“With Uri real fast,” I answered her, then turned to Consonance. “Yale is staying here.”
“Forever or just tonight?” Consonance asked as she crossed her arms and smirked. “Because if it’s the latter and not the former, then I’m taking her home.”
“Forever,” I answered, then dropped a kiss on her forehead as I passed her.
“About fucking time,” she said, and I nodded.
“I already know,” I laughed, then jogged down the stairs. “I’ll be back. I love y’all.”
**
“Well, shit,” I said as I walked into the room that Psalms held Shelly in. The smell of blood, piss, and something else that I couldn’t identify hung in the air, and I had to wave my hand in front of my face to try to clear the air. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Expect what?” Psalms didn’t look up from tracing her name in Shelly’s blood. She hung upside down, her eyes open but empty.
“Is she dead?” I asked as I closed the door behind me. Uri stood next to me with a blank expression on his face. I didn’t know if he was impressed or concerned, shit, he may have been both.
Psalms looked over her shoulder at Shelly, tilted her head to the side, and then used her right index finger to poke her in the middle of the forehead. Shelly finally blinked, and Psalms turned back to me, nodding. “You want to know what I found out?” she asked, then went back to tracing her name in the blood.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“You’re going to be mad, so be prepared,” she said with an innocent shrug.
“I’m good with whatever you’re about to say,” I said, even though I didn’t fully believe it.
Psalms looked up at me, smirked like she didn’t believe me either, then went back to tracing her name. “You know thebasics. Shelly and Grant have been together for a while. Have a few kids.” I looked at Shelly’s now-flat stomach, wrapped in Tegaderm, then back at Psalms. “She was close to eight months, not six like you said.”
“You killed the baby?” I asked.
Psalms lifted her head and slowly blinked. “I’m not Cross and the other one,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s at the NICU,” she answered. “Now back to her.” She pointed her bloody finger at Shelly. “She’s been with Grant for years, loved him, all that jazz.”
“Not past tense, she still loves him,” I said, shaking my head.
“Past, present, never happened, I personally don’t care what you label it. Just know her and her feelings are strong.”
“Alright.”
“Anyway, your girl here was a part of the plan to set Yale up.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because they needed a fall person,” Psalms answered with a shrug. “They shit wasn’t grand or a well-thought-out plan. At least from what she knows.”
“She could be lying.”
Psalms’ finger stilled, but she didn’t look up from the blood she was writing in. “She didn’t lie,” she said with a low laugh. “She wanted to, shit, she even thought about it, but she learned quickly that wasn’t a smart decision.”
“What did you do?”
“I broke her fingers,” Psalms answered. I looked at Shelly’s hands and instantly knew that shit hurt. They were barely connected to her hand and were black, blue, green, and swollen. They were pale, which meant the blood circulation had stopped. Whatever Psalms had broken them with had done some severe damage.
“I see,” I said as I walked around Shelly to try and get a better look at what Psalms may or may not have done. Her hands werethe least of my worries as I looked her over. “So, what else did she say?”
“The Franklins are involved, which I figured you knew,” she answered. “This shit is personal on more levels than one. They want y’all, The Numbers, St. Thomas’, and us.”
“Why?” Uri asked, finally speaking up.
“All for different reasons, but none of them matter because I just decided to join the story.” Psalms looked up at me and smiled. The crazy part was that her smile was genuine and sweet, and if I didn’t know her, I would’ve thought she was just an innocent hippie out enjoying her life, instead of a killer. She stood and wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants. “I’m going to be honest when I say this to you.” Psalms looked at me with a serious expression. “You really should’ve left me to play in my dirt.”
