“Where do you think Newman’s run off to?” Felipe asked absently with a full mouth.
“I have no idea. I didn’t see a train or dirigible ticket in his trunk. He could have bought them today or kept it on his person. Do you think we can still catch him?”
“He could be anywhere.” Narrowing his eyes in thought, Felipe pursed his lips. “And the priest. We should see if he’s in the wind. I doubt any ticket sellers would remember them, but what if we could find out their plan?”
“How would we do that? Newman’s gone, the priest can compel us to leave, and Monroe is...” Oliver turned to find Felipe watching him with a quirked brow. “No.”
“Why not? He’s right here. Couldn’t you wake him up for a few minutes, so I could interrogate him?”
“Felipe, we have been put on leave. That means we leave the case and my laboratory alone.”
“And to think, yesterday you were beginning your life of rule breaking and you’ve already reformed.” He shook his head but flashed Oliver a lazy grin.
“I would prefer not to get kicked out of the society or be accused of murder if I can help it.”
“Well, I still have to ask the head inspector about going into the lab to get your clothes. I should be able to feel out how much trouble we’re in.” Checking his pocket watch, Felipe added, “If I’m going to do that, I should do it now, before he and Gale leave for the night.”
Panic tightened Oliver’s throat at the thought of Felipe seeing his room without him there to explain. “I’ll come with you.”
“In my dressing gown?” he asked, searching the floor for his discarded drawers.
“I could put my old clothes back on.”
“I know you’re a grown man who can make his own decisions, but I draw the line at letting you walk around in a blood-soaked suit. Trust me, if I thought you could fit, I would lend you some of mine.” Grabbing his notepad and pencil off the dresser, he handed them to Oliver. “Here, write down everything you need and where to find it. If they won’t let me into the lab, I can always run to Stewart’s or Bloomingdale’s tomorrow and pick you up a new shirt and collar. While you wait in the steamer, of course.”
Oliver chewed his lip at the careless way Felipe mentioned department stores. Something that would take Oliver a day to plan and a day to recover from, Felipe could do without a second thought. “Thanks, Felipe. Hopefully you can get in, so you don’t have to run to the store on my account.”
Oliver stared down at the paper, suddenly blanking on where he put his clothes despite the only answers being his dresser and the chair in the corner. He silently cursed himself for prematurely taking all the toiletries out of his overnight bag.
“I meant to ask before, but I thought Gale was going to take you to one of the healers,” Felipe said, nodding toward the cut on Oliver’s cheek.
“They did, but...” But the thought of being touched by a stranger made him want to crawl out of his skin. By the time they reached the third floor, the adrenaline had cooled, and someone touching him who wasn’t Felipe or Gwen repulsed Oliver more than the thought of stitching up his own wound. “Once I washed the extra blood away, it was smaller than I expected, so I told Gale I would disinfect it myself and keep after it.”
Felipe’s eyes narrowed as he inspected his cheek. Oliver hadn’t believed how small it was either. When it happened, it felt like a deep slice, but facial wounds could be deceiving. They would bleed immensely, and with all the nerves, it was easy to overestimate its size based on pain alone.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t need stitches.” Squeezing Oliver’s shoulder, Felipe took his list and tucked it into his pocket. “I promise I’ll be back soon.”
Oliver watched Felipe leave with equal parts relief and dismay. After their conversation, he seemed lighter and more himself than he had been in days, though the strained, dark circles remained around his eyes. That urge to move and to do made Felipe who he was, but Oliver hated the thought of Felipe going to his room without him there. He doubted he would pry or rummage through his things, as if he had anything to hide, yet someone intruding into his space made him feel flayed to the bone. Stuffing the last of the turkey sandwich into his mouth, Oliver sighed and got to work brushing the crumbs off Felipe’s side of the bed.
***
The investigation intoJed Monroe’s death had been officially concluded five hours after his death. Felipe, Gwen, and Oliver’s accounts matched the evidence, and people had been sent to the ports and airfields to look for Peter Newman. Felipe should have been relieved that Oliver and Gwen were off the hook. Staring down at the note for Oliver from the head inspector, he wanted nothing more than to ball it up and throw it in the nearest hearth. The undertaker would come for Jed on Friday, and the head inspector wanted Oliver to clean him up despite he and Oliver being on leave another day. Such a reasonable request, please make the man who tried to murder you and your best friend more palatable for his funeral. He hoped Oliver would refuse but knew he wouldn’t.
Flipping on the lights in the laboratory, Felipe’s eyes fell to the bloodstain on the tile floor. The metallic tang of souring blood made his stomach twist, but what sent his heart climbing into his throat was the evidence of chaos left around the usually orderly room. An upturned tray of tools lay scattered behind the lab table along with a wicked-looking saw beside where Jed’s body had lain. Nearby, the percolator sat smashed in a half-dried puddle of coffee. He couldn’t leave the room like this for Oliver to find in the morning. He knew what it was like to see a scene and relive those near misses or to have a place that was once safe feel foreign after an attack. Dropping his coat on the railing near the door, Felipe got to work.
An hour and a half later, Felipe had managed to put the laboratory into some semblance of order and find everything Oliver had on his list. He still wasn’t sure why Oliver had been so cagey about his bedroom. Sure, it was in the back of a storage closet full of chemicals and god knows what, but the room itself had all the usual trimmings of a bachelor’s bedroom, along with an impressive collection of scholarly journals and catalogs. Stuffing Oliver’s shaving kit into his overnight bag, Felipe’s gaze landed on the wall of metal drawers on the far side of the laboratory. The entire time he had been cleaning, he had tried to keep his back to them.
Jed was in one of them. And Felipe had put him there with one squeeze of the trigger.
Drawing in a ragged breath, Felipe freed the latch on the door tagged with Jed’s name. A puff of cold, stale air tainted with the scent of blood roiled out as Felipe stared at the top of Jed’s head. He should close the door and leave. Instead, he rolled the stretcher out until he could see his ex-partner’s face and the bullet hole in his shirt. Felipe didn’t know what he expected to feel, but intense anger wasn’t it. They had spent five years working together.Five years.He should have been grieving his loss, yet Jed had wiped that history in an instant. All because he and Newman wanted to steal something from that old anatomist that he could have taken anywhere between California and New York without consequence but didn’t.
“Was it worth it?” Felipe yelled at the dead man. Was that why he had been surprised to see him that day? Tears burned the backs of Felipe’s eyes. “Was it worth killing me and ruining everything for?”
When Jed didn’t answer, Felipe shoved the drawer back and slammed the latch home in disgust. He had stood up for Jed in the past. He had covered his ass when he made reckless mistakes, and having his lungs shredded by his new pal was the thanks he got for his years of misguided loyalty. Felipe rode out the urge to kick the metal drawer. He should have let him rot in that jail in Texas when he had the chance.
Turning, Felipe frowned at the familiar box sitting on the lab bench. Notebooks and wax anatomical models laid scattered around it along with a doleful wet specimen of an arm left on its side that was beginning to shrivel. Carefully righting it, Felipe set it aside and pulled the box down to see inside. For days, Felipe had wondered why Newman killed him. What he could have possibly known or done, but it had been what Newman assumed was in his possession that signed his death warrant. Perhaps he had panicked when Felipe returned early to his apartment, but he had been murdered for it all the same. Felipe silenced his galloping heart at the thought of Newman killing Oliver instead that night, had he had known Felipe had given the specimens to him. Thus far, Felipe hadn’t felt Oliver sending anxiety tugs through the tether, and he didn’t want him to come running down in a dressing gown to check on him now. But it could have gone so badly. Oliver could have been dead. No second chances, no reanimating, and worst of all, Felipe never would have known what he had lost in that moment.
Flipping through the books and models, Felipe wasn’t sure what was missing. If there had been a magical text mixed in with the rather gruesome drawings, he hadn’t noticed. As he lifted each alcohol-filled specimen in turn, Felipe tried to picture what Oliver had pulled out of the box when he sat in his room that first time.
