Page 27 of Crown of Ash

"It's your detective," Ghost said.

Nate's knife stopped.

"No," Zain said.

"Zain."

"No." Zain was already crossing the floor. He had his hands up, both of them, moving well ahead of the rest of him. "No. Absolutely not. Not tonight. You do not let him in this building tonight."

"He's already in the building," Ghost said. "You want me to un-let him in?"

Marcus heard the outer door. He heard the second door, and the change in the air pressure that meant the corridor, and then two sets of footsteps that had come in together, and Andre Jefferson came around the corner of the partition into the light with his jacket over his arm and his shirt untucked on one side and his hands empty.

He was wrecked. Marcus saw it in a second and a half. Gray under the whiskey-brown. The silver at his temples, more of it than six years ago, more of it than four months ago. A scrape on the heel of his right hand that he had gotten getting into or out of a car too fast. He had driven here at speed and he had not stopped on the way to make himself presentable, and Andre Jefferson had never in his life walked into a room he did not own.

Marcus's whole body turned toward him, chest going tight because fuck he'd needed this. To put his eyes on the man, to know he was safe and not the next target… He had to shut down the play of his need on his face, though, because Eli was in a room upstairs and had almost been in the ground. This couldn't be about Marcus and Andre right now, even though everything in him wanted it to be.

Then Zain hit the open floor between them, and Marcus moved.

He got there first. Not by much. He put himself in the space where Zain's shoulder was going. Zain came up against the flat of him and stopped, because Zain would not go through Marcus, and both of them knew it. It made Zain angrier.

"Get out of my way."

"No."

"Marcus."

"No."

Zain's face was three inches from his. The dark eyebrows were all the way down. He was breathing through his mouth. "Three hours," he said. "Three hours on a table. Nobody would tell us anything. Nobody would tell Jack anything, and Jack was down that hallway right now with his man's blood dried on his hands like a-"

"I know."

"You don't know! You weren't in the waiting room." Zain jabbed a finger past Marcus's shoulder, at Andre, at the room, at the city. "None of this happened before him. Not one shot fired at this crew like that. Not one. And then he walks in here with a badge and a task force and a chain of command, and we let the law touch it, and it almost cost us a brother!"

The rice was burning. Nobody moved to take it off.

"Say something," Zain shouted, past him. "Say something, Jefferson."

Marcus did not turn around. He kept his eyes on Zain because turning around would have been giving Zain his back, and because if he turned around he was going to look at Andre for longer than he could afford in front of these people. They knew him too well. Seth had already stood up. Ghost had not looked at the screen in forty seconds.

"He's right," Andre said.

That turned the room.

"Partly," Andre said. "He's partly right and I'm not going to argue the part he's right about. Every shot that's been fired at this crew has been fired since I came back into youur life. That's true. I'm not going to pretend it's not."

"Then get the fuck out!" Zane's expression was rage and fire.

"I didn't give you up."

Zain went very still.

"That's the truth." Andre's voice did not rise. Marcus heard the effort under it, the same effort he had heard in a courthouse corridor six years ago, when Andre ran out of ways to cope with a verdict that allowed a monster to walk free. "Somebody inside my channel is leaking. That's real. I've known it since the warehouse and I've been running it down since then. I'm going to find out who… and you have my word, this time… I'll hand them to you. But it isn't me. It was never going to be me. I have had six years and countless oportunities come across my desk… and I never gave you up, not once, not when it would have made my career, not when it would have gotten me the bars and the corner office and the pension I'm never going to use."

"Words," Zain hissed.

"Then here's a fact." Andre put his jacket down on the back of the chair like a man setting down a weight. "I went to Dray."