“Can’t tell you. Hell, I don’t even know yet.”
“What happened?” The words escape before I can smother them.
“I had this storage locker, kept some of my . . . information in there. Someone called in a bomb threat and the next thing I know they’re running dogs by all the units, looking for explosives. Guess where they found them? My locker. My fingerprints. My stuff. And I had it all under a fake name. How do you think that will look?”
“Not good?”
“Not good,” he echoes, and his laugh sounds rotten. “Damn right it’s not good. The stuff in the unit is mine, but the explosives—” Carson shakes his head hard. “I’ve been set up. I can’t prove it and, even if I did, there’s the matter of the other . . . things in the locker. I had information from other sources, information on other cases. Once the ATF tracks it to me, I’ll be put on administrative leave pending the investigation’s completion. Everyone will act like I’ll be back and we all know I won’t be. I’ll never work again.”
And all those other “sources” like me will go free. Red-hot satisfaction rolls through me. It’s round and hard as pennies. I want to spill it over my fingers, roll around in it until I come up drenched. Milo was right. I am impressed.
I’m fucking thrilled.
“You need to know about who’s been watching you, Wick. There are other people who want to use you.”
“No shit, I’m talking to one.”
“I’m not like them. I mean . . . I have used you, just not like they would. I know they’ve contacted you. You need to ask yourself why they’re doing it now.” Carson pauses, waiting for my response, and when there isn’t one, his shoulders sag. “We were doing real work, Wick. I was going to make you a hero.”
Except Carson decided who was worthy and who was evil—and I’m not sure which is worse: Carson thinking he’s a good guy or the idea that other people are hunting me.
“What else do you have?”
“Nothing. I swear it.”
I start to leave. “Good luck with running.”
“Wick.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting when I turn around, but it’s not the hunched figure standing in front of me.
“Be careful,” he says, his voice a flattened nothing. “One day you’ll look back on this and you’ll remember how good it was. We were a team.”
“We were never a team, Carson.”
He lifts one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Then you’ll remember me telling you this: They’re coming for you, and without me, you’ll have nowhere to hide. It’s just beginning.”
“You’re wrong, Detective. It ends tonight. It ends just like this.” And I walk out the door.
What Happened After
By the time I leave Carson’s, all hell has broken loose. The cops are pissed I disappeared. The EMTs are pissed I disappeared. Bren has left me four voice mails because, due to someone’s infinite wisdom, she was notified and she’s pissed I disappeared.
I drive straight to the Fayette County hospital and plead a head injury.
Ten minutes later, I’m admitted. Twenty minutes later, the cops I ditched show up.
You’d think we’d all be happier to see each other.
Not.
The doctors keep me overnight in the hospital, and when I wake up, it’s so quiet, I think I’m alone . . . then I see Bren. My smile has never hurt so much and it is so worth it. She’s worth it. I escaped. It’s over.
But when I reach for Bren, she recoils.
“What are you?” she breathes.
My skin crawls. “Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
We study each other, Bren using silence as a leverage that will never work on me. I know how this game is played. I’ll wait. Even if the silence drowns us.
Bren touches her fingertips to her lips, chin. “You didn’t find him on a hunch, did you?”
She should be talking about Bay or Ian or Jason. She’s not. She’s talking about Todd.
“You tracked him down,” Bren continues softly. “You hunted him.”
Him. Her husband still turns soft in her mouth, like Todd’s living under her tongue.
Stick to the story, Wick. That’s what is in the police report. That’s what you have to say. But, right now, I can’t say anything. For the first time, I want the words and I don’t have them. I want to explain and I can’t.
I look at her. “He deserved it, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” The word escapes on a hard exhale. Bren stands up, starts to pace.
“It isn’t like what you’re thinking.”
“Then what’s it like?”
I study the blanket . . . the hospital ID tag. Now is the time to say something and I have nothing.
“That’s what I thought,” Bren says, and I feel her take one step back. Two. Her breathing has gone shallow and loud. “Then it’s true? That you’ve been entrapping people online? You’ve been breaking the law? Why would you do that?”
How could I not? I don’t say that though. How do I explain that I lived in the dark so they could stay in the light? How do you explain that?
You don’t.