When Ash finally spoke, his tone was stripped of swagger. “There’s something else. Something I haven’t told you.”
Rick’s jaw clenched. “Go on.”
Ash rubbed the back of his neck, the cuff of Rick’s sweater swallowing his hand. “I think… I can see what the Sculptor sees. Feel what he feels. Right before he kills his victims. Flashes of it. Sounds. Ever since I found Jimmy and touched that symbol.” He glanced at Rick, gaze shadowed but steady. “I think it marked me somehow. Or maybe woke something in me.”
Rick’s grip tightened, jaw locked, every muscle wound tight as if bracing for a blow. He’d suspected Ash’s heritage was darker than even the kid realized. This clinched it: the boy’s blood sang in tune with the same witchery smeared across theSculptor’s crime scenes. He forced his tone even. “You’re telling me you’ve got a direct line into the bastard’s head?”
Ash’s mouth twisted. “Seems so.I can see where he keeps them—some kind of underground bunker, or a water cistern, damp enough to smell the mold in the walls. Candlelight everywhere, but it barely touches the corners. There’s this… cross thing. Wooden, rough. He chains them to it before he starts carving.”
Rick’s eyes snapped to him, knuckles whitening on the wheel. “Anything else? Anything about him?”
Ash chewed his lower lip, tugging at the cuff. “A scarf. Checkered. When he bent, it slipped into view. It was the only part of him I could catch a glimpse of.”
Rick slowed for a light, rain sheeting the glass, the glow of yellow bleeding across Ash’s face. His stomach churned with rage for what Ash was enduring, with awe for what he could do, with dread for what it meant. That kind of connection could either destroy him—or help Rick end the nightmare. “You must be tuned to it somehow. Your… other half. It’s in sync with whatever dark force he’s feeding on. That symbol… it’s not just a marking. It’s a key. And you can read it.”
Ash turned, eyes luminous and haunted. “You think it could help the case?”
Rick’s instincts screamed to keep him out of it, to lock him away safe, to never let those shadows touch him again. But the truth cut deeper: he needed him. There was more at stake here than whatever was going on between them, and Ash knew it. He wasn’t just a material witness anymore. He was the only thread leading into the Sculptor’s labyrinth.“Yes. I think so. Would you be willing to? For real. No games.”
Ash didn’t waver. “Yes.” He leaned against the seat, expression fierce despite the ridiculous sweater draping off him.“I want to nail that son of a bitch. For Jimmy.” He paused, then added: “For all of them.”
The light changed, and Rick eased the car forward, a heaviness in his chest matched by something sharper: pride, fear, desire, tangled into one. He told himself he was only thinking like a cop, but the facts were simpler, and more slippery: Frank was out of the picture, and he couldn’t do it alone.
Outside, Silver Cove loomed in broken grandeur, its skyline a jagged crown of stone monoliths. Inside the Eldorado, Rick nodded, jaw tight, heart louder than the engine. “All right. It’s you and me, kid. We’re gonna hunt him together.”
(4:01 p.m.)
Rick always hated hospitals. Too much bleach in the air, too many flowers left to wilt in vases, and that fluorescent hum that gnawed at the nerves. But mostly it was the memories: a young man waiting in a room just like this, while a sheet slipped over the face of a mother taken too soon. He never shook the smell.
And now Frank. The sight of him in that bed was all wrong. Frank was no giant, no brick wall of a man like he was, but he carried himself with a kind of seasoned solidity, a frame shaped by decades on the job. Seeing him pinned under starched linen, one shoulder bound, and his complexion dulled to gray, knocked the wind out of Rick more than he cared to admit. But his eyes still looked like Frank’s—bloodshot, yes, but sharp enough to cut him where he sat.
“Dammit, Rick,” Frank rasped, voice hoarse but steady. “If you’d just told me—”
“What, Frank?” Rick stayed planted at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, jaw tight. “That I had a late-night appointment with a bloodsucker in the boneyard? You’d have listened and stayed put, would you?”
The sheet shifted as Frank tried to push himself up, teeth gritted. “Hell no. But you can’t keep running me blind. We’re partners. That means no secrets on the job.”
Rick’s throat worked around the words he didn’t want to give. He let his gaze wander to the rain sliding down the window, fine as wire. “You still don’t get it. I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
“No, you’re shutting me out.” Frank’s words cracked, then settled hard as shale. “You think you’re carrying the weight of this whole rotten city on your back, and hell, maybe you are—but I’m no rookie you can kennel. Don’t toss me scraps and expect me to wag.”
Rick’s jaw flexed, his voice low. “You damn near got killed. Another inch and you’d be on a slab.”
“I had to know.” Frank’s fist bunched in the blanket, tendons sharp under skin gone taut. “And now I do. More than I ever wanted.” He slumped against the pillow, breath ragged.
Silence stretched, filled only by the tick of the monitor, steady and indifferent. Rick shifted his stance, uncrossing his arms, the tang of antiseptic scraping his nerves raw. He hated this part—the waiting, the hovering—because there was no rulebook for it, no training that taught a man how to tell his longest friend that he was glad he was alive. Every word that came to mind felt clumsy, too small, and he’d never been good at laying himself bare. Easier to stay quiet, to keep it buried where it couldn’t be fumbled.
Frank shook his head, gaze softening just enough to pry at Rick’s guard. “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”
Rick grunted. “You’ve bailed my ass off the hook more times than I can count. Call it even.”
“At least tell me it wasn’t for nothing. You get anything out of that leech?”
Rick hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Enough to know we’re on the clock. He’s got room for one more before Halloween.”
“Fuck.” Frank shifted against the pillows, wincing. “And I’m out of action.”
“Let me worry about that. You focus on getting better.”
