They had sent the picture of the code to Shireen before she arrived in the precinct and were now waiting for her call while trying to look productive without having to move too much. He was now paying for his nightly foray into the minds of the arthropods in Castain’s house with a humming headache that was gearing up to becoming a full-fledged migraine if he didn’t watch it. An hour of meditation sounded perfect right now and was—just like real sleep—simply not in the cards. Andi sighed. The beeping of his cell ended his contemplation of how much he pitied himself. It was a text from Shireen, with a date four days from now, plus a time and GPS coordinates she had already translated for them into a spot in the Goose Creek area, not too far from St. James Street, where they had found the bodies of the three girls. Andi sent her a quick thank-you, which she ignored, as usual. Then he forwarded the info to George’s cell, not wanting to distract his partner from whatever fascinating thing he was seeing on his PC. His leg was bouncing in a rapid staccato, making Andi nauseous from just watching it.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, George pulled out his cell, swiped it with his thumb, punched in his PIN—no fancy pattern drawing for him—and then read the text. He turned around to face Andi. Slowly, a predatory smile appeared on his lips. “We’re going to get those bastards.”
Andi mirrored that smile, even though it increased the hammering between his temples. “We will.” The surge of adrenaline in his system was only hampered by the way his skull tried to burst at the seams. George furrowed his brows.
“Are you all right, Andi? You don’t look so good.”
Andi’s first reaction was to shrug the concern off, but then he thought better of it. Georgeknewand would understand. This was a such a novel feeling, Andi wasn’t sure if he could get used to it anytime soon. Probably when George went on to greener pastures, which was just Andi’s luck.
“I’m getting a migraine. Last night was—trying.”
George’s eyes rounded, and he hissed a curse under his breath. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I would have dropped you off at home and found an excuse. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He got up, put on his jacket, grabbed his car keys, and reached for Andi’s hand to help him up. The gesture was so sweet, it tore at something Andi didn’t want to examine too closely. At least not while his heartbeat tried to kill him with how loud it resonated within his skull, bumping his brain around as if it were a basketball. He let himself be led out of the station, too busy basking in George’s genuine concern to acknowledge all the curious stares they were getting. This felt nice. For the first time since his gran had died, somebody was concerned about his well-being. Somebody who knew about his weirdness and the problems it caused.
George maneuvered him into the car, even went so far as to close his seat belt for him, then hurried around to the driver’s side. After a ten-minute drive, they reached his house, where George half-carried him inside, helped him get out of his clothes until he was only in his T-shirt and boxers, and tucked him into bed, after he had given him an ibuprofen to deal with the sharper edges of the pain. Before he left, George brought him a washcloth dipped in cold water to put over his eyes, as well as a bowl filled with ice cubes—he must have found those in the freezer, though Andi couldn’t remember when he’d made them—so he could suck ice chips and freeze the washcloth anew when it got too warm.
“Thank you,” Andi managed to croak when George placed a water bottle with another ibuprofen next to the bowl.
“You’re very welcome. I’ll go back to the precinct now, but I’ll come by later to see if you need anything else. Do you think you might be hungry later?”
Andi honestly didn’t know. Usually his migraines had him mostly incapacitated for at least twelve hours, though it seemed they had caught this one in time to prevent the worst, which could mean he’d be able to have a light dinner. Perhaps. Probably.
“Soup, maybe?”
George smiled as if Andi was his star pupil and had just gotten the answer to a complicated problem right. “I’ll be back tonight with some soup. You go and sleep now. We’ll have to make battle plans later.”
For a highly charged moment, Andi had the feeling George was on the verge of leaning down and pressing a kiss to his forehead, but his partner spared them both the awkward moment, even though a part of Andi kind of wanted this intimate gesture, which he associated with the greatest care. George waved and left the room, leaving Andi to his cold washcloth and foggy mind.
WHEN GEORGEcame back, Andi was—to his own amazement—awake and able to string two thoughts together in his head, which was a first after a night like the one before. George took charge of the situation like he had in the morning, sending Andi to have a shower while he heated the soup he had gotten from a deli close to the precinct. Andi had no problem getting bossed around when a dinner he didn’t have to do anything about was his reward. Freshly showered, he sat down at the kitchen counter just in time to see George pouring the soup into two bowls, which he then carried over to the counter.
“I hope chicken soup with noodles is okay,” George remarked and handed Andi a spoon.
“It’s food, it’s warm, it’s light, I didn’t have to prepare it. The hallmarks of a perfect meal.” Andi showed George a happy smile before he dug in. The soup was good, the flavors bursting on his tongue with just enough of a hint of pepper to have the sting Andi liked.
“This is good. You can come over and bring food more often.”
George grinned. “I’m so glad you approve.” He turned serious. “How are you feeling? You look slightly better, though still a little mangled.”
“Your way with words is amazing. I’m freshly showered.” Andi managed a wink.
“And you pull the drowned rat look off like a pro.”
“Ass.” Andi took another spoonful of soup, reveling in their easy banter.
“Takes one to know one,” George muttered, suppressing a chuckle, which resulted in some soup spilling on the counter. Remorseless, George kept on eating, ignoring the little sea of broth with a lonely piece of noodle half floating, half stuck to the counter surface like a dead worm after a stormy night. Andi had not gotten to where he was today by being fussy, so he followed George’s example, concentrating on battling his hunger. After a few minutes filled with nothing but blessed silence and some images from the silverfish—something warm and wet, spilled but out of reach, blocked by the big blobs causing all the tremors in the ground—Andi decided it was time to talk shop.
“According to Shireen, we have four days until that ominous meeting.” It had taken Shireen some time to figure out the date and place of said meeting since the information on the piece of paper had been in a more complicated code than what they had found on Vance’s cell, which was still missing, thank you very much. Merrigold and Vargas hadn’t found the slightest clue as to who could have taken it. They were seriously entertaining the idea of it being just some kind of prank, though Andi was convinced somebody at the precinct was trying to sabotage their investigations. Because of his suspicions, he had asked Shireen to keep the decoding of the piece of paper from Castain’s garden as quiet as possible. Apparently Castain had used the Greek acrophony system to code the date, time, and place of whatever he was planning next, and as soon as Shireen had realized that she had been able to do the rest of the work in her own little office, which she rarely used because it was so small. All they could hope for now was that the mole inside the precinct wasn’t smart and alert enough to realize Shireen had done the most important part of the work away from her usual place and that he or she wouldn’t get another chance to keep sabotaging them. Since the theft of Vance’s phone, things had been suspiciously calm with no tampering whatsoever, but then again everything they had found since then had been straightforward and hard to manipulate. The victims were all in hospital, the perps in custody and silent. The evidence they had found was only circumstantial and therefor more or less useless at the moment.
“Yep.” George gulped the last spoonful of soup down, then put his spoon in the bowl, causing a slight clicking the silverfish interpreted as something akin to a jumbo jet starting. Andi did his best to block them out. George steepled his fingers above the bowl, staring at Andi as if he were searching for the answer to everything. Andi couldn’t resist.
“It’s forty-two.”
“Huh?”
“The answer you’re looking for.”
George’s eyes narrowed. “Nice try, Mr. Nerdy Nerd. But I do happen to know my classics. And no, forty-two isnotthe answer I’m looking for, though I’m willing to put it in the report we have to write for Chief Norris. Perhaps it can fool her into thinking we did any actual police work.”
Andi furrowed his brows. “We did a ton of actual police work. Just the unorthodox kind.”
