“Let them clean that up,” he said. The Hounds would come back—the Company had a retention clause—but it would take a while once Murderer’s Row’s best broke them down for parts. “Get out of here before anyone sees you.”
The man holding Davy hesitated as his expression tried to decide between confusion and disgust. Before it could settle, Davy solved it for him by punching him in the face. As the brawl kicked off—messy and highly charged and packing the area full of living, breathing bodies to push the Beyond back—he saw a brief glimpse of a shadowy, predatory press of bodies that faded away as Hill made himself scarce.
Then someone slid a punch through his guard and split his lip. He focused back on the problem at hand.
Being arrested as a rich kid was awholedifferent experience from being arrested as gutter trash. They’d given him a sandwich and a Starbucks, for fuck’s sake.
Davy would rate it 10/10. He would be arrested here again.
The desk sergeant handed his wallet back to him. “…and tell your dad thanks for the donation to the Widows and Orphans fund,” she said. “We appreciate his continued support.”
“Thanks,” Davy said as he tucked the wallet into his back pocket. He scrawled something that would probably pass as Hill’s signature on the papers handed to him, playing on the bruises on his ribs to explain anything weird. “He appreciates everything you do for the city.”
Bullshit, obviously. Fraser appreciated everything they did for him, or he’d not keep paying them to do it. Most people would rather pretend they were being generous than admit they were bought and paid for, though.
The desk sergeant smiled and nodded as she shuffled the paperwork back together.
“Don’t worry about this,” she said. “It was obviously just a misunderstanding.”
Davy nodded. “Give the lady who got hurt Fl…our lawyer’s number,” he said. “We’ll make it right with her.”
Why not, after all. It was one jab at Fraser, and, well, Davy didn’t feel great about the woman’s nose. If it had actually been Hill in need, she’d have been doing a good deed. It wasn’t her fault she’d got a hair-trigger asshole instead.
“I’ll do that,” the sergeant said, her mouth tucked in an approving smile. “Happy holidays.”
Davy took his jacket and shrugged it on as he left. As he walked out, he saw Hill sitting on the bottom step and Reynolds on the curb, in front of a black SUV from the company fleet. He paused on the steps under the pretext of fixing his collar as he weighed how he wanted to play this.
“Fraser asked me to pick you up,” Reynolds noted as he pushed himself up off the door. He looked haggard, with a twitch under one eye and his collar wrinkled, but he sounded normal enough. Hill looked up and bolted to his feet in surprise as Reynolds came into focus for him. He glanced up at Davy for direction, and Davy did his best to communicate “play it chill” without looking weird. Reynolds didn’t seem to notice the slight gesture of his hand. “He’d have been here himself, but…apparently, there’s a few unseasonal fires he needs to put out.”
It was hard to be annoyed with someone who came bearing good news.
Davy took the last three steps down.
“That’s new,” he said, and took a punt on what portion of the world could still be volatile enough to be relevant decades on since he’d been involved. “The oil fields?”
He realized his mistake when Hill, hovering behind Reynolds’s shoulder, gave him a puzzled look. That wasn’t something Hill would have been involved in, apparently. Fraser did seem invested in keeping his stepson unsullied by the…illicit side of things.
Davy would have to check and see if Fraser was setting Hill up to be the unsuspecting patsy for something.
Luckily, Reynolds was too busy looking aggrieved to register the slip.
“No, that’s all in hand,” he said. A frown pinched his eyebrows together, and the tic under his eye got worse, the nerve visibly squirming under the skin. “He told me it wasn’t anything to worry about. It was being handled.”
Huh. It looked like Reynolds was in Fraser’s good books if he was surprised at being kept in the dark. Not that Fraser hadn’t had secrets from him—Davy’s brother would have kept secrets fromhimselfif he could—but he’d made the effort to make sure Reynolds didn’t know that.
Which could be useful.
“I had lunch with my mom,” Davy said. Behind Reynolds’s shoulder, Hill looked surprised at that news and mouthed “what?” Davy ignored him. “She said their accountant was having some sort of family emergency. Maybe it’s that?”
Orthe Mafia had caught up with the IRS. Who knew? Davy had set alotof small fires earlier.
“Maybe,” Reynolds said. He rubbed the frown off his face and gave Davy a once-over that was…hungrier…than the last time they’d talked. “Your mom the one who got you drunk? Or did you, maybe, hook up with someone after? If they gave you something to get you…to get you to do something, I can deal with them.”
That was a little off, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful. It might help.
“Blood sugar.” Davy didn’t bother to put much effort into selling the lie. “But I could do with a drink now. How about you?”
Reynolds swallowed hard.
