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“It also costs a lung,” Minka quips. “You could give her some of yours.” But then she wrinkles her nose. “Not if you shoot yourself, though.”
“I could!” Like she’s given the man an idea, he jams the gun deeper against his chin. “If I die, she gets my life insurance money and two healthy lungs! We’d be a perfect match.”
“Nuh-uh…” Minka swats my fucking hand away and turns to her buddy to chit-chat. “By the time the cops clear this scene and wash your blood out of my couch, your organs will be dead.” She tut-tuts in the back of her throat. “What a waste.”
“I don’t believe you.” He peers to Fletch and wraps his finger around the trigger. “My name is Parker John Slade, and I carry O-negative blood. As does my daughter. She requires a lung transplant to live.” He squeezes his eyes shut so tears spring free to dribble along his temples. “I demand you keep oxygen pumping through my body until the authorities arrive and can extract the organs.”
“How are they gonna perform CPR,” Minka asks, “if you blow the bottom of your face off?”
“Minka!”
“Oh, right.” So Slade lifts his pistol and sets the end against his temple—but it’s angled so when the bullet passes through him, it’ll hit Minka, too. “Goodbye.”
“No!”
Slade squeezes the trigger, and I dive forward. Fletch jumps. Minka squeals when I crash into her already sore body, but still, I stand faster than I thought I could manage and yank her up to stand behind me.
But Slade’s gun doesn’t go off.
He pumps the trigger once. Twice. He cries out and tries a third time.
“Six bullets,” Minka singsongs. “Earl said there were six bullets.”
“Fucking hell!” Fletch holsters his weapon and snatches Slade’s before he can use it to hammer himself to death. Then he grabs the man and slams him to the floor. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney.”
ARCHER
“About time, Detective Malone.” Captain Bower sits behind his desk, leaning back, his fingers steepled, and his eyes a dangerous arrow aiming straight for my heart. He glances to the clock on his wall and raises a single, threatening brow. “It’s nearly five o’clock.”
Motherfucker, I didn’t intend to be here at all.
“We got caught up with the Parker Slade case,” I grit out. To my right, Fletch stands with his head down, eyes on the floor. But he’s with me, like he said he would be. “You have my apologies, Captain. Today’s been… eventful.”
“Yes, well—”
He picks up the phone on his desk when it rings, only to slam it down again to silence it. “I appreciate your dedication to your work… though the Slade case wasn’t yours to run.”
I have no response. and he’s sure as shit not asking for one, so I shut my lips and follow Fletch’s lead, lowering my head.
“I’ve received a concerning phone call, Detective Malone, that directly relates not only to you, but to a couple of cases you and Detective Fletcher are primaries on.” In my peripherals, I watch him slap a manila file to his desk. “Justin Dowel.” Then another. “Laramie Fentone.” Then a third. “The vigilante.”
My heart stops dead in my fucking chest while the gun I carry burns against my thigh.
“You’re lead on at least two cases that point us toward the vigilante killer, Malone. It’s been nearly five months, and you’ve made not one arrest?”
“We’ve been—”
“You’re ignoring tips from your rat!” he booms. “You’re prioritizing other cases over Dowel’s. So now, I would like to ask you, Detective…”
I look up in time to catch a fat vein pulsing in his forehead.
“Where were you on the evening of Justin Dowel’s murder, between eight p.m. and three a.m.?”
“What?”
“Answer the question, Detective. Your whereabouts on that date, during those hours?”
“Um…” I look at Fletch, then back to my captain. “I-I was at my brother’s bar until midnight. I only had one beer, but Fletch was having a tough time personally, so we hung out and talked. I could probably pull bank statements to show a timestamp of when I paid for my meal.”
