“If I were you, I’d try,” Piper said. “I talk to you, I end up dead. I don’t talk to you, same endgame. So you better have an ace in the hole to change the course of this game.”
Cade stepped away from the window before he tried to put his fist through it. The glass wouldn’t break, it was bulletproof and reinforced, and he’d just look stupid.
“The funny thing is, Piper, that Marlow is probably the only person in San Diego who still remembers when you were a good cop.”
“That’s his problem. I tried to kill him; he should know better.”
Resentment tasted like iron on Cade’s tongue, like the apples his stepmother pierced with nails to let the metal leech out into the flesh. Growing up in Alaska meant being short of some sort of vitamin or mineral during the year—unless it was one that came from game meat and beer.
“Yeah, I’d have learned my lesson,” Cade said. “Marlow, he likes to think the best of people.”
“Yeah?” Piper said. The background noise got louder as the prisoners shouted abuse at the guards on their rounds. The lazy drawl left Piper’s voice, and his words came out clipped and deliberate. “Well, get me what I want or real soon Marlow’s going to be disappointed in someone else. One thing my… associate… told me before he left? Third time’s the charm on killing a cat. Marlow isn’t going to see another full moon out without my help.”
He hung up.
Cade gave in to the urge and punched the window. He split the skin over his knuckles and dripped blood on the wooden floor as he called down to the legal department.
“Two?” the guy behind the counter asked, two fingers held up to check the order. When Cade nodded his agreement, the man turned and yelled it back into the kitchen, voice pitched to carry over the din of service. Then he gestured for Cade to move along to the other end of the shop, where he joined the short queue of people ready to pay.
Cade rolled his eyes in annoyance at the wait and checked his phone. His last message to Marlow was still unread, without even a flickering row of dots to show willing. Doubt made the back of Cade’s neck itch as he considered the unpleasant prospect of having to choke down two bowls of shrimp noodles on his own. Just in case anyone thought he’d been stood up.
The woman ahead of him handed her money over and took her tray in exchange. Cade stepped back to give her room to get by, and a lean black-clad arm reached past him to pay. Two crisp twenties and a “Keep the change” from Marlow won a quick nod of thanks from the woman behind the counter before she turned her attention to the next in the queue.
“I had it,” he said, his voice stiff in his throat as he lifted his carton from the tray. “You didn’t need to pay.”
Cade could have bought the restaurant, if he wanted, and made the staff make him mac and cheese. With the cash in his wallet, he could have paid for the next two hours of customers to eat on his tab. Yet he could still feel the dull ache of kicked pride in his chest and a weird sort of panic clutch at his throat.
If Marlow didn’t want his money, wasn’t seduced by the lifestyle, then what the hell did Cade have to offer him?
Nothing.
That answer came from the scrawny seventeen-year-old he’d been, who’d too much pride and not much else. Cade had come a long way from then, but he’d need to think about it for a while before he could come up with a better one.
“I asked you out,” Marlow reminded him. “My shout. I did expect you to pick somewhere fancier. With seats, maybe?”
Cade considered that for a second and decided he could live with it.
“According to Piper, you guys don’t get paid that much,” he said as he popped the styrofoam lid. Savory fishy steam rose from the sauce-covered shrimp piled on top of the bed of sticky noodles. Cade grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the small table at the door and stripped the paper off with his teeth. “So I thought I’d cut you a break.”
Marlow paused mid-reach for his utensils.
“You spoke to him?”
“He called me.” Cade glanced at the cluster of people by the counter. They all had their attention, one way or another, on the food. He gestured with the sticky chopsticks for Marlow to follow him outside. There still weren’t any seats, but there was a wall to lean on. “Bit of an asshole, isn’t he?”
“That’s one word for him,” Marlow said. He poked absently at the food until the shrimp was half-buried under the noodles. “What does he want?”
Cade raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think he wants anything?”
“If he’d told you anything, you would have led with that. So, what does he want?”
On the street, a cop car drove slowly by. Cade watched it pass and only relaxed when it turned the corner. His spats with the local LEOs were a game. They might not have thought so, but Cade knew just how far to push it. He was a thorn in their side they couldn’t afford to touch.
This was different. Whoever had taken over from Piper in the Night Shift wasn’t constrained by the SDPD’s rule book.
“Let me worry about that,” he said.
Marlow gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Easier said than done. Whatever it is, however he wants out of prison, tell him no.”
