A few more voices filling the space.
The door whispered open, then shut. James sat next to him, his own bottle dangling from his fingers. His eyes were tired, but his shoulders were loose. Like a weight had been lifted.
“You’ve been cheerful,” James said, nudging Bishop’s elbow. “I didn’t realize you enjoyed dismembering bodies as much as Holden.”
The accusation caught Bishop slightly off guard. Not the dismembering. The cheerfulness. He’d thought himself wistful tonight. Melancholy. But now that James had brought it up, Bishop couldn’t deny the telltale curiosity driving him forward.
The Rat Kings had been investigating the Viper. As if he were a present threat, not a crime lord who retired nearly twenty years ago.
Bishop should be concerned, like Kit and Darius were. The pair of them had never looked more similar with their sharp, calculating expressions. But Bishop could never resist a mystery.
“I only let Holden dismember two of them.” Bishop sipped his beer. “That should keep him happy for a few months.”
“Feral animals need enrichment.” James nudged him again. “Same goes for private dicks, huh?”
“Investigator,” Bishop corrected, just to hear James snicker. “Can’t say I mind having another thread to pull. Though I should get back to paying work eventually.”
“I believe in your ability to multitask.” James took a long, slow swig. Then exhaled. “All right, I’m ready. What did you guys find?”
Bishop had experience with this, and he didn’t blame Kit and Darius for foisting the task off on him. He’d delivered soul-crushing news to plenty of families. Sometimes answers were the only comfort he could offer.
Sometimes the revelations weren’t surprises. But certainty still cut fresh wounds.
“Your mom ordered hits directly,” Bishop said. “She oversaw the darkest parts of the business. That’s probably why she died. She was the only one with dirt on Felicity.”
Sure enough, James didn’t look surprised. His face was calm under the burning sunset. “Did my dad know?”
Bishop twisted the bottle in his hands. “He didn’t turn up in the files. It’s possible your mom protected him from the information.”
“Or it’s possible she didn’t.” James leaned back, braced on one hand. “The year after I took over San Corvo Security, I forced through a major hardware update to all our systems. We had to replace every single device we had installed, for every client, free of charge. The cost made my VP finance twitch. I didn’t take a salary that year. But it paved the way for mypersonal access to every system—and made anyone else’s secret access obsolete.”
That was just a few years before Bishop met James. Bishop had thought him reckless and impulsive at the time. But James had always had his ruthless discipline.
“Did you suspect someone had access?” Bishop asked.
“There was no evidence,” James said. “But there were seven years between my family’s murder and me taking over. I couldn’t guarantee nobody had interfered during that time. Or when Mom was in charge, either.” He exhaled, then finished his beer. A new light reflected in his dark eyes. “The Rat Kings are dead. I can live with a few leftover unknowns.”
Laughter sounded behind them, muffled by distance. Kit’s voice, then Darius and Holden too. James’s lips twitched into a fond smile.
Bishop shoved down envy. “What’s next?”
“I think I’m done killing people.” James paused, then added helpfully, “Unless you ever need a favor.”
Bishop’s envy vanished into laughter. It was good to have friends.
Going home was harder. Bishop intended to crash into sleep after locking up, with or without taking his shoes off. The past few days had been long and exhausting. But all that waited in bed was the melancholic darkness. His mind wasn’t ready to rest yet.
So, he made a cup of herbal tea and settled at his kitchen table with a stack of files. Old cases. Local cases. Tragedy and justice might jostle his memory onto useful tracks.
Not useless tracks, like using the mug Kit gave him. Or the empty chair across the glass table. Or the fact that Kit had helped him transfer these files to new folders, just a couple months ago.
“Is he really back?” Melissa Vespers had asked before James shot her. Time for Bishop to finally answer that question.
Except Bishop’s phone buzzed, and the sender’s name jolted him wide awake.
Before James planted a tracker on Terry, kicking off the last few weeks of chaos, Bishop had invited Kit over to digitize files. A false pretense. What he’d really wanted was one last chance to ask Kit to come clean.
Because the others weren’t willing to ask hard questions about a past that didn’t make sense. Because Holden had carefully urged Bishop to dig. Because the others feared exactly what had happened.
