Policemen moved briskly in all directions, shoulders squared, hats rumpled. A drunk bellowed obscenities as two officers frog-marched him down a side passage. A weary-looking cop ushered in a giggling girl in fishnets, mascara smudged halfway to her cheekbones. Phones rang. Keyboards clacked. The scent of stale coffee and floor polish mingled with city grit and old cigarette smoke, unmistakable, unchanging.
Ash watched it all with a strange detachment, as though the world had kept turning without him and was now struggling to make room for him again. He stepped to the release counter, where a desk sergeant slid a clipboard toward him without a glance. Ash took the pen, scratched his name in the space provided, the letters small and crooked. The officer handed over a small tray without ceremony, and Ash glanced down: wallet,phone, toothbrush, cigarettes, keys. His whole world, reduced to five little things.
He took them as if they might vanish and slipped them into his jacket pockets, the motions careful in a way he hadn’t expected. The gravity of release, he supposed. The city waited just beyond those high, brass-framed doors, and he wasn’t sure if it still remembered him.
Behind him, Slade towered silently. Huge. Unmoving. Ash felt the man’s presence like a shift in barometric pressure. When he spun around, he saw him shrugging into the coat, the fabric sliding into place over his mountainous frame. Ash couldn’t look away. He drank it up, all of it, the way Slade straightened his spine, the way his face locked up like a vault. It seemed that Ash wasn’t the only one who needed his armor before stepping into the world.
Slade glanced at him—no expression, but the tension in his jaw betrayed him. Something was warring behind those stormy eyes. A flicker of uncertainty. A question he hadn’t decided whether to ask. He reached into his coat pocket, fished out a pack of cigarettes, and put forward one to Ash. A peace offering.
Ash blinked, then took it, rolling the cigarette between his fingers before slipping it between his lips. A quip rose to the surface, sharp, easy, but he let it die unspoken. The silence between them had teeth, but he didn’t mind the bite.
Slade stepped closer, struck a match. His broad hand cupped the flame, shielding it from the draft as he leaned in, eyes steady on Ash’s face. The fire flared, brief and gold, catching in the darker flecks of his gaze. He repeated the gesture for himself, swift and practiced, smoke swirling between them, a truce neither had signed. He hesitated, lips parting and closing once before he spoke. Then, gruff and low: “Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”
Ash glanced up, surprised despite himself. The words had landed softer than they should have. Not quite an order. Not quite a favor either. He couldn’t resist a tease. “And they say chivalry’s dead.”
Slade simply moved toward the exit. “Don’t read into it.” His voice had lost its edge. Still firm, but quieter. Almost human.
A beat passed. Then Ash gave a crooked smile, blowing smoke like a secret not yet told. But this time, he didn’t resist. He followed.
Chapter Twelve
(10:33 a.m.)
Rick led the way past the hooded stone sentinels flanking the entrance and down the grand steps of the Central Station, the wind tugging at his coat as if trying to drag him back inside. The plaza opened before them like a flower: Calgrave’s heart of power and prestige, all soaring towers and monuments to old money. To their left, City Hall loomed with its wedding-cake tiers and dome gone green with age, while across the square, the Gazette Building’s spire stabbed at the overcast sky, gargoyles leering from every corner. The National City Bank dominated the eastern edge, a fortress of limestone with columns thick as redwoods, and beyond it, the Post Office stretched an entire city block, its Beaux-Arts façade crawling with allegorical sculptures—Commerce, Industry, Justice—all blind to the rot below their feet.
Ash followed close behind, boots thudding against the wet concrete, his gaze sweeping the buildings with the kind of calm interest that made Rick all the more intrigued. The kid was too composed for someone just sprung from a cell, too comfortable in his skin. Rick wanted to know what went on behind those fathomless amethyst eyes and a smile that hid blades beneath the gloss.
When they reached the bottom, Ash gave a low whistle that curled with the smoke into the morning air. “Well, well,” he drawled, pausing at the curb. “That your ride?”
Rick couldn’t help but smirk. The ‘67 Cadillac Eldorado waited under a Victorian lamppost—midnight black, chrome bright, and long enough to qualify for its own zip code. Sleek inthe way only vintage machines could be, with tailfins like shark’s teeth and whitewall tires that caught the gray light just right. It looked like it belonged to someone more sophisticated than him. Maybe that’s why he kept it.
Ash walked a slow, appreciative circle around it, fingertips trailing a lover’s caress along the hood. Rick’s gaze followed, unbidden, the quiet intimacy of it twisting something low in his gut. “Didn’t peg you for the type to drive a gangster’s caddy, Detective. I figured you for a pickup truck and a bad attitude.”
Rick shrugged. “It was my old man’s. I just keep her running.”
Ash flashed a crooked grin over the roof. “She’s a beauty. Front-wheel drive, if I’m not mistaken? Sixty-seven was the first year they tried that with a car this size.”
He blinked, mildly impressed. “You know your classics.”
“I know what turns heads.” Ash tapped the fender. “Eldorado’s a hell of a flex. All this and a badge?”
Rick didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t have something to say, but because his mouth was too busy betraying him with a twitch he couldn’t suppress. He pulled the keys from his pocket, the cigarette clenched between his teeth, and unlocked the driver’s side. “Get in before I change my mind.”
Ash slid into the passenger seat with the ease of someone who belonged there. The leather creaked beneath him, worn soft with age and bearing the faintest trace of cigarettes, gunmetal, and cologne that had long since evaporated but still haunted the seams.
Rick got behind the wheel, a pale ribbon of smoke coiling around the brim of his fedora, and started the engine. The car rumbled to life with a throaty purr, vibrating through the chassis, a black panther stirring from sleep. “Home?” he asked, easing the car away from the curb.
Ash shook his head, looking out the window. “Take me back to the club. My bike’s still there.”
They pulled into traffic, merging with the stream of yellow cabs and delivery trucks that clogged Mokasset’s arteries. Rick guided the Eldorado past the Stock Exchange, its marble steps crowded with men in gray suits clutching briefcases like shields, then through the canyon of Commerce Street where the towers leaned in so close the sky became a ribbon overhead. Every building here had a name, a history, a secret. The Merchants’ Tower. The Ironworkers’ Union Hall. The old Telegram Building with its Art Deco eagles spreading stone wings above the entrance.
“Quite a neighborhood,” Ash murmured, eyes tracking the architecture.
Rick grunted. “It’s all for show. Pretty façades hiding ugly truths.” The words hung there a moment before he realized how they might be taken.
Ash’s head turned slightly, eyes glinting with a look Rick couldn’t read. Then he faced forward again, saying nothing.
They crossed Packard Avenue, where a bronze general on horseback presided over a soot-streaked fountain that spurted streams toward a slate-colored sky, then turned west toward the river. The buildings began to change—less marble, more brick. With each block, the grandeur dwindled, giving way to old churches, courthouses, and clinics darkened by time. Smog clung to the skyline, a wraith that had nowhere else to go.
