. “Gomez and I aren’t fucking. And as far as I know, Hugo doesn’t have a cabin in the mountains, and he doesn’t want to make me his anything.”
Except he clings to me while he sleeps and his hair curls around the tips of his ears when it’s loose and when he wakes up, he looks at me like he can’t believe I’m real.
“Suuuuure,” my sweet sister says. “Anyway, I’ve got someth—”
“Wait a second, if we’re talking about men wanting to play house, I get to bring up Beatrix Potter.”
“Dietrich Porter,” she says testily, “was a nice, normal guy.”
“He made you the ugliest ceramic vases I have ever seen. And they’re still sitting on shelves in your house!”
“Folk art isn’t for everyone. But we’re not talking about him.”
“Oh? Would you rather talk about that girl you dated for three weeks who tattooed your name on her ass?”
“Rue.”
The “we’re done fucking around” she injects into that one word shifts the conversation into very different territory.
“Shit.” I slump back against the fence, bracing myself for the body blow of whatever she’s about to say. “What is it?”
“How free are you to talk?” she says instead.
I glance over my shoulder as if I can see through the walls separating Hugo’s yard from mine.
“I’m in the backyard, so I should mostly listen.” I pull the blanket more tightly around me. Discussing murder plans on our standard-issue iPhones isn’t what anyone would call best practices, so keeping it vague until we can talk in person is second nature to both of us.
“Okay,” she says. “I stayed up all night trying to decipher the code names in the files you gave me.”
The files from Navarro’s computer, she means. The files detailing the awful things the men in this city have done or plan to do to the women in this city.
“Any luck?”
“Please. Luck has nothing to do with it.” I hear the squeak of her chair, which tells me she’s swiveling back and forth in the seat. She only does that when she’s nervous.
“Oh god.” I clutch the phone tighter. “Spit it out.”
“Okay. This might be hard for you to hear—”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s Greg.”
I blink. “What’s Greg?”
“The lawyer who’s keeping the Philosopher Kings out of legal trouble.”
“My Greg? I don’t understand.”
“He basically wrote their how-not-to-get-arrested handbook, and he tosses out as many charges as he can for the ones who do.” Her voice drips with contempt. “Harassment, threats, assaults, drugged drinks, doxing…”
“My ex-boyfriend is doing that?” I say, my voice flat.
“Yeah.”
The chair squeaks stop, the silence on the other end of the line turning so thick my scalp prickles. “What else?”