Dory sniffed. “Someone smart would know it isn’t,” she said flatly as he freed her other wrist. She shook her hands out and reached up to rub her cheeks and behind her ears where the gag had left lines creased into her skin. “Never mind someone who played as much D&D as you did.”
Grade sat back on his heels and looked up at her. Of the two of them, she looked more like their dad. The same blue eyes, the same easy way with people… when she wanted. The same nasty streak when she didn’t. It made people think she was tough. They didn’t know the half of it.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Buchanan.”
“I know who you meant,” she said. “Who else would I think it was? Santa?”
“That’s not an answer. Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Would you tell me if he did?”
The corners of Dory’s mouth, chafed raw red by the gag, tweaked up in a brief, tight smile. “No. But he didn’t.”
Grade took her hands in his and squeezed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll get you out of this.”
She nodded. “I know.” Dory waited a minute and then pulled her hands back. “And then you find somewhere else to live.”
Yeah. Grade supposed that was fair enough. He nodded.
“Same as last time,” he told her. “The minute you get a chance, you run and don’t look back.”
She pressed her lips into a thin white line and nodded. Then she lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Grade’s neck. Her nose pressed awkwardly against his ear as she hugged him.
“Asshole,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She sniffed. Her knuckles dug into his shoulders. “Don’t spoil our thing.”
He pried himself free, tucked a loose tangle of blonde hair behind her ear with a gentle pat, and headed over to Clay. Time to find out how much of a liar he’d just made of himself.
Buchanan’s wrist had started to swell, the skin shiny and red as it stretched out like a water balloon. He cradled it against his chest.
“He looked like me,” Buchanan said with a dismissive one-shouldered shrug. “Betsy used to take messages in and out of prison for Fisher. One day she saw Hadley. It was all her idea, this part. Everything else was in place. We had the money and the retirement plans, but we knew that we’d never be able to rest easy if Fisher was after us.”
Clay nodded. “But if you gave him a corpse to trawl for trout with—”
“He did that once,” Buchanan said. “But yeah, that’s the gist of it. So Elizabeth ‘got to know’ Hadley, convinced the poor sap he was in love with her. He was desperate for something to make the last few years worth it, and here it was, wrapped up nice for him. He hadn’t wasted thirty-six months of his life; he’d just been waiting for a beautiful ex-stripper who wanted to turn her life around. When he got out, she talked him out of coming down here, convinced him that she wanted to get away from me and that the two of them just needed to get some money for a fresh start. Oh, and that he needed to get sober—to buy us some time. So she used my credit card to check him into a nice expensive rehab, and I came down here and took his place. Trust me, you got the better end of that deal.”
“And Fisher didn’t miss you?” Clay asked.
“I told you, I was in rehab. At least, as far as the rehab and my credit card company were concerned, I was,” Buchanan said. “When I didn’t have a shift for a couple of days, I’d fly up and keep things ticking over. Me and Elizabeth wired money to off-shore accounts and cashed-up some NFTs for mad money until we got to where we were going. Then she sprang Hadley, dressed him up nice in one of my suits, and brought him down here to rob you two blind. And I shot him.”
“In the face,” Grade said. “Because you looked alike, but not identical. Someone would have told you apart, but between dead and partially disfigured… no one expected too much.”
Buchanan nodded. He tilted his head back to rest against the wall. “It was perfect. Until you fucked us up, Cleaner.”
Grade nodded. “Because the last thing you wanted was for me to make the body disappear. The whole point was for Fisher to be satisfied you were dead, not off somewhere with his money. One question?”
“Not the time,” Buchanan said.
Grade ignored him. “Why did you take his shoes? It’s been bothering me.”
Buchanan rubbed his finger over his eye and grimaced. “Hadley had bad feet. He turned up for the meet in a nice suit and a pair of sneakers. It would have been the first thing that prick Nesmith would have noticed. That was the first thing that didn’t go to plan, and after that it was like dominos,” Buchanan said. “One thing after another started to go wrong. From Elizabeth’s idiot cousin working out something was going on to Nesmith getting here ahead of schedule. I was like that little boy at the dyke, plugging one leak after another. It worked, though. End of the day, Fisher thinks Buchanan is dead and I’m free and clear. Except…”
“Elizabeth had the money,” Clay said.
