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“I didn’t lie.” His words are hard. Cutting.
Heartbreaking.
“Be at the captain’s office at nine, Arch. Tardiness will earn a warrant for the vigilante’s arrest—and I’m warning you now, because of the friendship we once had, you don’t wanna make them come looking for you.”
“Fuck.” The oxygen races from my lungs and leaves me panting, but my back remains pressed to the wall, so I use it for support as I bend at the hips. If I’d eaten lately, I’d lose it all over the linoleum. “Oh god.” I press the heels of my palms to my eyes and breathe. “Oh fuck.”
“What did he say?” Cato crouches in my peripherals and shakes my shoulder while I tiptoe toward hyperventilation. “Arch? What’s going on?”
“I’ve gotta get Minka out of the city.”
Shoving up tall, I blow past my baby brother and commandeer a nurse as we walk. “Minka Mayet is in eight-oh-three and needs pain relief immediately.”
“Detective—”
“That’s right.” I drag her along so her feet barely touch the floor. “Detective. And this is time-sensitive. Get her fucking meds, then we need her to be discharged. Right now. She’s a material witness in the Parker Slade case, and we need her immediate cooperation.”
I stop by my wife’s room and steer the nurse through the door, only to find Minka on her feet next to her bed, pale-faced, but wearing an expression of determination.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demand.
“Standing.” Her arm is in a sling, bandaged all the way to her neck and across her chest. Felix is at her back, his hand on her hip to keep her up. “I need to pee, and there’s no reason I can’t do it in the toilet instead of a freakin’ bottle.”
She shuffles, shuffles,shufflesright past the nurse I’ve somewhat kidnapped. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Fuckkkkk.” Stress makes me dizzy. Sweaty. It makes my brain want to explode.
And Felix’s hand on my wife’s ass only makes everything worse.
So I push him back and take Minka’s good arm in my palm. But I cast a glance to the stunned nurse. “Meds. Discharge. Now.”
“Discharge?” Minka keeps walking, but she looks to me in confusion. “What?”
“I’ll explain in a sec.” I help her to the adjoined bathroom, then flick the light on, as well as the extraction fan in hopes it will mask our voices.
After closing the door and hitting the lock, I back Minka up until she’s sitting on the toilet. “Pee. Then we gotta go.”
“Go where?” She studies me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “What the hell is going on, Archer? And I’m not peeing while you stare at me.”
“Just pee!” I throw my hands up, feeling the walls close in around us. “Fuck, Mayet.” I lower my voice and grit out as quietly as I can manage, “The captain knows it’s you.”
Her face pales impossibly whiter, and her bladder lets go. “What?”
“At least… he’s asking questions. There’s this guy Fletch and I have.” I reach out to the toilet paper and ball a heap for her. “A rat. He sells us information, but he’s got a bug up his ass about me. He already ratted to Fletch that I didn’t use some of his intel, which is how he started putting pieces together. But I guess Fletch has taken too long to do anything about it, because the rat went to my captain. Now Bower wants to see me in his office.”
She snatches the paper from my hands and reaches between her legs, though her gown maintains her privacy through the process. “When?”
“Oh-nine-hundred.”
The second she’s done, I straighten out and bring her up with me. Then I slap the button to flush and lead her to the sink.
“I have documents for us already, it’s all at the apartment. IDs, money. We’re going home to pack, then we’re done.”
“We’re leaving Copeland?” she exhales. “Forever?”
“Unless you wanna go to prison, yeah.” I pump the soap into my hands and flip the tap on. After I wash mine, I take her good hand between my palms and do the same for her. “We don’t have a choice, babe. It’s time to leave.”
“But you don’t actually know what the captain knows.” She looks up at me with terror in her eyes. “If heknew, then there would be cops in my room. Not a friendly request for a meeting.”
