Night Shift boot camp had not prepared him for this.
The blond man looked over at him. Then back to the clerk. She looked at him and shook her head as she bagged egg tarts and rolled the paper down. The man took a second look and then shrugged. He paid for his breakfast and left.
Marlow drained the last of his kvass—it was thicker at the bottom, almost rubbery—and unhooked his foot from the stool. Coffee would have helped him come up with a better plan. Any plan.
The door opened, and two uniforms came in, hands on their guns. The clerk chirped her scripted welcome, and they turned toward her automatically. They said something quietly and showed her something on their phone. Probably a picture.
Marlow could just turn himself in, put his faith in the system. Except that left him with the same problem he’d had last night: who could he trust? Franklin didn’t work alone, and he absolutely couldn’t afford to let Marlow give his side of the story.
Gloved fingers dug into Marlow’s cheeks to hold his mouth shut as they cuffed his hands behind his back. Someone slapped his ass, and the hot, bright shame of it choked him. He’d never work out why that bothered him so much. Something ripped, and then they pulled a bag over his head. It was only when he choked on feathers that he realized it had been a pillowcase. Two held him while the two he’d taken down worked him over.
His bruises ached, and gravel scraped his bare feet as they dragged him out. The night air was cold on his skin. He made frantic mental notes of that as if it mattered, as if it might help at some point. It was all he had. His neighbors were mainly wolves. The few nulls spent the full moon at the local church. He knew because they always tried to talk him into joining them. No one was going to see him.
Hands grabbed his arms and legs to bundle him into the trunk of a car. It slammed shut, and he squirmed against his bonds. The cuffs were too tight to pull his hands free, but he managed to use his shoulder to shove the pillowcase up over his head.
It was dark, but after a few bumps, the driver had to stop for something. In the dim red glow cast by the brake lights, Marlow could see the SDPD gear bundled up under him.
There’d been four people there that night by Marlow’s count. The only thing Marlow knew for sure was that none of them had been Piper; he’d been at the warehouse when they got there. It could have been some of the cops who got fired when the department cleaned house. Or they could have slipped IA’s net and still be on the force.
Two of them could be in the cafe with Marlow right now. Probably not, but Marlow didn’t want to bet his life on it. He got up, tossed his empties in the trash, and grabbed one of the nice metal knives from a table—there was a reason not to hole up in a McDonald’s for you--as he headed toward the single restroom at the back of the cafe.
The back of Marlow’s neck itched, but he resisted the urge to look around. That would just slow him down and draw attention to him. If he’d misjudged his exit, a heavy hand on his shoulder would let him know soon enough.
“Hey,” a cop said. Marlow didn’t need to look around to know it was one of them. He recognized the way they projected their voice, the assumption of authority. “Sir. You at the back. Stop right there.”
Marlow didn’t. He stiff-armed the door open, ducked inside, and slammed it shut behind him. The lock was built into the handle. It wouldn’t hold long, but it would buy him a few more seconds than a latch. Marlow turned the lockjustbefore he felt the impact of someone slamming into the other side of it. It hit his shoulders hard.
“Sir,” the cop said. He tried the door again, rattling it in its frame. “Officer Marlow. This isn’t the way to do it. Just turn yourself in.”
There was a big metal bin against the wall. Marlow dragged it over and wedged it under the handle.
“I didn’t do it,” Marlow said. He’d cased the cafe before he came in earlier. The bathroom had a small window that opened into the alley. “Tell Bennett the guy was dead when we got there.”
He lifted the toilet seat—rookie mistake to stand on that—and climbed up to stand on the bowl. The sour, off-putting smell of a well-used toilet poorly covered up with bleach rose around him as he felt around the window. It was painted shut, layers of heavy white paint crusted over the wood.
“Then how come your bullet ended up in the corpse?” the cop asked.
Marlow paused for a second, the blunt edge of the knife half wedged into the crack of the window. His mind replayed the double-tap concussion he’d heard as he made his getaway. A bitter smile twisted his mouth. Franklin always had improvised well, the bastard.
“Course it was,” he muttered and yanked back on the knife.
Paint cracked, and old wood splintered.
“Look, I’m a wolf, but I get it,” the cop said. His voice was carefully measured, reasonable and engaging. “I’ve seen the footage. Being out on the streets on a full moon, every full moon. That has to get to you.”
“Does it?”
“It obviously did. Then you met this guy, and you could see how it was going to end, right? He was going to get killed, and you just wanted to save him. You just wanted to stop the wolf.”
Behind the measured “talk him down” cadence of the cop’s voice, Marlow could hear the soft mutter of another conversation. The clerk’s voice, pinched tight and nervous, cracked high and sharp as she said, “I don’t know. I guess so. Yes. There is. Yes.”
They knew about the window.
Marlow gave the knife one last yank. The window was loose in the frame now, chips of paint scattered over the sill and Marlow’s boots. He shoved against the window. The latch creaked as he put his weight against it, but held. Marlow pulled back and slammed the heels of his hands against the frame hard enough to sent a jolt of pain through his wrists.
“Hey!” the cop outside yelled and hit his shoulder against the door. “What are you doing, Marlow? Don’t run. You won’t get far.”
Wood splintered and gave at one side. The gap was wide enough for Marlow to get his fingers into it and wrench it open the rest of the way. Cold air blew into the bathroom as Marlow dropped the glass to the ground outside. He got his elbows on the sill and boosted himself up to climb out.
