AllFreeNovel
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She’s a cop, but her spatial awareness is all kinds of fucked up.
Slipping out of her room, I take a fast study of her bathroom; neat, but not cleaned today. In her shower; clean, but with a small pile of hair in the drain. Behind her toilet; one hidden gun. No drugs, no money, no admissions of guilt.
Nodding as though I’ve proven something to myself, I back out again and know I’m pushing my luck the longer I stay. I need to leave and make a new plan, because after twenty-two years, I’ve ended up in the same town as Libby Tate, a couple Bishops, and Sean Frankston’s child. Twenty-two years, and they all end up in the same geographical space, despite starting somewhere else entirely.
The wordcoincidenceis a lie.
Now I have to decide what to do with this new information.
Leaving the hall and passing through the living room, I stop with a skid at a flash of red tucked into the back of the couch. I was facing the wrong way when I passed earlier, but now I see it. I glance back toward Libby’s room to make sure she’s still out, then I move toward the couch and yank the fabric free. A lifetime of memories sprint through my mind. A lifetime of wants, hungers, loneliness, exhaustion, fear. So much fucking fear. Dark alleyways and skittering vermin pass through my conscience while I stand in Libby’s dark living room and study my discovery.
When Libby makes another soft snoring sound, I ball the fabric in my fists and toss it back onto the couch as though it offends me. I take a step back, then another. I only make it three steps before I charge forward and snatch it up, then I dash out her door and make sure it’s locked up securely before I walk away.
I skip down the stairs and out the front door, and when Olly winds his window down and lifts an inquisitive brow at the dinosaur sweater an eleven-year-old boy once wore now bundled in my hand, he says nothing except, “Sir?”
I slide into the back seat with an odd betrayal swirling in my stomach. Technically, finding evidence of being a dirty cop would be the true betrayal, but my emotions take over, and the unfairness and everything this sweater represents bothers me more. She has it. Perhaps she’s had it all along. Why, after two decades, is this sweater still in her possession? Why is it out in her living room as though she’d touched it only today? And how the fuck did she come into possession of it in the first place?
“Sir?” Olly prompts me again.
“Head to the hotel. We’re done for tonight. I’ll drive myself tomorrow, but I have some things for you to look into while I’m busy.”
He pulls away from the curb and heads across town. “Bishops?”
“We’ll watch for a little longer, but I think I’ll make contact soon. I’m gonna work this other angle first.”
“Work it.” Dropping character, my driver smirks and meets my eyes in the mirror. “I see youworking it, Griff. I know whose home you were in tonight, I see the fire in your eyes. You act like I haven’t known you for fifteen years already.”
“If you think you know me so well, then you know you should shut your mouth and drive me where I wanna go.”
He’s not scared. He might be the only person on this planet that knows the real me. He doesn’t know my name was Bishop once, but he knows I’m from the streets, he knows I have a problem with authority, and he knows that deep down, below the intimidation, below the businessman, below the high-rise buildings and multitudes of loyal staff, I’m just a poor kid with a witty sense of humor buried deep in the dark recesses behind my black heart.
He’s possibly the only human I would call a friend.
Chuckling when I say nothing else, he dips his imaginary hat and makes a right onto Main Street. “Yes, sir.”
My lips twitch, but I try to school it as my sweater rests on my lap and Libby Tate sleeps naked just a couple miles from where I’ll have a bed for the night. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll staple your lips closed.”
