Chapter 49 #2
Both men freeze, then Hugo mutters a petulant, “Sorry,” and steps away abruptly, rubbing his wrist. Pell tosses the ball one more time and strolls to the chair on the opposite side of the table from us, his face choirboy innocent.
“Who taught you about joint locks?” I ask Felicity.
“I dunno.” She slides back into the seat next to me. “Probably saw it on Dateline. Who told Pell about Mom?”
We both look at him.
“I dunno,” he says. “Watcha cookin’, Quinnie?”
“Your balls,” she answers without turning, maintaining the steady rhythm of her knife as she thwacks through potatoes.
“Oh!” Felicity straightens her floppy bun. “Quinn, if you’re Pell’s chemist, does that mean you made the drunk spray we were going to use on Marcus Navarro?”
“That’s mine,” Quinn says. “How long until onset?”
Fi deflates. “Rue didn’t end up needing it.”
“Damn,” Quinn says as she transfers the potatoes to the pot. “I was hoping for some field reports.”
Pell has the baseball back in his hands. “I told you, Quinnie, you can test anything you want on me anytime.”
“And I told you that I’d inject cyanide directly into your eyeball if you keep calling me that.”
He tilts his head and spins the ball. “Hot.”
As Quinn mutters darkly in a language I don’t recognize, I turn to Hugo and murmur, “Well? Did you get all that out of your system?”
His eyes are still flinty. “You almost died.”
True, but I’d rather not find out what happens if we keep pressing the man at the end of the table, so I slide my hand into his. “I will never again not check my equipment before a mission.”
“Check it all twice next time.” He kisses me again, and my stomach erupts into excited butterflies despite having spent the past week mostly naked in Hugo’s bed.
Quinn whacks her spoon against the big pot on the stove and stomps to the empty chair between Hugo and Pell.
“Paprikás krumpli will be ready in thirty,” she announces. “Can we please nail down this murder before then?”
Pell pockets the baseball and pulls out a package of pistachios. “Appetizer?”
We all decline; he shrugs and cracks a shell.
“The way I see it, now’s the time,” Felicity says. “Timms is rattled, but he’s not cornered yet.”
Pell pops a pistachio into his mouth. “And you oughta shake a leg, what with him ready to squeal on blondie.” He tilts his head. “Both blondies, probably. Won’t take much to connect the dots.”
He’s no more interested in that outcome than in tomorrow’s weather report, and when I glance at Fi, she’s staring at him with coldness I’ve never seen on her face before.
We’ve always joked/not-joked that working with Pell is like stepping into a cage with a tiger, but for the first time I see a little bit of tiger in my sister, too.
“Right.” I push past my unease all the way around. “Well, I’m the holiday on-call for the ME’s office starting Tuesday, so I’ll be the one processing any death scenes. Now’s the time.”
Quinn shrugs. “Okay. I’ve got a million ways to…” She pantomimes plunging an injection into an invisible Timms and pressing the plunger.
“Won’t work,” says Fi, who’s been monitoring the Philosopher Kings forum. “Unless you want a martyr and a million conspiracy theories.”
We all deflate. Straight-up murder is so much easier.
Pell selects a pistachio from the bag, sets it on the table, and flicks it at Hugo, who catches it midair without turning his head.
“So where does that leave us?” I ask. “Because I’ve gotta be honest, I’ve done a lot of murders recently. A bitch is tired.”
“Babe.” Hugo’s not in his glasses today since it’s just us, which means I can see every millimeter of the crease that appears between his brows.
I smile as his thumb travels gently over my bruised neck. “You’re so handsome when you’re worried.”
“Gag,” Quinn mutters. Pell flicks another pistachio that Hugo catches and sets in front of him.
We all fall silent until Hugo raps his knuckles lightly on the table.
“So before we kill him, we get him to confess.”
There’s another beat of silence, but this one’s broken by snorts of laughter from my sister and me.
“Sure,” Fi says, wiping away pretend tears of laughter. “Easy peasy.”
“Yep, no problem.” I clutch my side like I’ve laughed myself sick.
Quinn stands. “Look at his face. He’s got a plan.” She points at Hugo, then walks to the stove and lifts the lid on the pot, releasing a warm, sweetly spicy smell that makes my mouth water and pulls a little whimper from Pell.
“Timms is a big fan of Ancient Greek philosophy,” Hugo says, catching another flying pistachio. “Or at least he thinks he is.”
“You guys should see his living room.” I curl my lip at my memory of Timms’s faux-intellectual shrine to old dead Greek guys. “Fake marble busts and like six different copies of The Republic.”
“Exactly,” Hugo says. “And men like him don’t confess under pressure. They confess to an audience.”
“Oh, he has an audience,” Fi says. “The forum’s frothing at the mouth, talking about other ways to frame Angie. Some sub-pockets are even starting to turn on him. Apparently he’s too much of a cuck, and that’s why he can’t control his bitch.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Hugo mutters in disgust, running his hands down his face. “We can work with that, but… Jesus.”
“Right?” Fi says mournfully. “I never knew there were so many different ways to be a horrible human being.”
I reach over and squeeze her shoulder. “You’ve had the worst job of us all.”
“Thanks for noticing!” she says in a maniacal chirp. “I regret the day I stole Navarro’s login and made myself a dummy admin account! I may never recover from this!”
She dramatically drops her head onto her folded arms on top of the table while I pat her back. This is her “joking, but really I’m not” register; the time she’s spent on the forum has been a genuine strain on her usually sunny disposition.
“You are owed so many spa days,” I tell her. “And look at it this way: if it’s done right, a confession’s the one thing his police buddies and his union can’t cover up.”
“Not a confession.” Hugo’s voice is distant as his wheels keep turning. “What we want is a Socratic apology.”
His eyes go hazy as he thinks, and fuck me, this man makes planning an airtight murder unbearably sexy.
“Socrates, huh?” Quinn says as she pulls bowls from their new home in Felicity’s rearranged kitchen. “If you want true authenticity, I’ve got hemlock.”
Hugo frowns. “You do?”
“It’s what I use in the paralytic I made for him.” She jerks her head toward Pell. “I assume Rue has one of the injector pens.” She starts ladling out the steaming potato, tomato, sausage paprika stew, and Hugo stands to distribute the bowls.
“The dial-a-dose is hemlock?” It still blows my mind that the chemicals I’ve been using for years are courtesy of Hugo’s bestie.
“Yep. One of my patents is for a compound that enhances the effects of alkaloids like coniine. And actually…” She joins us at the table, reaches into her massive canvas bag, and produces a tube of lipstick. “I’ve been working on a new delivery mechanism.”
When she hands it to me, I pull off the top and grin at the vivid red inside. “Oooh, is this your color?”
Quinn’s straight brows meet over the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have a color.”
“Well, it’s definitely mine,” I say happily.
“Then you’ll be glad to know that’s the safe end,” she says. “Works like any other lipstick in your makeup kit: twist it up, twist it down, get your mouth pretty for your man, woman, theydy, or gentlethey.”