Even as he said it, though, he could hear Piper’s easy, believable voice in the back of his head. He’d call it an accident and say they’d learned their lesson, that Marlow would be within his rights to turn them in, but… There was always a “but,” always a greater good that Piper was somehow on the right side of. He might have talked Marlow round, even with a dead man on a slab. That wasn’t something that Marlow wanted Cade to know, though.
“No, the park rangers found the guy the next morning. He was dehydrated, and he had sunstroke, but he was alive. Paid what he owed from his hospital bed, Franklin said, now that he’d been shown who was boss. I told myself I’d go to IA and tell them everything… but first I’d talk to Piper, let him tell me his side of things. Only, I never got the chance.”
Cade absently grazed his thumb over the sensitive hollow under Marlow’s ear. The caress cut through the smog of old guilt with a much more immediate distraction. His mind should have been on how to clear his name and make Franklin pay for everything he’d done. Instead, Marlow leaned into Cade’s hand, and Cade scruffed him to pull him to his feet.
“Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
“Any chance it’s a bed?” Marlow asked. It might have passed as seductive if he’d not immediately yawned hard enough to make his jaw pop.
“Next time,” Cade promised. He picked up a tablet from the dining table pushed against the wall and tapped at the screen for a second. Once he’d pulled up what he wanted, he handed it to Marlow. “What do you see?”
On the screen, Night Shift officers—anonymous in full gear to the point even Marlow could only pick out a few of them—loped in and out of the shot. Bennett, helmet off and blood on her face, walked next to the stretcher they’d loaded Franklin onto. He held her hand, head tipped back against the board and mouth set in a grimace.
“Franklin making a meal out of menotshooting him?”
Cade reached over and tapped the screen to pause it. “Look at the bruises.”
Blue and purple spread over Franklin’s chest and up over his shoulder. The marks looked livid under the glare of the incident spotlights set up around the ambulance. Marlow frowned and pinched the screen to zoom in.
“They’re not fresh bruises,” he said.
“No,” Cade said. “That’s because I shot him over a week ago. At SKINNED. This guy was there too.”
He flicked the video to the side and pulled up a picture of a fresh-faced man with acne scars on his cheekbones.
“The rookie?” Marlow said.
“George Cook,” Cade said. “He tried to start a fight with me in the club that night, but he wasn’t quite up to it. Once I broke his wrist for him, he lost interest.”
“He always hesitated before he committed to a course of action,” Marlow said. Habit made his voice dry and critical, as if he was in O’Hara’s office to give his feedback on the rookie’s progress. “He’s lucky you only broke his arm. If he doesn’t have the confidence to risk a mistake, he’ll get someone killed one day.”
“A friend?” Cade asked.
Marlow shook his head. “New guy,” he said. “Bennett was his training officer. Franklin took him under his wing. In more ways than one, I guess. But I don’t see how it helps. We could have the full roster of dirty cops in the department, but without evidence, we can’t do anything with it.”
“Trust me,” Cade said. “You don’t need evidence when you have leverage. Cook here has ‘weak link’ written all over him.”
That was true. He did. If the rookie didn’t have the confidence to commit for fear of mistakes, he wouldn’t have bought in to Franklin’s con. Not yet. But…
“It could work, but leverage takes time, and I don’t have that,” Marlow said as he handed the tablet back. “Franklin isn’t going to let me talk to Cook or anyone else if he can help it. Even if I turn myself in to O’Hara today—so Franklin can’t make sure I get shot ‘resisting arrest’—I won’t last the night. No one is going to ask too many questions about a ‘disgraced Night Shift officer who couldn’t live with the shame’ headline. It’s what they want to hear.”
“Leverage doesn’t have to be legal,” Cade pointed out. “And how are we going to clear your name without taking Franklin down? He says you killed Lyons, you say he did—but you’re the one who ran.”
“Franklin didn’t kill Lyons,” Marlow said.
“That leaves you,” Cade pointed out. “I can get you a good lawyer if you want to confess, but it’s the opposite of clearing your name.”
Marlow snorted.
“I had no reason to kill Lyons,” he said. “And I didn’t. He was dead when we got there. So if I find out who did kill him, that’s a hole blown right through Franklin’s story. Then we can expose him… even if it means making a deal with Piper.”
Cade shook his head at the concession. “We’d be in a lot less trouble if you’d come to that conclusionyesterday,” he pointed out.
“Do you want me to say you were right?” Marlow asked.
“Yes.”
“You were right,” Marlow admitted. “I should have listened to you.”
