Marlow dipped a spoon in the yogurt and stirred to dredge up the peanut butter and jelly sludge at the bottom. His stomach grumbled, loud enough to make him look up awkwardly. No one else in the cafe had noticed.
He’d broken into some wolf’s house last night to wait for the dawn. It hadn’t been difficult. Null houses had metal shutters, deadbolts, and security cameras with dedicated streams, because if someone broke in, it was probably to eat them in their bed. The wolf had a cylinder lock and a sash window he’d left half-open because most burglars weren’t desperate enough to risk working during the full moon.
Marlow had raided the wardrobe in the master bedroom for the jeans and shirt he had on—pale pink with a gray check, the sort of shirt that everyone who knew Marlow knew he wouldn’t wear. The rucksack he’d grabbed to stash his Night Shift gear in was currently locked in the trunk of his wrecked Firebird in the mechanic’s lot.
He could have picked a worse house, but the cupboard had been bare. All he’d found was gauze bags of bone broth and a stash of saltines.
Marlow spooned the yogurt goop into his mouth. The edges of the plastic spoon were sharp against his lips as he sucked it clean.
He’d never thought what it was like for wolves the morning after. Even those who got Crated for the night weren’t his problem once the sun came up. Day Shift dealt with them, and Marlow was usually on his way home. He’d dated a couple of wolves back before he got his shot at the Night Shift—when it was just risky and not borderline idiotic—but never seriously.
Now he wondered what it was like when they woke up on the sidewalk—or the pier or beach—as he ate. Were they stuffed from the wolf’s gluttony? Too starved to make it home to eat?
For a second, he remembered the raw look—a thorny tangle of gutted, relieved, and angry—that Cade had given him the morning after thelasttime that Franklin had tried to kill them. Marlow hadn’t understood it at the time, but now he did. Or at least he understood it a bit better.
Wolves didn’t remember what they’d done under the full moon, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t work out some details if they tried. If they worked out what—who—they’d eaten, maybe it left them too sick to the stomach to think about food again.
It would explain the saltines.
Marlow felt a pinch of guilt at the reminder of how easily he could have made Cade’s bad morning better. He ignored it. It was probably deserved, but Marlow couldn’t afford to dwell on it right now.
He finished the last of the yogurt, smears of peanut butter scraped out with the edge of the spoon, and picked up the kvass to wash it down. The drink had warmed up enough that he could taste the earthy ripeness of the beets, almost stronger than the salty bite of fermentation. Marlow grimaced to himself, but he’d not gotten it because he expected to enjoy it. It was to give him an excuse to linger as he nursed it so he could try to come up with some sort of plan for what next.
Franklin.
Marlow rubbed his shoulder absently, bruises tender under his stolen shirt, as he contemplated that discovery. Out of everyone on Night Shift, he would have never suspected Franklin.
Of being corrupt? Sure. That had always been on the table. Franklin had been tight with Piper. He’d kept his job after the SDPD cleaned house, but Marlow had always assumed that was a trade. Information in return for a clean slate. And he hated wolves nearly as much as he wanted to be one.
Marlow wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Franklin had fallen in behind somebody else.
Behind Bennett, that would have made sense.
The idea that Franklin was the mastermind, the brains behind all of this? That was hard to swallow.
Nearly as hard as the mouthful of kvass Marlow absently took. He coughed into his hand to clear the taste out of his throat and glanced toward the counter. The girl was preoccupied with taking photos of a fresh hunk of leg bone, the marrow blistered and dusted with paprika. She didn’t have any attention to spare for Marlow.
For now.
Marlow leaned back so his shoulders rested against the wall, his heel hooked over the rung of the stool to steady him, and grimly wondered how long it would be until a notification popped up on her phone about a rogue Night Shift officer. He’d made the news this morning, obviously, but they’d not shown his face.
In cases like this—there weren’t many, even Piper hadn’t run—Internal Affairs would rather not have the suspect’s face on the news. No one wanted a civilian injured trying to take down one of the most highly trained fighters in the country, or the Night Shift mythology dinged by a lucky swing to the back of the head.
They’d prefer him to turn himself in or be brought in quietly, but when that didn’t work, they’d release the photo to the press. If that didn’t work… well, that depended on how Franklin spun the story.
He probably wouldn’t try and pin the corruption on Marlow. That was the sort of thing that IA wanted to talk about at length, and the last thing Franklin wanted was for Marlow to be brought in alive. It’d be a hate crime, the old myth of the murderous null in the night and the poor wolf who’d never known what hit it. That was the sort of crime where IA didn’t want the perpetrator to talk too much. It wasn’t like O’Hara would give the order to bring Marlow in dead, but he’d not have the political capital to raise a fuss when Marlow’s corpse was laid out on the table.
A blond man nudged the door to the cafe open with a tinkle of bells. Itwasn’tCade—he didn’t have the shoulders or the swagger—but Marlow’s breath caught in the back of his throat anyhow. Just for a second.
Because he’d expected it to be Cade.
Some part of him anyhow. Marlow pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes in tired exasperation. What was that about? Since when did he need anyone? Night Shift worked in teams, but Marlow always went in first or split off. He appreciated backup, but he preferred to work solo.
It was how he workedbest…Always had been. He didn’t sit around and wait for anyone to save him.
A statement, he thought wryly as he tilted his cup to see how much kvass he still had to get through, that would have more bite if he had any other idea of what to do. Last night had been easy. He was Night Shift. All his training revolved around not getting killed in streets full of things that wanted to kill him. Usually they were wolves, but other than the element of surprise, Franklin hadn’t brought anything new to the table. Everything from the fight in the kitchen to Marlow bolting the minute Bennett distracted Franklin had been instinct and adrenaline.
Now the sun had come up, and he was tired, sore, and framed for a murder he didn’t commit by his corrupt teammate.
