The world lurched sickeningly around Clay for a second. He closed his eyes and worked his jaw from one side to the other to make it click and his ears pop. The world had fallen back into place when he blinked his eyes open again.
“Yeah,” he said, old, bad memories scratchy in the back of his throat. He walked over to the side of the road and grabbed the discarded magazine out of the grass to put back in his gun. “Pretty sure. Come on. I need to call Ezra.”
The singsong refrain of the old rhyme had gotten stuck on the last line. It repeated on a loop in his head, disrupting the actionable thoughts he was trying to cobble together a plan out of.
What a good boy am I.
Not that Ezra was going to agree.
Chapter Nine
The bottle smashedagainst the door to Ezra’s office. Glass and whiskey sprayed out from the point of impact. It made Grade flinch, despite his best intentions, as the sharp, woodsy smell of aged liquor filled the room. Clay, sprawled in one of the uncomfortably upright wooden chairs, leg cocked up over the arm and blood still matted in his curls, didn’t even tighten his shoulders.
“Fuck sake, Ez,” he said. “You could have offered me a glass first. It’s been a long day.”
“I should offer your head to Fisher on a goddamn silver platter,” he snapped. “Maybe that would be enough to save my ass.”
Grade cleared his throat.
“Unless that’s what whoever set this all up wants you to do,” he said.
“TJ?” Ezra asked skeptically. He threw himself back down in his chair and snorted. “Pretty sure all he wants is to get out of this alive. Not that different to you, Cleaner.”
Maybe. In some ways. They had certainly found themselves in the same shitty boat. The difference was that if Grade had killed Buchanan, he’d have covered his tracks better. He’d have…
OK. That would work.
Ever since he’d lost the body, Grade had run on the assumption that he was out of his depth. This wasn’t his wheelhouse; he didn’t solve crimes or catch murderers. He helped the bad guys get away with what they’d done.
But if he retro-engineered that process, if he played this like it was a cover-up he’d staged…
“What the hell’s wrong with him?” Ezra snapped Grade out of his train of thought, his voice gravelly with annoyance. He snapped his finger and thumb loudly. “You still with us, Cleaner?”
Grade stared at him for a moment and then nodded slowly.
“I don’t usually ask a lot of questions,” he said. “So bear with me?”
“No,” Ezra said. “You had your chance—”
Clay held up his hand. “C’mon, Ez,” he said. “Maybe he’s on to something. Go on, Grade.”
For a second, Grade’s mouth dried up and he couldn’t get the words out. It felt like he was twelve again, standing at the front of the class as Mrs. Gallen encouraged him to speak up. Except this time, it was only his life on the line, not his A-plus in math. Grade squeezed a breath into his tight chest.
“How did you know Buchanan got shot?” Grade blurted out the question just as Ezra looked annoyed at him.
“I don’t know,” Ezra snapped. He tapped his finger hard against his temple. “The way half his brain was sprayed over the mirror. That was my first inkling. Clay?”
Clay craned his neck around to look at Grade over his shoulder. “Same,” he said.
“No. Not themethod,” Grade said. “The act. How did you know he was dead? Did you hear the gunshot?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course,” Ezra said. Then he grimaced and waved his hand at Clay. “I mean, I didn’t, but Clay did.”
Clay’s eyebrows twitched together. With a last thoughtful look at Grade, he turned back to face Ezra.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t.”
Ezra took a deep breath through his nose. “Goddamn it,” he snarled as he smacked both hands down on the desk and pushed himself up out of the chair. Blood spotted the white gauze on his forearm as the muscles clenched. “You fucking told me—”
