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“At the hardware store,” I grumble. Now halfway through infusion, I slow down so she has less chance of getting a headache because of me. “No tattoos? Scars?”
“Tattoos, no,” she mumbles. “Scars, yes. You can come down to the George Stanley in the morning and inspect them yourself. I’ll likely have a report written up by then, too. He does have his fair share of scarring, though nothing too wild. A past knee surgery. Not a reconstruction, but…something. A few incision scars around his left elbow, too. His appendix was removed long ago, and his surgeon was… not top of their class. I’ll look into his records for that information tomorrow, though it doesn’t really matter for this case.”
“You have a problem with the appendix scarring?”
“Yes.” She frowns, even with her eyes closed. “It was sloppy and embarrassing. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume it was done by a first-year med student whose parents paid his or her way in when they couldn’t gain entry on their own academic merits.”
Carefully, I stop my infusion and look up to study the side of her face. “You’re taking this personally.”
She snickers, even half-asleep. “Sloppy work bothers me. And I’m extra cranky right now. I was feeling kinda perky after dinner, but now I think I’m gonna have a quick nap.” A long, body-wracking yawn holds her captive as I restart infusing. “Just for a few minutes. Then we can get back to talking about work.”
“I’ve got you, Mayet. Rest now. I’ll finish up here.”And once I do, I have a phone call to make.“You want me to take you to bed so you can sleep comfortably?”
“No.” She turns inward on the couch, her coat still half-on, half-off, and lifts her legs until she’s sort of curled up. But her arm remains mine, and her trust… humbling.
I could completely fuck this up. Introduce germs, and leave her vulnerable. This is not a process that, even a few months ago, she would nap through and leave me to run.
But now…
“I love you, Archer.” She reaches up with her slinged hand and loops her finger through the wedding band that hangs from around her neck. The one that matches mine. Neither of us can wear a ring in our day-to-day lives, but we didn’t want to be without, either, so that was the compromise: a chain, and a band that would hang over our hearts twenty-four-seven. “Don’t kill me while I sleep.”
I snort, but I stifle the sound and finish what I’m doing.
A soft, cat-like, purring snore rolls along her throat and exits her mouth, not even interrupted when I remove the syringe and carefully peel the tape from her arm. But I grit my teeth and swallow the nausea bubbling in my stomach as I pull the needle from her arm and press a Band-Aid over top to stop the bleeding.
All the while, Minka rests, and when I release her arm, she curls it against her body to stay comfortable.
Shaking my head, I pack up our biohazard mess and put everything back where it belongs. The needle in the sharps container, and the tourniquet in the kit that then goes above the fridge. Just as I toss the used tubing, tape, and Band-Aid wrapper in the bio-container under the sink, my phone trills somewhere on my person.
I hurriedly search for it to silence the sound before it wakes her up. Tugging the device from my back pocket, I fumble it in my hands, and narrow my eyes when Felix’s name flashes on my screen.
Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear.
Accepting the call and bringing the phone to my ear, I wander back across the apartment and swipe up the TV remote, tossed haphazardly to the arm of the couch. “Felix?” I turn the TV on, but lower the volume until it’s just background noise. “Where were you the day before yesterday, morning through approximately lunchtime?”
“What?” Surprised, the mood I know was annoying playfulness drops away to curiosity. “That sounds like an accusation, Detective. Tell me what you think I did, and I’ll confirm whether I’m innocent…” Finally, his smile comes back so I hear it in his words. “Or not.”
“Did you or your men have anything to do with a hit in Copeland this week? Extensive torture, teeth extracted, smashed bones, countless lacerations, and two missing eyes?”
“Botheyes?” he questions.Of course he’d latch on to that detail.“Really?”
“Mm. They’d been holding him for a couple of days, torturing the dude for whatever reason. I don’t know if they got what they wanted from him, but he’s dead now, fished out of the river, and he’s my newest murder investigation. So…” I set down the television remote and perch on the edge of the couch, careful not to disturb my sleeping wife. “Do you have an alibi?”
“Ialwayshave an alibi,” he chuckles. “Only idiots go somewhere without first setting up a decoy. Hell, I have an alibi right now, posted up innocently in a French restaurant on West and Thirty-Third, drinking coffee and enjoying a pastry. I’ll have the receipts to prove it, and security footage that says I’m there. As well as phone records to prove I was having a friendly chat with my police officer brother. Your body wasn’t me, though. I was in Cuba until this morning.”
“And you’d tell me if it was your doing, right? You’re my brother. You’d be honest?”
He barks out a laugh loud enough to make Minka stir in her sleep and curl in tighter on herself.
“You’rethe asshole who wants nothing to do with us,” he reminds me. “Fuck loyalty, fuck the family name. You’re out, and we’re not shit to you anymore.”
“I’m out,” I confirm, “but I’m around. You know my stupid ass went to New York to take care of you, so stop with the whining and answer my question. If Copeland was yours, you’d tell me?”
“Depends.” He strings me along and reaps the attention he so craves, no matter how negative it may be. “On the record or off?”
“It’s just you and me here, Lix. Mayet’s asleep, Fletch is at the bar. No one has my line bugged, and even if they tried, we both know you have scramblers in place to keep unwanted ears out. So did you make that hit and dump a body in my river? He’s my case, and Minka’s too. If she’s wasting her time searching for a killer, and it was you all along, then I can think of better things for her to do. Like continue her recovery,in bed.” Sitting back, I reach across with my free hand and stroke the long strands of hair fanning across her cheeks.
“How’s she doing, anyway?” His voice softens to a tone I’m not sure I’ve ever heard come from his mouthexceptwhen he speaks of his sister-in-law. “She healing up?”
