I took another bite, partly out of defiance, partly because the food was good and hot and my body wanted it desperately.
The danger hadn’t gone anywhere. The fear sat there too, a quiet knot under my ribs, reminding me of the cop, of the men who died, of the fact that the man across from me was capable of turning into a weapon faster than I could say his name.
But laid over the top of that was this small, stupid, ordinary thing: hot noodles in a white box, condensation beading on the lid, my plastic fork scraping the bottom as I chased the last bites. His forearm on the table, tan line where a watch used to be. The hum of the refrigerator. The way the lights reflected in the window and made it harder to see the street, easier to see us.
For the first time in a long time, my body wasn’t locked in fight-or-flight. It was just… there. Heavy in the chair. Full in the belly. Warm behind the breastbone.
I found myself praying, in a weird, sideways way. Not to be saved or rescued or avenged. Just a quiet, wordless request:more of this, please. More of these small, human-sized mercies.
If there was a god out there watching — from the rooftop, from the clouds, from the reflection in the café window — he wasn’t in a church or a stained-glass anything. He was in the way the steam curled off my noodles. In the way Halo remembered I hadn’t eaten. In the way the door stayed shut and the cop did not walk back in.
In the way I didn’t feel entirely alone.
I scraped the last of the food from the container and sat back, palms flat on my thighs, feeling the weight of the meal settle into me like a stone in a jar of water.
For now, in that small pocket of time, with the sky darkening and my coffee gone cold and curry clinging to the air, it was quiet.
It was safe enough.
And it was not entirely lonely.
For now, that was enough.
Chapter twenty
Halo
“Necessary Evil”
Hefuckingtouchedher.
I kept thinking about the way that, even at a distance, I could see the way his hand curled around her arm, applying pressure. She tried to hide it, putting on a brave face, but I saw the way she had winced in pain. I saw everything from across the street, through panes of glass, and I struggled with every cell of my body not to kill him on the spot.
I could have ended him right there, but I didn’t. Eden was watching; that kid was watching. It would have made a mess that bled onto her shoes.
The moment Eden was inside her apartment and safe that night, I went to find Detective Parrish. He wasn’t hard to locate, even easier to keep up with. He was loud, irritable, cocky. An angry man who wanted to pick a fight with everyone he could. He hid behind a gun and a badge and used and abused the very people he, as a publicservant, had sworn to protect. I had no room to talk – I was no saint – but I also didn’t pretend to be good. Everything was transactional, necessary and cold. I took no pleasure in it. I didn’t get off on hurting good people.
Iwouldget off on hurting him.
I sat in the dark, engine idling, as I sat in the back parking lot of a strip mall a few blocks from the coffee shop. Across the street, Parrish was inside a liquor store, talking to someone that a cop had no business associating with. He was handing the man a baggie, and even with my binoculars, I couldn’t see what it was for sure, but I had no doubt it was drugs skimmed from evidence.
The man handed him a brown bag. He was jumpy and nervous. I watched the twitch in his hands as he loaded the passenger seat of his cruiser with an assortment of items: a crowbar, a mask not unlike my own, a canvas bag, duct tape. No reason for him to carry that kind of gear unless he was planning something that wasn’t legal or clean.
I followed him for hours, into the late hours of the night as they bled into morning. I’d been looking for a quiet place, a moment when I could make him disappear without a trace. I had my rifle in the trunk, but part of me wished I would have the opportunity to kill him with my hands.
He never stopped moving, and he was constantly looking over his shoulder or glancing in the rearview mirror, like he could feel my teeth at his heels. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. He pulled into a house near the rec center that could have been a traphouse by appearances. Another vehicle was parked there, one that was unmarked, burgundy with serious damage. It had expired plates, and one of the windows had been duct taped shut.
There weren’t many good places for me to pull in with the car where he wouldn’t notice me. I parallel parked on the street, a few houses down, across from a house with an empty driveway, shutting my car off and keeping my eyes on the cars. A strip of neglected bushes obscured my view, but I could see the fendersof both vehicles and would notice the moment either of them moved.
Thirty-two minutes passed before I saw something move behind the foliage. Someone exited the house and got into the beat-up car, backing out and heading down the road. I waited a few beats to see if Parrish would come out and follow, or go his own way… but nothing happened. I leaned over and pulled my suppressor out of my glove box, attaching it to the end of my glock before exiting the car and carefully making my way towards the house.I moved across the street like a shadow, staying close to fences and tree lines. A second-story window was lit and there were voices: muted, slurred, volatile.
The front door was cracked, so they weren’t worried about having company. I slipped in, stepping over a pile of crushed beer cans and what might’ve been a vomit stain. The smell of sour body odor and old food was noxious, but I didn’t let it distract me as I moved from one room of the dilapidated house to another. I went upstairs, clearing those rooms one at a time until I heard movement in the room where the light had shined through the window.
I kicked the door in, but it wasn’t Parrish standing there… it was two skeletal addicts, one with a needle still halfway in his arm. They both flinched at the sudden noise, and the woman scrambled backwards on her hands and knees. The man dropped his needle, diving for something under a couch. Blood and black fluid dripped down the puncture on his arm.
“Don’t,” I warned, voice calm and quiet.
He stopped, and the two of them just stared at me.
