"We got a case?"
"I have a case," I specified.
"And yet I think I am going with ya."
"I need you to watch Linny."
"We'll road trip. One big, happy family."
My only response to that was an eye-roll.
"Ya go ahead and get yer scrub on. I'll pick out an outfit for..."
Outfit.
That meant...
"No!" I shrieked, flying across the floor faster than my head and stomach wanted me to, getting there just before he reached for the knob on my bedroom door, crushing myself between it and him, desperation making me do something I didn't want to do.
Adler's brows knitted for a moment before he seemed to shake off the curiosity. "What? Ya got someone tied up in there? Human punchin' bag? Personal sex slave? Are ya taking new applications for that?"
Damn him.
He was possibly the only man on the surface of the earth who could make an incredibly awkward, out of character moment seem light and fun and normal.
"What's up, Lou?" he asked, ducking his head a bit, eyes holding mine.
"Look," I said, taking a breath, breaking eye-contact for a moment while I pulled it together, stifled the panic rising inside, a sensation mostly foreign to me. "I don't want to discuss this. I don't want it to be a thing. But I need you to promise me something."
"Aye. Can do that," he agreed, tone serious, something it so often wasn't.
"I need you to promise me you will never go in my bedroom without permission."
His brows furrowed further, watching me with unsettlingly intense eyes, making me need to fight the urge to squirm.
"Ya got it, duchess. I promise. But ya need clothes. So go get 'em. I'll run yer shower."
With that, he ran my shower. I got clothes, washed, dressed, and found him waiting for me with a power bar he fished out of my cabinet. "Feelin' more human yet?" he asked, latching the leash onto Linny's collar.
"No," I growled, snatching the bar, wishing it was chocolate, not granola and honey. Because as if a hangover wasn't bad enough, I had gotten a little visitor in the shower. I should have been pleased. It would delay the seemingly inevitable intimacy. But all I knew was it was giving me cramps and a backache from hell, and my button to my jeans was piercing into my skin from bloat. I was going to enjoy the hell out of taking this out on a pregnant-girlfriend-beating junkie shithead.
"Let's go," I growled, grabbing my purse, hoping what clothes I had stashed in my car would get me by, noting that Adler must have slipped over to his apartment because along with a plastic bag full of food for Linny, he also had a small backpack slung over his shoulder.
"Let's go get a shitehead off the streets, shall we?" he asked as we moved out into the hall, seemingly already forgetting about my bizarre behavior and unusual promise, something I didn't know if I should be comforted by, or wary of.
But it was a thought forgotten as we climbed into the car, and his hand slammed down on my thigh, giving it a squeeze, like it was the most normal thing, like he did it all the time, like we were some comfortable, loving couple.
And I started thinking things I had no business thinking.
Like how nice it felt when he gave it a squeeze every so often.
Like how I could get used to this.
Like how refreshing it was not to be so damn alone all the time.
Like maybe, just maybe I could open up, tell him all the things I never told anyone.
Like maybe I could let him in.
But that was ridiculous.
That was something that could never happen.
SEVEN
Adler
I thought about her.
A lot.
Almost incessantly.
All during those weeks while I was away.
Never before had I been plagued with feelings of guilt. Guilt was one of those touchy-feely words. It went with things like hearts and consciences. Things I'd swear I didn't have. Maybe I'd been born with 'em, but life had seemed to rip them from me pretty thoroughly by the time I hit my teens.
It wasn't until I was running down leads, or sitting on my fucking hands at the compound that I realized I had both.
A heart because it cracked for Ferryn.
I knew kidnapping. I knew it the way I knew the map of scars on my hands, the way I knew which bones ached when it rained, which ones creaked in the morning. I knew all the barred windows and locked doors that came with being thrown in a room with no exits.
I knew the feeling of cold, damp cement and cinderblocks, the scent of stale air and unwashed bodies, the sounds of my own heartbeat in my ears, speeding up even when I tried to play the part of the jaded youth.
I knew what Ferryn was going through.
I knew the sensation of timelessness, of how minutes could have been hours, hours could have been years.
I knew what it felt like to try to slip into survival mode, find weak spots, learn how to exploit them in the off chance they might lead to freedom.
She'd do that, too.
Not because she led the shitestorm of a life I had, knowing there was not a single hope of someone coming to save me, so I needed to save myself. But because she was smart, trained, willful. Because she would want to try to save herself. And anyone else she might find along the way.
She could handle herself in a lot of ways.
But I had swam in the gutters of this ugly world; I knew what wicked things awaited young girls in basements. Especially around scum like V. Even if she was her grandmother.
The fracture started and spread at the idea of that spirit of hers being broken by forces beyond her control.
And the guilt kicked in because while those thoughts - of Ferryn, of her safety, or her chances for survival - should have been all I could focus on while she was missing.
But there was no stopping the thoughts of her.
Of Lou.
Lou with her hardass shell. And the suspected soft center. With her snarky attitude, but love of dogs. With her haughty dismissal of the bond between us paired with the way she turned liquid and purring with just a few touches.
Me, a man who had never thought much about what a woman I was interested in - mainly because I was never interested in anyone - was thinking, was consumed day and night with what she must have been thinking.
About what had already happened.
What could happen.
What she thought about this separation, my inability to let her know what was going on.
I didn't have her number.
And I hadn't been able to find the half an hour I would need to go and check in with her. If she would even be there with her unpredictable work schedule.
Fuck, maybe I should have sent her a goddamn letter.
Something so that she knew I was serious about finishing what we had started. And more.
But that just felt like the wrong route.
Interactions with Lou had to be in person. Where she couldn't hide. Where her reactions would be right there on her face as they always were, things I could use to work with, to gauge what she really felt against what she said she did.
I understood guards.
And I normally respected them.
But I wanted to dismantle hers.
I wanted to cozy myself within them.
Which was why the moment we all realized there was nothing to be done to find Ferryn once she was free, once she ran off to do fuck-knew what, once I was back in Navesink Bank, debriefing everyone left behind, showering, and changing, I headed right toward our apartment building, knocking, hearing Linny barking, but getting no response.
It wasn't until I got the call from Roderick that I knew where she had been all night.
Drinking with the girls.
Babbling about me on the way home.
She's off her ass, Roderick had added, making it clear I couldn't have any kind of discussion with her until she sobered up. Her liver had pulled a double. It needed some time to process things.
I had unlocked the door once late at night, taking Linny out for a walk, making sure Lou was on her side on the couch. Then I had left her alone, coming back around ten, taking Linny out, feeding her, making coffee, then finally opening the window, hoping the light might rouse her.
She slept like the dead.
Not snoring, just un-wakeable.
I'd even slammed cabinets.
I had no idea if it was a drunk thing or a normal thing, but I intended to find out.
Though maybe a night of sleep after a solid dicking wouldn't be the best test case either. Then again, if I had my way, she would spend all her nights solidly fucked from here until, well, whenever.
I wasn't a forever guy.
She wasn't a forever girl.
So we would likely be a whenever pair.
Besides, no one could genuinely, no bullshite, say the word 'forever' without mostly lying. Since not a fucking one of us knows what our future holds, if forever is a word we even have the right to offer someone.
I had an odd feeling in my center though, like a knot twisted just under my ribcage, that whenever wasn't going to be simply in a day or two with Lou. Or even a week or two. Month or two. I had a strange, uncharacteristic idea that with Lou, it was going to take a good, long time.
Then she woke up, hurting and - if I was right, and I usually was - hurt, acting all distant and dismissive, making me realize it was going to take a while to get her to open up, let me in a little.
Then she did that weird as shite bedroom freakout thing, something both unexpected but not wholly unusual, and reinforcing an idea I had about her.
Lou had secrets, had a past that wasn't fully in her past, it was still hanging around, a purple elephant in the corner. Or, in her case, in her bedroom.
I could look into it, could dig it up myself. Maybe. Some people - people like me - have next to no strings leading back to their ugly origins. But I didn't want to snoop, to trace, to dig it up.
I wanted her to tell me.
So I agreed.
We moved on.
And I would wait.
Until she was ready.
Until she learned she could trust me with it.
"You're breathing on me," she ground out about forty minutes into the drive that would take us up and over into Pennsatucky where this bastard was supposedly hiding out with a sister and her dirtbag husband.
"Ya sure ya don't need to stop for another cup of coffee?" I asked, raising a brow at her.
"I wasn't talking to you. Linny, get back in your seat," she demanded, nudging the mass of muscle with her shoulder, trying to dislodge her feet from the armrest she was steadily trying to haul her weight over. "It is your fault though," she informed me, shooting me a look. "You're in her seat," she specified. "She hasn't been able to hang her head out and slime all the windows and side of the car with drool yet."
"We'll take turns," I assured Linny, turning to push her back into her comfortable back seat. "Lou, maybe taking the day off to nurse yer hangover might be a good idea."
"Why? I'm in a shitty mood. I'd like to take that out on a shitty person."
I couldn't exactly fault that logic, so I shut up and let her stew on the four-hour drive, watching as things went from decently populated to sparse until we were on a literal country road like some cheesy ass country song, flanked on both sides by the occasional trailer. Some were nice, the kind of place people took some pride of ownership in, the yards trimmed, flower boxes overflowing, kids playing out back on those aluminum swing sets you see out front of big box stores every spring. Others, though, were not so well-cared-for.
In my personal opinion, you could always spot trash by their willingness to have actual piles of trash scattered all around visible parts of their yards. Why pay to have your old, moth-eaten furniture picked up by the garbage company when you could just start your own old furniture landfill right out the side of your garage?
We drove almost to the end of the road, finding a robin's egg blue trailer sitting back on a mostly wooded lot. The driveway was like a used car lot, except no one would want to buy a single one of the train-wrecks compiled there, some missing tires, sitting on cinderblocks, others missing windows and dashes, branches sticking out of them, implying some local wildlife settled in, called it home, and started a family there. Dangling icicle Christmas lights lined the gutters while Easter egg decals were stuck to the front window.
"Looks like a nice place to... cook meth," Lou decided, parking her car beside the others, looking almost troubled at the idea of having her precious car anywhere near them. "Alright, Linny, you protect the car," she demanded with a firm nod as she climbed out of her seat, closing her door with barely a click, leading me to do the same.
"Want me to go out back?"
"There won't be a door there," she said with confidence.
"Windows?"
"Let him try to escape into the woods. Making me run on top of everything else would be a really, really stupid idea right now."
With that, she knocked on the screen door, the sound making my shoulders move up instinctively, somehow worse than nails on a chalkboard.
There was a pause before the inside door pulled open, revealing a kid whose face just barely reached over the cutout in the screen door to - I shite you not - glower at us.
"What you want?" he asked, tone very much implying we were bothering him. What he had going on at seven or eight years old that could have been so important completely stumped me. Cartoons? Coloring? Plotting how to fix the shitestorm of an economy two generations before him fucked up? I had no clue.
"We're looking for someone."
"Well... someone ain't here. Fuck off."
Lou turned to me, eyes bright, lips parted in what almost seemed like shocked joy even as her hand flew out to jerk open the screen and slam on the door as the kid tried to close it in her face.
"How old are you?" she asked, head cocked to the side as she eyed up his short-cropped wheat-colored hair, ruddy cheeks, and bright green, almost unsettlingly keen eyes.
"Seven," he declared, raising his chin like the age was an accomplishment the way all small kids did.
"Seven. Really. Well, I don't think you should have a mouth like that until you're... seven-and-a-half at least," she decided, shaking her head. "And, see, if you're going to lie to me, you should really try to do a better job."
"I ain't lying. Somebody ain't here."
"Well, see, I think someone is here. I think your Uncle Percy is here."
"You a cop?"
"Nope."
"Then you can't come in."
To that, Lou's smile was a little wicked. "Well, see now... what's your name, kid?"
"Kevin."
"Well, see now Kevin, the funny thing is... if I were a cop, I actually couldn't come in. Not without a warrant. But since I'm not a cop... I kinda can do this," she declared, pushing open the door, and moving to walk inside. "Why don't you go outside and, ah," she paused, looking over at me. "What do little kids do?"
"Play hopscotch?" I suggested, equally out of my depths.
"He's a boy," she shot back, rolling her eyes.
"Well, now, look who's being a sexist. Maybe he likes hopscotch. And those little lamp oven things. And the dolls that shite themselves."
"I don't like dolls," Kevin insisted, looking between the two of us like we were nuts. And, well, we weren't exactly showing up with our A-game when it came to kid shite.
"Ya like money?" I asked, reaching for my wallet, fishing out a fifty. "This is yours if ya head outside and don't go screaming or shite like that."
All kids liked money, liked the possibilities of it. Huge piles of candy. That new video game they were after.
But poor kids looked at it differently.
Like it held the promise of a full belly.
Or shoes that weren't full of holes.
I would know.
"Fine," he said, jumping up to snatch it out of my hand, "but I ain't telling you w
here he is. I ain't no snitch."
"Nah, not a snitch, kid. Just an opportunist. Those are much better," I told him, watching as he took the cash and ran down the driveway, back down the road we had come from, likely heading to the gas station convenience store we'd seen on the corner.
Even as I turned back, Lou was moving further in the house, leaving me to follow, something I didn't mind. In fact, I was pretty sure I would always prefer it.
There was something about a woman who was doing something she was passionate about. For some, that was singing or dancing, for others it was painting or arranging flowers.
For Lou, it was catching scumbags.
And she was sexy as fuck while she did it. She was in her element. Confident. Happy. This was what she got off on. And I found myself getting my jollies watching her do it. Even as she carefully swept the living room, getting down on her knees on a shag carpet that had the distinct traces of vomit and cat piss, doing it carelessly so she could peek under the twin bed that was supposed to act as the couch, then moving through to the kitchen, not even seeming to notice the way her shoes stepped into something sticky, making a ripping sound each time the sole lifted from the linoleum surface.
Finding nothing, she moved toward the last remaining room, save for the bathroom, but the door had been left open, as had the shower curtain, revealing nothing hiding there except some thick mold that maybe should have been bleached or something because it couldn't have been healthy to breathe that shite in.
"Come out, come out wherever you are," she called as she rounded the corner of the only bedroom in the trailer.
Then stopped, making me have to peek over her shoulder to find the man from the mugshot standing with his hand on the window, not even smart enough to think to pull up the plastic blinds first.
"Well, look who it is," she said, and I could hear the sneer she was sending him. "Oh, do it. Please do it," she begged, watching as he made a move to duck into the window. "See Percy, I have missed my afternoon dose of Midol. And I am just looking for something to slam my fists into. So, please, give me a reason to fuck your shit up. Just breathe in my direction." The man looked over at me, almost like he was seeking advice.
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