“Your lawyer can argue that in court,” Marlow said. “Only thing I don’t know is, did you kill Clara Walker because she found out what you’d done, because you were scared she’d expose you? Or did you kill her because you thought she’d find out why you did it?”
Franklin grinned.
“Little bit of both,” he said. His shoulders hitched in a shrug. “I didn’t plan that one out, not properly. I thought I’d get caught, to be honest—instead, nothing. So next time one of Piper’s old clients spoke to me the way they thought they could speak to me? I… handled… him too. Piper noticed that, and that’s when I found out he’d kept an insurance policy on me. I couldn’t live with that hanging over my head, could I? I’d been loyal. Sure, I made a mistake—”
“Killed people.”
“So have you. That’s the job,” Franklin said. “Maybe some of them I didn’t miss. Piper threatened to turn me in—to ruin me. Bennett would have found out; my career would be over. I could have ended up in prison.”
He sounded genuinely offended, as if the unfairness of it still ate at him.
“I still don’t care,” Marlow said. “The only reason I’m here is because you kidnapped my boyfriend.”
Cade tried not to grin. It wasn’t the time. That felt good, though.
“Boyfriend?” Franklin said. “You move fast.”
“I thought about waiting for six years and then trying to kill him,” Marlow said, “but I didn’t want to step on your toes.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Cade saw Franklin’s face curdle with a quick black rage.
“That’s good,” Franklin said. “Because he’s dead, so I don’t think it would have worked out.”
Marlow grabbed the fork from next to his untouched plate of food and jammed it into Franklin’s hand in one smooth movement. The tines tore through the skin and jabbed down into the meat. Blood dripped from his palm into the eggs. For a second, Franklin just stared at the fork that jutted up from between his knuckles, his face slack with surprise.
Then he swore and ripped the fork out.
“I would have let you live,” he said as he tossed the bloody cutlery down. Blood oozed out of the wound as he wrapped a napkin around it. “But this works too. It’s how those old plays always end, isn’t it, the moon-crossed lovers apart even in death.”
Marlow scrambled out of the booth and away from him. The waitress stepped back to avoid the cutlery and hesitated, her brain stuck between the everyday event of a dropped fork and the not-at-all-common splatter of blood. She flinched and splashed coffee on the floor when the chef stuck his head out to yell at her about curdling eggs. One of the tables, an old couple with weather-beaten faces and worn collars on their clothes, tucked folded bills under their half-eaten breakfast plates and made for the door.
“Stop them,” Franklin snapped angrily. His voice cracked, and the desperation oozed out from the words. Whatever he’d expected today, it had probably gone smoother than this. After weeks of everything going to plan for him, the world had suddenly started to close in around Franklin. “Don’t let them just walk out.”
Franklin’s people did what they were told and then traded uncertain looks. It wasn’t hard to see where this was headed. The woman—tall and lean, with a scar that ran along her jaw like a seam—looked around the diner. Her gaze touched on the old couple, the woman’s arm protectively around the man’s back, and then bounced away.
“Now what?” she asked. “Marlow’s one of us. Half these people are nulls. This isn’t why we—”
“Do I have to do everything myself?” Franklin asked as he stalked over. He grabbed the gun she’d kept under the table and lifted it. Someone screamed, and a chair was knocked over as the rest of the diner realized what was going on. Marlow dodged to the side, between the tables, as Franklin took potshots at him that pocked the floorboards. He finally ducked down behind an overturned table, knees hunched up to his chest. He stared straight at Cade for a moment and then finally believed what he saw.
What he mouthed at Cade was less touching than “boyfriend.”
“You can’t just—” someone protested.
The retort of the gun silenced the protest, and someone else screamed, this time with feeling. Probably the scarred cop.
“I’m done,” Franklin said. “There’s no coming back from this. So, I am taking the money, and I am walking out of here. You want to be the ones that survived me shooting my way out or not?”
The guy in the cast broke and dashed out the back. Franklin sent two bullets after him. His aim was half-hearted. He missed the man’s back and killed the wall instead.
“The money’s already gone,” Cade said as he stood up. He took the hat off. It felt a bit dramatic, but his head itched. “I had my brother steal it back from that offshore account you had him send it to.”
Franklin stared at him, jaw set in a furious, exasperated expression. He started to say something and stopped, his lips pinched together in a thin, twisted line.
Cade pulled the gun from his waistband and held it loosely by his thigh.
“If I was you,” he said, “I’d forget the money. Run, Franklin. It’s your last chance.”
Franklin shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then grabbed a woman from where she cowered in a booth. He dragged her over and pressed the gun to her temple. “I still have hostages,” he said. “You can’t—”
