A skeptical pause. “Doing what again?”
“This morning when I went to change my bandage, the jack was out. I think I put the bandage on wrong, after my shower last night, and the jack pulled out when I moved. How much did you miss? Is it working now?” I stuck a hand down my top and tapped the mike. “Can you hear that?”
“Loud and clear,” Frank said dryly. “It popped out a few times during the night, but I doubt I missed anything significant there—I certainly hope not, anyway. I lost a minute or two of your midnight chat with Daniel, though.”
I put a grin in my voice. “Oh, that? He was edgy because of the stroppy-bitch act. He wanted to know what was wrong, so I told him to leave me alone. Then the others heard us and got in on the action, and he gave up and went to bed. I told you it would work, Frankie. They’re going up the walls.”
“Right,” Frank said, after a moment. “So apparently I didn’t miss anything educational. And as long as I’m working this case, I suppose I can’t say I don’t believe in coincidences. But if that wire happens to come loose again, even for one second, I’m coming down there and dragging you in by the scruff of your neck. So get out your Super Glue.” And he hung up.
I walked home trying to work out what I would do next if I were in Daniel’s shoes, but as it turned out he wasn’t the one I should have been worrying about. I knew, even before I got into the house, that something had happened. They were all in the kitchen—the guys had obviously been halfway through the washing up, Rafe was holding a spatula like a weapon and Justin was dripping suds all over the floor—and they were all talking at once.
“—doing their job,” Daniel was saying flatly, as I opened the French doors. “If we don’t let them—”
“But why?” Justin wailed, over him. “Why would they—”
Then they saw me. There was a second of absolute silence, all of them staring at me, voices sliced off in midword.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The cops want us to come in,” said Rafe. He threw the spatula into the sink, with a clang and a splash. Water spattered on Daniel’s shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I can’t go through that again,” Justin said, sagging back against the counter. “I can’t.”
“Come in where? What for?”
“Mackey rang Daniel,” said Abby. “They want us to come talk to them, first thing tomorrow morning. All of us.”
“Why?” That toerag Frank. He had known, when I phoned him, that he was going to pull this crap. He hadn’t even bothered to hint at it.
Rafe shrugged. “He didn’t share. Just that he, quote, wants a chat with us. Unquote.”
“But why there?” Justin demanded frantically. He was staring at Daniel’s phone, on the kitchen table, like it might pounce. “Before, they always came here. Why do we have to—”
“Where does he want us to go?” I asked.
“Dublin Castle,” Abby said. “The Serious Crime office, or squad, or whatever they call it.”
Serious and Organized Crime work downstairs from Murder; all Frank had to do was whisk us up an extra flight of stairs. S&O do not investigate your average stabbing, not unless there’s a crime lord involved, but the others didn’t know that, and it sounded impressive.
“Did you know about this?” Daniel asked me. He was giving me a cold stare that I didn’t like one bit. Rafe raised his eyes to the ceiling and muttered something that included the words “paranoid freak.”
“No. How would I?”
“I thought your friend Mackey might have rung you as well. While you were out.”
“He didn’t. And he’s not my friend.” I didn’t bother hiding the pissed-off look; let Daniel try to figure out whether it was genuine. I had two days left, and Frank was going to eat away one of them with endless pointless nothing questions about what we put in our sandwiches and how we felt about Four-Boobs Brenda. He wanted us first thing in the morning: he was planning to stretch this out for as long as he could, eight hours, twelve. I wondered if it would be in character for Lexie to kick him in the goolies.
“I knew we shouldn’t have rung them about that rock,” Justin said wretchedly. “I knew it. They were leaving us alone.”
“So let’s not go,” I said. Probably Frank would class this as doing something stupid, breaking one of his conditions, but I was too annoyed to care. “They can’t make us.”
A startled pause. “Is that true?” Abby asked Daniel.
“I think so, actually,” Daniel said. He was examining me speculatively; I could almost hear the wheels spinning. “We’re not under arrest. This was a request, not a command, although that’s not how Mackey made it sound. All the same, I think we need to go.”
“Oh, do you?” Rafe inquired, not nicely. “Do you really? And what if I think we should let Mackey go fuck himself?”
Daniel turned to look at him. “I plan to continue cooperating fully with the investigation,” he said calmly. “Partly because I think it’s wise, but mainly because I’d like to know who did this terrible thing. If any of you would prefer to stand in the way and raise Mackey’s suspicions by refusing to cooperate, I can’t stop you; but remember, the person who stabbed Lexie is still out there, and I for one think we should do our best to help catch him.” The smart-arsed bastard: he was using my mike to feed Frank exactly what he wanted him to hear, which apparently was a heap of pious clichés. The two of them were perfect for each other.
Daniel glanced inquiringly around the kitchen. No one answered. Rafe started to say something, checked himself and shook his head in disgust.
“Good,” said Daniel. “In that case, let’s finish up here and get to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” And he picked up the dishcloth.
I was in the sitting room with Abby, pretending to read and thinking up creative new words for Frank and listening to the tense silence coming from the kitchen, when I realized something. Given the choice, Daniel had decided he’d prefer to spend one of my last few days with Frank, rather than with me. I figured, in its own dangerous way, that was probably a compliment.
What I remember most about Sunday morning is that we did the whole breakfast routine, every step of it. Abby’s quick tap on my door; the two of us making breakfast side by side, her face flushed from the heat of the stove. We moved easily around each other, passing things back and forth without having to ask. I remembered that first evening, the pang as I’d seen how closely woven together they were: somehow, along the way, I had become part of that. Justin frowning at his toast as he sliced it into triangles, Rafe’s autopilot maneuver with the coffee, Daniel with the edge of a book caught under the corner of his plate. I didn’t let myself think, even for a splinter of a second, about the fact that in thirty-six hours I would be gone; the fact that, even if I were to see them again, someday, it would never be like this.
We took our time. Even Rafe resurfaced once he’d finished his coffee, nudging me sideways with his hip so he could share my chair and nick bites of my toast. Dew ran down the windowpanes, and the rabbits—they were getting cheekier and closer every day—were nibbling the grass outside.
Something had changed, during the night. The jagged cutting edges between the four of them had melted away; they were gentle with one another, careful, almost tender. Sometimes I wonder if they took such care with that breakfast because, at some level deeper and surer than logic, they knew.
“We should go,” Daniel said, finally. He closed his book, reached to put it on the counter. I felt a breath, something between a catch and a sigh, ripple around the table. Rafe’s chest rose, quickly, against my shoulder.
“Right,” Abby said softly, almost to herself. “Let’s do this.”
“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Lexie,” Daniel said. “Why don’t you and I ride into town together?”
“Discuss what?” Rafe asked sharply. His fingers dug into my arm.
“If it were any of your business,” Daniel said, taking his plate to the sink, “I would have invited you to join us.” The jagged edges crystallized again, out of nowhere, fine and slicing the air.
“So,” Daniel said, when he had pulled up his car in front of the house and I got in beside him, “here we are.”
Something smoky curled through me: a warning. It was the way he was looking not at me but out the car window, at the house in cool morning mist, at Justin rubbing his windscreen fussily with a folded rag and Rafe slumping down the stairs with his chin tucked deep into his scarf; it was the expression on his face, intent and thoughtful and just a touch sad.
I had no way of knowing what this guy’s limits were, or if he had any. My gun was behind Lexie’s bedside table—Murder has a metal detector. The only time you’ll be out of coverage, Frank had said, is on the drive to and from town.
Daniel smiled, a small private smile up at the hazy blue sky. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” he said.
I was about to slam out of the car, stamp over to Justin and tell him Daniel was being horrible and demand to ride with him and the others—it seemed to be the week for complicated vicious spats, nobody would be suspicious of one more—when the door behind me flew open and Abby slid into the back seat, flushed and tangle-haired, in a tumble of gloves and hat and coat. “Hey,” she said, slamming the door. “Can I come with you guys?”
“Sure,” I said. I’d seldom been that glad to see anyone.
Daniel turned to look at her over his shoulder. “I thought we said you were going with Justin and Rafe.”
“You must be joking. The mood they’re in? It’d be like riding with Stalin and Pol Pot, only less cheerful.”
Unexpectedly, Daniel smiled at her, a real smile, warm and amused. “They are being ridiculous. Yes, let’s leave them to it; an hour or two stuck in a car together might be exactly what they need.”
“Maybe,” Abby said, sounding unconvinced. “That or they’ll just kill each other.” She pulled a folding hairbrush out of her bag and attacked her hair. In front of us, Justin got his car off to a jerky, irritable start and peeled off down the drive, way too fast.
Daniel put his hand back over his shoulder, palm up, towards Abby. He wasn’t looking at her, or at me; he was gazing out the windscreen, unseeing, at the cherry trees. Abby lowered her brush and laid her hand in his, squeezed his fingers. She didn’t let go until Daniel sighed and detached his hand from hers, gently, and started the car.
22
Frank, the utter fuckbucket, dumped me in an interview room (“We’ll have someone with you in a minute, Miss Madison”) and left me there for two hours. It wasn’t even one of the good interview rooms, with a watercooler and comfy chairs; it was the crap little one that’s two steps up from a holding cell, the one we use to make people nervous. It worked: I got edgier every minute. Frank could be doing anything out there, blowing my cover, telling the others about the baby, that we knew about Ned, anything. I knew I was reacting exactly the way he wanted me to, exactly like a suspect, but instead of snapping me out of it this just made me madder. I couldn’t even tell the camera what I thought about this situation, since for all I knew he had one of the others watching and was banking on me doing exactly that.
I swapped the chairs around—Frank had of course given me the one with the cap taken off the end of one leg, the one meant to make suspects uncomfortable. I felt like yelling at the camera, I used to work here, dickhead, this is my turf, don’t try that shit on me. Instead I found a pen in my jacket pocket and kept myself amused by writing LEXIE WAS HERE on the wall, in fancy letters. This didn’t get anyone’s attention, but then I hadn’t expected it to: the walls were already scattered with years’ worth of tags and drawings and anatomically difficult suggestions. I recognized a couple of the names.
I hated this. I had been in this room so many times, me and Rob working suspects with the flawless, telepathic coordination of two hunters circling their moment; being there without him made me feel like someone had scooped out all my organs and I was about to cave in on myself, too hollow to stand. Eventually I dug my pen into the wall so hard that the point snapped off. I threw the rest of it across the room at the camera and got it with a crack, but even that didn’t make me feel any better.
By the time Frank decided to make his big entrance, I was seething in about seven different ways. “Well well well,” he said, reaching up and switching off the camera. “Fancy meeting you here. Have a seat.”
I stayed standing. “What the fuck are you playing at?”