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“You’re right.” I dip my chin in contemplation. “She’ll probably ask. And the chances of Jada straightening out are… Low. She’s in deep, man. She’s in so deep, I worry every day we’ll get the call that tells us she drowned.”
“And that’s why I’m out here cleaning up her messes! I wanna prevent that call if I can.”
“You can’t hold the water back, Fletch.” I lift my hands, as though to picture them cupping liquid. “You can’t stand in front of those girls and hold back the waves. All you can do is place Jada somewhere safe—rehab,” I clarify. “Where she’ll hopefully learn to navigate the waves herself. And you carry Mia the rest of the way. Because she’s too young to swim on her own. She might ask you someday,” I reach across and tap the side of my fist to his chest. “She’ll want to know everything. But I swear to god, I’ll be around to tell her you did everything you could.”
“Arch—”
“Put Jada in rehab and get on with your life. That’s your job.” I unsnap my seatbelt, but I don’t open my door. “And maybe, if you’re feeling a little frisky, ask Fifi out. You can save her from herself since you have that hero complex.”
“Shut up?—”
“And in return, she can give you a different, high-maintenance woman to obsess over. Cleaning up after Jada is gonna kill you. But chasing after Fifi and letting her boss you around a little might be the medicine you need to kick your addiction.”
“You’re an asshole.” He taps the steering wheel and peers out the windows to a quiet street lined with flowering jacarandas, purple rain trickling from their branches and landing to mark the road. “Your marriage is unhealthy,” he grumbles. “Your wife is a killer, and you’re afraid to go home tonight. But instead of dealing with that, you poke at me.”
“Like I said,” I laugh, nodding again when he starts the car forward and brings us closer to Anderson’s home. “Hypocrisy works for me. My marriage is the healthiest unhealthy shit I’ve ever experienced. We fight, and we fuck. Sometimes, we rid Copeland streets of people who’ve dodged justice. But always, we come home to each other. We always come back to love. And shit,” I lift my shoulders in a shrug, but my body becomes brutally aware we approach a potential killer’s home. My muscles tighten, and my hands prepare to draw a weapon. “I’m happy, Fletch. In my marriage.” I look over as he cuts the engine and the world outside seems to still. There are no people walking their dogs. No cars puttering by. “I can stay at your place tonight, though, right? I handcuffed my wife to the mafia.”
He laughs and shoves out of the car. The door squeaks on its hinges, protesting his rough treatment. But he turns and rests his arms on the roof, waiting for me to mirror his actions on my side. “You’re so dead when you go home. So dead.”
“I’m saving her from herself. And don’t,” I point in his direction when he opens his mouth to speak, “come at me about hypocrisy. I’m gonna spend my life saving her. It’s the deal I make every single day when I wake up with her in my bed. I’m happy to exist within this double standard, Fletch. I don’t mind it one bit. My wife’s toxic trait is to defend innocent people. Your wife’s toxic trait is to serve herself. They’re not the same.”
“Ex-wife.” He taps the roof of the car and starts around to the hood. So when I do the same and stop by his side, we head toward the house Charleston Anderson grew up in. “And just so we’re clear: at least I never worried Jada would kill me in my sleep.”
I scoff, though I swallow it down with a painful gulp because the Anderson’s front door creaks open, and a man, a boy, really, peeks through the two-inch gap he makes.
It takes everything in me not to draw my weapon and point it at the guy who may have butchered another this week.
“Mr. Anderson?” Fletch steps ahead of me—fuck him and his toxic shit—and shows the terrified man his hands. “My name is Detective Cha?—”
“Charlie Fletcher.” Anderson swallows, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbing in his too-narrow throat. Then he looks at me, licking his lips nervously. “And you’re Detective Malone. I know. I see you on the news.”
“Can we talk with you for a bit?” I step around my partner so he can’t be my shield and force a small smile for Charleston. He’s wearing pants, at least. And a tank top that shows off exceptionally skinny arms. “I bet you’ve heard about that Adrianna Alves stuff on the news, huh? It’s pretty wild.”
“She didn’t kill her husband.” Anderson’s eyes, a muddy brown and too large for his face, swell up and redden with tears. “No way she hurt him.”
“That’s why we’ve come to talk to you.” Fletch stops about seven feet from the door and settles his hands on his hips. “We know that you’re friends with her, Charleston. We know you see her at school.”
“My friend?” He tries out the word, like he’s never given it much thought before. “Adrianna is my friend?”
“Well… isn’t she?” I draw his attention. “She says you’re friends. And other people in your class say so.”
“They do?” His entire face brightens, happiness making his cheeks warm with a blush. “She said that?”
“Sure.” I take a step back and bring Fletch with me. “Will you come out and talk with us, Charleston? Your friend’s in quite a lot of trouble right now. Maybe you can help her.”
“She didn’t hurt him.” Nervously, he opens his door wider to reveal the tank he wears, smattered in day-old food and cheese dust. His hair is shaggy and messy, his jaw, clean, though I get the feeling it’s because he can’t grow anything there and not because he shaved today.
His lashes are long, and his ears—like almost every other feature he possesses—are too big for his frame.
He’s long and lanky, and if I had to make a bet, I’d say he’s physically weaker than Adrianna. But he’s tall. Probably six-five. Perhaps another inch or two over that.
But he’s not a threat to us, and the idea that he stabbed a dude twice his size is already fading from my mind.
I’d sooner bring my suspicion back to Adrianna.
“W-we can sit in the garden.” He sniffles, his long nose wrinkling as he ventures through the door and into daylight. Part of me, an immature part, expects him to hiss when the sun touches his too-pale skin. For his body to catch alight and his screams to peel into the sky.
Though of course, that’s not what happens.
