“Somewhere with a lock,” he says. “And a bed that I can use to ravish my wife.”
I smile into the cold, into the night, into the promise I made to myself when I chose turquoise over black. I am not a girl who knows how to fight. I am a woman who will learn how to rule her kingdom and protect her family.
Inside, the band finds a beat worth saving, and the people who love us move, messy and human, toward something like joy.
Outside, I rest my head on my husband’s shoulder and let the cold bite my ears and think about the next door we’ll close behind us and what we’ll do when we do.
15
CAYCE
Tiernan badgesus through the steel door and the lock answers with a clean click. Cold fluorescents come up in sequence, a measured path of light along painted concrete. The room is as it should be—white tile, stainless, bleach and metal. No shadows to hide in. No noise but the hum of a vent and the soft, impatient beat of my own blood coming back down.
“Any issues?” I ask without looking at him.
“No,” he says. “No tails, no messages. He didn’t call anyone on the way in. He doesn’t have anyone who would pick up if he did.”
We step past the sink, past the rolling cart arranged like a tidy argument, to the chair in the center. The man is awake now. He came around fast—bad luck for him, good for the ledger. Tape at the wrists and ankles. Plastic apron under the chair. His breathing’s still in that stubborn rhythm of men who think they can negotiate with reality.
“Name?” I ask, for the part of me that likes to know which headstone to imagine when I’m counting sleep.
Tiernan answers. “Doyle. Low-level collector. Hired six months ago by Carrick’s crew. We thought he’d wash out butturns out he was useful because he didn’t mind scaring people.” A beat. “He’s hurt three women since he started wearing a watch on our time. Two we found. One won’t talk.”
The man looks at me then—really looks. The recognition isn’t sudden, it’s slow. The way a deer finally understands a road.
“I—” he starts.
“You talked enough at the reception,” I say. “You’re done.”
He jerks against the tape. The chair doesn’t move. The hum of the vent gets louder because that’s how memory works—you start hearing small things to avoid the big one.
Tiernan steps in closer. “No family,” he adds, flat. “No one who cares where he sleeps. A cousin in Worcester who owes him money and won’t miss him until rent day.”
“Good,” I say.
I take off my jacket and fold it over the clean hook. Cuff links next, rolled carefully into the pocket like I might see them again. I wash my hands because it’s what we do before we eat and before we work. The room smells like preparations. I’m calm. That’s important. This is a job, not a thrill.
Doyle starts to talk again—bargains that aren’t bargains, a name that isn’t relevant, a promise that doesn’t balance a sheet. I let it pass. Tiernan moves to my shoulder the way he did when we were boys and I tried to fight too fast. His presence is a metronome. My temper keeps time to it.
“You insulted my wife,” I tell Doyle. No ornament, because ornament is for men who need to convince themselves why they’re here. “You did it so other men would laugh.”
“I was drunk,” he says. “I didn’t mean?—”
“You meant every single word you spoke,” I say. “Drunk just means you said it out loud.”
His mouth goes stubborn. The kind of stubborn that got him as far as a paycheck and nowhere near a pension.
I take the axe from the peg. It’s not a theatrical thing; it’s a tool. Balanced. Clean. Tiernan set it out because I asked him to earlier, in the car, when I felt that old weather moving in and didn’t want to give it any more power than naming a cloud.
Doyle starts to beg. Tiernan doesn’t look away, and I don’t look at Tiernan. I don’t remember Blackvine when I work. I remember Pop, hands steady, voice low as he issued the edict.Do what you came to do, and do it clean, or don’t come into the room.
I do it clean.
I take his hands because he used them to touch girls who told him no. I don’t explain it to him. explanations are for men who get to learn something. He won’t be taking any lessons with him. The chair takes the weight. The sound is what it is. I don’t make it poetry.
Tiernan passes me what I ask for when I need it. He doesn’t flinch. I don’t either.
When it’s time, I take his sight. He doesn’t need it where he’s going, and he doesn’t deserve it after what he looked upon.
