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“Excuse us for a minute. It seems I need to talk to my wife,” Aslanov says to me, but the heated look in his eyes suggests something else.
“Talk? What do you…? Oh, talk. Yeah, we should definitely go talk. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”
He whispers something into her ear, making her giggle.
“Thirty minutes. We’ll be back in thirty minutes,” she tells us before Aslanov practically drags her out of the room.
“You have very interesting friends, Mal.” Blink laughs from the bed.
I laugh. “I have the best friends.” My smile falls when I look at Law, who has remained quiet throughout.
“Tell me what I missed.”
The lightness of the moment dissipates as Lollie stands and hugs me quickly. “I’m gonna swing by and pick up Hank. He’s been dying to see you.”
“Okay, thanks.”
I wait for her to close the door and face the others. “Tell me.”
Law pulls something from the inside of his jacket pocket and walks over to me, dropping to his haunches in front of me.
He holds open the napkin in his hand. Nestled inside is the penknife I gave Bill.
“Sugar recognized it. Said it was yours.”
I swallow hard, reaching out with my free hand to trace the initials on it, my other hand squeezing Graves tightly.
“It was a gift from my sister before she died. Said it was to keep me safe. And it did in ways she could never have imagined. I was a different girl back then. Then one day, I showed up to the gym. There was a fight taking place. I moved closer to watch it, commenting where I thought their weaknesses were, when the man beside me asked me my name. It was so noisy that when I told him it was Alice, he thought I said Malice. From that day onward, that’s who I was.”
“Hank?” Law asks me with a soft smile.
I nod. “Yeah. I never corrected him because I liked it. It made me feel strong, you know? Even so, I kept the knife until I came back here.”
I wipe a tear that slipped free because I already know the man I gave it to is gone.
“I gave it to Bill the day I first met him so he could protect himself. You found him, didn’t you?”
Law clenches his jaw so hard his teeth grind, making me wince.
“I won’t give you all the details. You don’t need them, and I promise you if I could erase them from my mind…I would.” He shakes his head.
“We couldn’t find any bodies. But we found…fragments. Where this knife was found led us to search…other sources and, sure enough, after testing, we found what we believe to be human remains.”
“What aren’t you saying, Law?”
“The barbecued food…” His voice trails off, so I wait for him to finish. When he doesn’t, my eyes widen, and vomit rushes up the back of my throat.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I warn Vega, who luckily doesn’t hesitate to hurry me to the bathroom, where I puke until my stomach hurts.
Sugar steps in and hands me a miniature bottle of mouthwash.
“Trust me, I needed it too,” she admits. I gargle and spit it out before nodding at Vega to take me back.
“Tell me the rest.”
“It can wait, Mal,” Law tells me gently.
I reach forward and cup his jaw. “Tell me the rest.”
