“It’s not your fault,” Vance said. “He made his own choice. The wrong one. There’s no better way to handle this.”
“We all made choices. Most of them were wrong,” I pointed out, glancing from him to Davey.
“I know. If you want my resignation, you’ve got it. Just don’t ask me to leave. Not now.”
“I want you on the job,” I told him. “I want you at my back, and at hers, if she ever makes it out of this bed. But my rules stand, Vance.”
“I know. I swear to god.”
“I’m going to consider that a renewal of your enforcer oath.”
“Fucking count on it.” He sat in the chair on the other side of the bed and took Davey’s other hand. “Starting now. Get some sleep, Charley. I got this.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Iwoke up around noon to find Spencer replacing the gel packs lining Davey’s legs. “How is she?” I said as I sat up, pushing tangled hair back from my face.
“The fever spiked, and she had a small seizure,” he said. “But it’s been calm since then.”
“And no one woke me up?”
“It was over as soon as it started,” Vance insisted from the other side of the bed. “Or we would have.”
“She gets a second dose of the new antibiotic in a couple of hours.” Spencer frowned at me as I stood. “How areyou?”
“Fine. More than accustomed to sleep deprivation.”
“They’re back,” Vance said, and I turned to find him staring out my bedroom window. “Austin and Bishop, anyway. I told Tucker to go home and get some rest.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I ran one hand down Davey’s too-warm arm on my way around the bed toward the bathroom, where I brushed my hair and teeth. When I emerged again, Austin and Bishop were waiting in my living room.
“How’d it go?” I asked as I started a pot of coffee in my tiny kitchen. I could tell nothing from their freshly scrubbed faces and damp, clean-smelling hair. Except that they’d had reason to shower before they came back.
“We want to stay,” Bishop blurted out, staring at me from the other side of my breakfast bar.
“I…?” I set the coffee pot beneath the drip. “Okay. Yes, that’s already been discussed.” I shot a questioning look at Austin.
He sighed. “It’s taken care of. We’ve logged the coordinates of the…disposal on the encrypted virtual drive Jace gave us, along with the rest of the evidence. He took all the originals with him. We have no way of accessing anything on that drive—it’s a one-way system, unless you have download access—so there should be nothing incriminating here.”
“Except the jail cells in the basement,” I said, one corner of my mouth crooking up. “If the human police ever get that far, we’re all fucked anyway. As a species.” But that had always been the risk. The best we could do was mitigate anything beyond that. “And it went…okay?”
Austin nodded.
Bishop shook his head. Then he nodded. “Fucker got what he deserved. But I didn’t get what I wanted.”
I pulled several mugs down from the counter. “Which was…?”
“I wanted to end a cold-blooded murderer. A stone-cold killer. But that asshole just kept blubbering. And apologizing.” Bishop exhaled. “It wasn’t what I expected.”
I nodded. “It usually isn’t.”
“It’s over,” Austin said. “That’s all it ever needed to be. So…thank you.”
“No need. You guys found him. If anything, I delayed your justice.”
He shrugged. “You went where the investigation led. That’s all we can do. And it might never have led us back to Nolan, if not for you.”
I didn’t feel like I deserved that praise. But I was glad it was over.
