“It would have been simpler,” Hewitt said calmly. “Just another mugging, no reason to look closer. It’s not as if she didn’t have a decent burial years ago. But then you turned up, and things got out of control. Really, everything that happened is on you. If you’d just given up when anyone else would have, I would never have had to do any of this. God knows I didn’t want to.”
“You tried to kill Galloway.”
“Not me,” Hewitt said sharply. “I’ve never killed anyone. All those years on the force, and I never had a fatality on my record. That’s why I didn’t just kill Macintosh back then. I never thought I had the nerve to actually do it, not in cold blood. That’s why I sent Macintosh. He was cold-blooded enough to do it. But I guess that all that booze had taken the edge off Mac the Knife.”
“And Frome?” Cloister asked. “He’s your friend.”
Hewitt did the mute mouth click again, as though he’d rather not think about that yet.
“You do what you have to. Someone has to take the blame,” he said. “He took my career, the promotions I should have had. So maybe it’s fair. Better him than me, in the end.”
Cloister spat sweat off his upper lip. “Not exactly going to work now, is it?”
“I think I can make it work,” Hewitt said reasonably. He swung the gun up and stopped Cloister in his tracks as he stepped forward. “You know, I don’t think it’s going to be as hard as I thought it would be to murder someone.”
As he tightened his finger on the trigger, Bourneville lunged over Janet’s wheelchair, her paws raked over the girl’s cheap T-shirt nightgown, and she latched on to Hewitt’s wrist. Without the padded sleeve of a bite suit, her teeth sank straight into meat and down to bone. Stunned, Hewitt gave a high-pitched squeal and pitched forward as Bourneville’s weight dragged him down.
He took the already battered and misused wheelchair with him, and all three bodies hit the ground. Janet sprawled out, stiff as a doll where she was splinted into plaster casts, and the other two scuffled on top of her.
“Get it off me,” Hewitt yelled. He flailed blindly, and his fists connected with Janet’s back as often as Bourneville’s padded back and shoulders. “Frome’ll die if I don’t tell you where he is! Dead as fucking Macintosh!”
Cloister scrambled forward and grabbed Janet. She whimpered and clung to him with weak fingertips as he dragged her out of the crushed chair. Her eyes were unfocused, blank and bruised, and she obviously had no idea where she was, but she was awake. The end of her braid caught in the broken spokes of the chair, and she moaned as it yanked at her scalp.
“It’s okay,” Cloister told her. He shifted her weight to one arm and leaned back in to untangle her.
The thick knot of hair was almost free when Hewitt managed to land a kick to Bourneville’s stomach. She whuffed as the air was knocked out of her, and her grip on Hewitt’s wrist loosened enough for him to yank it free. Blood poured from the lacerated joint, and bone was visible through the torn meat as Hewitt swung back and coldcocked Cloister with the butt of the pistol.
It caught Cloister right on the seam of bruise that still stained up into his hairline. The unexpected pain almost blinded Cloister with a hot pulse of red that screwed back into his brain like an auger. He fell back in dazed confusion, and red dripped down over his vision as the split stitches in his scalp peeled loose.
Hewitt kicked the broken chair at Bourneville and scrambled to his feet. He fell back onto the Merc’s hood and clumsily traded the gun from one hand to the other. Cloister wiped the blood from his eyes just in time to see Bourneville gather herself to lunge at Hewitt again.
Panic washed over Cloister in a sick wave that hurt more than his head. He knew how fast Bourneville was, and how fast a bullet was. This time she wouldn’t be quick enough. Cloister tried to call her off, but he couldn’t get the words out in time.
She jumped, and Cloister squeezed his eyes shut. He heard the gun go off and Bourneville bark a sharp little sound.
Coward,he thought bitterly.
“Don’t shoot the dog,” Javi said. “I don’t even like dogs, and I know that makes you an asshole.”
Cloister opened his eyes. His face was all blood again. He wiped it away on the back of his cast while Bourneville, whole and uninjured, did her best to crawl into his lap and lick it clean for him. Her tongue went up his nose and into his ears until he finally managed to grab her narrow muzzle and push it aside.
He looked up at Javi.
“Thank you,” he said,
Javi held his hand out. “Next time?” he growled as he yanked Cloister unceremoniously to his feet. “Wait.”
Cloister thought he had a concussion. He swallowed bile as the pain rolled around inside his head like a marble. Then he pressed the heel of his hand against his brow bone. “Is he….”
Hewitt groaned before Cloister had to finish the question. His arm hung from what was left of his shoulder, but he was still breathing. More importantly, so was Janet. Cloister went back down clumsily onto his knees and tucked his arm under her shoulders to help her sit up.
“Where am I?” she wailed. Her voice was dry and small, parched after days of unuse. She tried to touch her lips with her fingers and then stared at her plastered forearms. “What…. I don’t remember. What happened?”
“It’s okay,” Cloister said. He patted her shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”
Javi tapped the radio attached to his vest and barked a command to “Get some doctors down here. The underground structure. Yes, again.”
EPILOGUE
