“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
Mac waited, but Morgan didn’t have anything else for him. After a second, Mac shook his head with a slight twitch of his chin and grabbed his keys. As he left, he slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the suncatcher suction-cupped to the back of it.
What had he wanted, Morgan thought irritably. He didn’t know Shay. Even if he were Sammy, that didn’t mean he’d know Shay. He grabbed the back of his chair and shoved it in under the table in a futile attempt at tidiness when the kitchen was covered with the abandoned remains of breakfast. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—obviously he didn’t want anyone to burn to death; he was a criminal, not a psychopath—but just not enough for Mac.
What did Mac want from Morgan anyhow? Or Donna. Or Shay. Even Boyd. They allwantedsomething from him, and it wasn’t fair. He didn’t fucking ask for any of this!
The weird phantom pain in Morgan’s chest flared. He was angry. He could tell because his chest tightened and his skin flushed with heat and anticipation. But he couldn’tfeelit, just that weird hollow in his stomach that shouldered everything else out to a hot pulse against the inside of his skull.
“Fuck them,” he rasped out. He grabbed the frying pan from the counter and swung it at the waxed wooden table in blank, red frustration. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want it.”
Crockery cracked into white shards, ground into dust on the scarred wood and bounced against the floor, and half-congealed grease splattered over everything. Mac’s ketchup was batted into the front of the fridge, where it smashed in a bloody splatter of tomatoes and glass. For a second Morgan imagined it was Boyd, imagined the flash surprise on his face as Morgan’s bony knuckles caught on his cheekbone and knocked Boyd on his ass even though he was taller.
The shock of that image made Morgan recoil, and the hollow pressure inside him deflated. His temper tried to hang around, spluttered excuses for what he’d done—thoughtabout doing—but for once, Morgan wasn’t in the mood for it, and it slunk away.
He let go of the pan—the edge of it was sunk deep enough into the table that it stood up on its own for a second before it tipped over—and stepped back. His hands shook as he looked down at them. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Boyd. Ever.
But he would. It was all he knew.
Morgan pressed the heel of his hand against his temple hard enough to ache. It felt as though he were on a carousel, too dizzy to work out when to jump off. He hadn’t lied to Mac, had he? That was twenty grand down the drain because he’d flinched at the idea of Boyd’s disappointment in him. He wasn’t even going to be here to collect the sex for that debt, so what more could Boyd want from him?
The heavy growl of a police interceptor engine coughed to life in the attached garage. Morgan wiped grease and egg off his hands on a towel, and he supposed he knew the answer.
Maybe Morgan didn’t care about Shay, but Boyd did. He’d want to know if Shay was all right, or if he wasn’t. Morgan could do that for him, and…. Hell, Shay might have been a tool to Morgan, but it was only because he cared about his family. Morgan couldn’t hold that against him.
By the time he got outside, Mac had reversed out of the garage and screeched away down the road. Morgan ran out into the street and waved his arms in the air. For a moment he thought Mac hadn’t seen him, but then the car fishtailed to a hard stop at the corner. The driver’s-side door swung open, and Mac climbed halfway out. He waited as Morgan loped toward him.
“What?”
“I’m coming with you,” Morgan said.
“Why?”
Morgan shrugged. “Does it matter?”
It took a second, but Mac shrugged. “I guess not,” he said. “I can keep an eye on you. Get in.”
FIRE TRUCKSblocked the street, and water ran down the road in grubby, sooty streams. Smoke belched out of the roof, black and heavy, and flames spat up in erratic, hungry licks around the windows. Bystanders had been pushed back from the road, cordoned off behind cop cars and hastily strung tape to keep them out of harm’s way.
Unless Cutter’s Gap was a lot different than the places Morgan grew up in, there would be kids in the shops with their hands in the tills and merchandise stuffed in their bags. Fires were always a good distraction because nobody wanted to miss anything.
Mac drove up, and the cops pulled the tape aside to let him roll through. He parked behind the trucks and killed the engine.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “You could get hurt, and I don’t want to get sued.”
He scrambled out and was immediately surrounded by people. Cops milled as they waited for orders, and a firefighter in a smoke-grubby uniform wiped char from his hair as he waited to fill Mac in. At the same time, people shouted questions from behind the tape.
“Was it arson?”
“Did Calloway do it because he knew you had new evidence?”
“Is there anyone inside the building?”
Morgan ignored Mac’s last instruction and got out of the car. It was hot and damp, water from the hoses blown back in a light spray from where it would do any good. He watched the flames and remembered the white scars on the inside of Shay’s arms, from wrist to elbow, and wondered. It wouldn’t be because of any new evidence—there was none—but maybe all the shit had just gotten to be too much for him—the just-in-case suspicion that followed him around town, fifteen years of people thinking there were even odds on you being a monster. If, Morgan thought with a flicker of uncertain guilt, he’d realized Morgan didn’t want to tell the Hill lie….
Morgan turned to check that Mac was still busy and then headed forward through the trucks for a better look. He stepped over the taut line of a hose and pressed in against the truck to let a firefighter jog past.
“Get back,” they ordered sharply but didn’t have time to enforce it as they headed into the building.
