The wolf gave chase for a while, but it quickly lost interest. Marlow stopped for a second and leaned back against a wall to catch his breath. He gave his T-shirt an absentminded tug to straighten it. He paused as it stuck to his hands.
Honey?
Marlow pulled the T-shirt up to taste one of the stiff patches. It stung the tip of his tongue; the sweetness cut through with heat.
Okay. He wiped his sleeve over his mouth and pushed himself off the wall. Spicy honey. That gave him something to work with.
He found a map of the shops in the market in a pile of pamphlets crumpled and torn under an overturned stall. There was only one shop that sold “artisanal honey, gifts, and crafts.” Marlow folded the flyer, tucked it in his back pocket, and headed that way.
Bennett perched clumsily on top of the shop’s counter, broken leg awkwardly splinted with metal struts from a scavenged set of shelves and strips cut from her uniform. A makeshift baton—caked with blood and dented—was clutched in one bruised hand, and she hefted a broken jar of ghost-pepper honey in the other. Blood dripped between her fingers where the glass had sliced her fingers open.
“Who the fuck are you?” Bennett rasped out as she saw him. Bruised lips twitched back in a snarl as she hefted the honey, ready to throw. “Did Franklin send you to do his dirty work? Should have known he wouldn’t have the balls to do it himself.”
Marlow held one hand up and used the other to pull the gaiter down to his throat. The bridge of his nose itched where the seam had dug into it.
“It’s me,” he said. Then he realized that might not be entirely reassuring, seeing as he was a wanted killer. “I didn’t kill Lyons.”
Bennett’s expression whiplashed from near tears—her eyes wet and her lower lip trembling—to exasperated annoyance.
“Youdidn’t?” she said, mock surprise layered as thick as… honey… over her voice. “Wow. But who else could have? Maybe Franklin would know, but he hasn’t been back since hebroke my leg and left me here to die.”
“No need to yell,” Marlow said.
“You’re a fucking muppet,” Bennett told him. Sweat broke on her forehead as he scooted to the edge of the counter. He jogged over and helped her down, her weight braced over his shoulder. Both of them pretended not to notice the choked sound of pain Bennett made as she tried to stand. She managed to steady herself against the counter long enough to slap him around the back of the head. “Why didn’t you tell me Piper still had his fingers in the department?”
Marlow shrugged. “I figured if I brought them down, it would make me a shoo-in for that promotion,” he said.
Bennett stopped mid-rant and stared at him; her mouth hung half-open. “Fuck off,” she said after a second. “You thought it was me.”
Marlow put his arm around her waist, and they stumbled over to the door to look out. The blood that had started the whole thing caked the square in thick, clotted puddles. Wolf footprints tracked through it, and it seeped under the doors of the few shops not busted open.
“Would you have suspected Franklin of being the mastermind?” he asked.
She glared at him. Marlow could tell she wanted to argue the point, but she’d be lying. None of them would have thought of Franklin.
“When did you realize it wasn’t me?” she asked. “I assume you did, and that’s why you sent me those files on Clemons.”
Marlow nodded. “You saved my life when you turned up at Clemons’s house the other night,” he said. “Franklin was going to kill me, but your arrival distracted him enough I could get away.”
“I could have still been involved.”
“You would never have worked for Franklin,” Marlow said.
Bennett made a rude sound under her breath. “That bastard,” she breathed out raggedly. “He set this up. We were called in to investigate a wolf pack formation and found that mess. He waited until my back was turned and then—”
She stopped and sniffed hard, her face twisted in an odd expression to hold back the tears.
“He was your friend,” Marlow said.
“No,” Bennett said. “If he was, then he would have had the common decency to kill me clean, not leave me for the wolves.”
Marlow hesitated. He didn’t care to defend Franklin’s reputation, but he remembered the sting of betrayal from when Piper tried to kill him. The weird let-down feeling that he hadn’t merited a bullet, that someone he’d admired would let him die badly rather than do it themselves. There was nothing he could do about that with Piper, but…
“He’s in love with you,” he said. “Franklin. For years. Maybe he just couldn’t—”
Bennett pinched his ear.
“Don’t be such a fucking boy,” she said, the words still thick with tears under the contempt. “He stamped on my leg until it snapped. Oh, he sniveled like a bastard the whole time, but it didn’t stop him. Would you do that to someone you loved? To your wolf?”
