I looked down at the graves and felt the weight of his words hit me. I barely heard him walking away while I fought the impulse to fall to my knees.
*
I wound up going by Roman Square a couple of hours later. As promised, Bob had my pay ready, some of it in petty cash. The rest of the guys offered the proper respectful condolences, but I got out of there as quick as I could. My next two stops were a barber to take care of my hair and beard, and a hotel room to sleep for the night.
A trip to the bank the next day confirmed that I had plenty of money from the house sale and Marissa’s insurance policy to be able to afford a new place. I met with Bob’s guy that afternoon, but the best he could do for me was a condo with a couple of buildings in front of the beach. I still took it.
As Bob predicted, the death of Sidhe was a full-fledged PR firestorm. It only got crazier when the autopsy report somehow got leaked out to the press. Conspiracy theories wilder than even what I’d experienced made the rounds. I felt for Brewster’s ex-wife and kids, who got more than a little of the ugly backlash from that crap. Eventually, the furor died down and everyone got on with their lives. Sidhe herself was long since put in the ground by that point.
Bob and his guys were called upon to testify in the case. Once the cops tracked me down to my new place, so was I. They stuck to questions about that last night of my family’s life, letting me off the hook for what happened after.
Bob himself quietly folded Roman Square a month after the Sidhe case wrapped, and vanished from the scene. As far as I knew, he treated every one of his guys as good as he did me.
After that, I used some excess funds to get my private investigator license. If the stuff that Lady McDeath was going to have me do was anything like the Sidhe business, I’d need a good excuse for poking my nose where it didn’t belong. Besides, I needed to earn a living and I was ready to be the captain of my own ship again.
Every once in a while, Sidhe or Brewster come into my dreams. But they’re getting fainter as time goes on. There’s nothing I can do to change what I did. But I can atone. I know all too well about good intentions being the road to hell’s preferred asphalt.
But the road to redemption is, ironically, a lot more crooked.
I’m not even sure I’d call it a road, more like a stairway made up of very, very tiny steps. I pray that I don’t slip on them. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to survive another fall.
About the author
Cristelle Comby was born and raised in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, in Greater Geneva, where she still resides.
She attributes to her origins her ever-peaceful nature and her undying love for chocolate. She has a passion for art, which also includes an interest in drawing and acting.
She is the author of the Neve & Egan Cases series, which features an unlikely duo of private detectives in London: Ashford Egan, a blind History professor, and Alexandra Neve, one of his students.
Currently, she is hard at work on her Urban Fantasy series Vale Investigation which chronicles the exploits of Death’s only envoy on Earth, PI Bellamy Vale, in the fictitious town of Cold City, USA.
Find out more at www.cristelle-comby.com
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book One) Page 8
