“Fuck it,” he said. “Why let you go out clean. I’ll tell them you got scared. That your famous nerve finally broke. There was no need to kill that wolf, no lives in danger, but you did it anyhow. Then you attacked me to cover your tracks, and I had to kill you. With my bare hands. Think they’ll buy it?”
Red smeared at the edge of Marlow’s vision. He peeled his lips back from his teeth in a snarl at Franklin.
“My nerve, maybe,” he rasped out. “That you could beat me?”
He sucked air through his teeth to express his doubts about that lie. Franklin snarled and leaned harder on his throat. That brought him in close enough for Marlow to reach up, grab an ear, and dig his thumb into Franklin’s eye.
Franklin screamed and recoiled. Blood dripped down his face from his torn eyelid as he scrambled away on his hands and knee. He blotted at his eye with the back of his sleeve as he cursed Marlow.
“You really think you’ve got nine lives, huh?” he rasped as he grabbed Marlow’s gun and scrambled to his feet. “Well, trust me. Three’s the charm.”
Franklin squinted through the veil of blood as he aimed at Marlow, finger curled around the trigger. He licked his lips.
“Probably for the best,” he panted. “If you were corrupt, you’d be competition, and I learned from Piper where that leads.”
His finger tightened on the trigger, and then Bennett’s voice echoed down the hall.
“Marlow? Franklin?” she said. “What’s going on?”
Habit twitched Franklin’s head in her direction. The gun wavered for a second, and Marlow lunged for the back door. He scrambled out over the threshold on all fours and then staggered to his feet in the garden. The cool night air stung his raw throat as he sucked in lungfuls of it. He scrambled up the wire fence at the bottom of the garden and dropped down the other side.
A window twitched in the house opposite and quickly closed again as the neighbor took in the scene. They were probably on the phone to 911 now, which would just help Franklin’s story.
Marlow grimaced and put that aside to deal with later. He pushed himself into a dead run down the long concrete rat run of the alley. At the end of it, he paused for a second to orient himself.
Behind him, he heard the distinct double-tap report of shots fired.
Bennett?
There was nothing he could do now. Marlow stripped his radio off and tossed it, then folded one arm over his ribs as he jogged away into the darkness. The wolves were waiting out in the city for him, but tonight they weren’t who he was worried about.
