The chime rattled behind him. He swung around and yanked the gun away from the woman’s head to aim it at Lem, who yelped, “Son of a bitch,” and threw himself back out again.
Cade lifted the gun, steadied it, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet blew through Franklin’s wrist and left a mess of splintered bone and flesh behind. He dropped the gun. The waitress darted forward and kicked it away with a nervous flick of her toe. It skittered away under a table.
“I’ve called the cops,” Lem yelled from outside. “They’re on the way.”
Franklin laughed, an exhausted huff of sound, and went down on his knees. He held one arm up in the air.
“Of course you did,” he said. “What else. Could someone get me a tourniquet?”
The scarred woman and her companion glanced at each other and then at Franklin. After a heartbeat they made their decision and headed for the door. Outside Lem yelped in surprise as the two of them shoved their way by him.
Marlow ignored them all as he scrambled to his feet and staggered over to grab two handfuls of Cade’s bought-used and sweaty T-shirt.
“You fucking asshole,” he said. Then he dragged Cade down into a desperate, hungry kiss that felt like heneededCade’s breath in his lungs. “I thought you were dead.”
“Now you know what it feels like,” Cade said. He realized that was a mistake immediately and pulled Marlow back. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing… for your boyfriend to say. I told you that you’d know.”
Marlow relaxed into Cade and wrapped his arms around him.
“You’re still an asshole,” he said. “But I’m glad to see you.”
“Me too,” Cade said. “Should we bandage Franklin up?”
“No,” Marlow said. His breath was warm against Cade’s throat. “Someone else can deal with him.”
The way he said it sounded oddly final. Cade would have questioned it, but he decided to just enjoy the fact it was all over.
Epilogue
VICTOR CLEMONS HADplayed the innocent victim in all this so many times that he had it down to an art. Not too vulnerable, a little bit angry. Indignant, even. They’d picked him up at the train station, with a one-way ticket to Phoenix in his pocket.
“I wasn’t even at the house during the full moon,” he said and jabbed a finger at Marlow. “I took Night Shift’s advice and checked into a resort.”
The feds had been called in for this one. It crossed state lines, and the ensuing fight over jurisdiction was easier to just dodge. The agent from the LA sub-office, who’d asked Marlow to sit in on the interview since he had a prior relationship with Clemons, shuffled through the file in front of him as if he hadn’t already memorized it.
“The Hilton by the Bay,” he said. “You checked in before sunset and ordered take-out after the hotel locked down for the night.”
Victor looked satisfied and sat back. He rested his hands on the table in front of him.
“Exactly,” he said. “So there’s no way that I could have been the one to kill Barney. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t shed any tears when I heard the news. Whoever killed him did me a favor, but I’m not a violent man. I don’t even own a gun.”
The agent flicked a page over.
“Victor Clemons isn’t registered as having bought or owned a firearm,” he said. It sounded like agreement. It wasn’t.
“In that case, if you had nothing to do with Barney Lyons’s death,” Marlow said, “why did you book a ticket to leave town?”
“I. Took. Your. Advice,” Clemons repeated himself, each word enunciated with a jab of his finger against the table. “The only way to break a fixation is to move. So I decided to move cities, get a new start.”
“Handy enough that you’d already quit your job,” Marlow said. “You’d done the same just before your ex, Sammy Goodwin, was shot in Portland, wasn’t it, during the full moon.”
That was not part of the script. Clemons's face shut down as his confidence took a hit. He crossed his arms and licked his lips.
The agent pulled a photo out of the file and pushed it across the table. No one would have said that Goodwin and Lyons looked alike, but they were still somehow the same type. Same social class. Same background. In the photo, Goodwin had his arm around Clemons's shoulder.
“Or, for that matter, Jensen North,” the agent said as he pushed another photo across the table. They hadn’t been able to find one of North with Clemons, who avoided cameras for obvious reasons, but his corpse made the point. Another photo joined the pile, this time of a man slightly older than the others. “Claude Jollet. Not quite your usual type?”
“I don’t…” Clemons paused as he tried to work out how much they knew and what he could still deny. “People die.”
