Theaella

52

Matthew unwound the Ace bandage from his head, enjoying his first clear breath of air since he’d entered the station. “Thanks.”

Jack’s nod looked like a tremor.

Matthew moved over to Brust and started tugging off the detective’s shoes. The big man’s legs hung from Matthew’s grip, deadweight.

In the corner Nu?ez choked out a grunt of pain.

Matthew finished with the loafers and got to work on Brust’s belt. “You’re gonna want to keep pressure on,” he said, not bothering to look over at Nu?ez. “The pen is buried in your femoral artery. If you let go, you’ll bleed out in seconds.”

Nu?ez grunted, eyeing his fallen service weapon a few feet past the tips of his shoes. So tempting.

Matthew stripped off his own jeans and stepped into Brust’s pants. A bit loose, but they fit well enough. The button-up took a bit more doing. The collar was stained, but not terribly. Next Matthew worked the badge lanyard carefully over the mess of Brust’s head and ducked into it.

He made for a passable detective.

Nu?ez watched the fashion show, his upper lip wrinkled back from his teeth like a dog’s.

As Matthew adjusted Brust’s belt around his own waist, Nu?ez let go of the pen and lunged for the Glock.

Blood spurted onto the tile, powerful blasts timed to his heartbeat.

Matthew shook his head. “Mistake.”

Nu?ez toppled over. His hand pawed the floor a few times and then stopped. He stared glassily at nothing.

Matthew smoothed down the shirt, adjusted the badge at his stomach, and freed the handcuffs from the hard leather belt pouch. Then he walked over and tugged the baseball cap from Nu?ez’s head. It fit perfectly.

Jack still hadn’t moved. He remained on the floor, breathing hard.

“Look at me,” Matthew said. “Look at me. You’re okay. Get up.”

Jack obeyed.

“Turn around.”

Jack did.

Matthew slapped the cuffs on him and started to march him out.

“Wait,” Jack said at the door, his voice hoarse with shock. He chinned back at Nu?ez. “The thumb drive. He has the thumb drive in his pocket.”

Matthew went to Nu?ez’s slumped body and dug through his pant pockets. As he extracted the thumb drive, a slab of smooth metal slid out and clattered on the tile. Not just any metal.

Liquidmorphium.

Matthew glared at the Turing Phone. Then he scooped it up, wrapped it and the thumb drive in his jeans, and tucked the bundle under his arm.

They exited into the corridor.

The bullpen was still empty save for O’Malley, who was just now stirring at his desk. As they passed, Matthew paused behind the slender detective. “Apologies.” He picked up the soaked gauze from where he’d dropped it on the desk, pressed it over O’Malley’s nose and mouth once more, and left the detective sleeping on his keyboard.

Gripping Jack’s cuffs in the back, Matthew steered him roughly out onto the sidewalk.

The uniforms were setting a perimeter, holding off onlookers. By now most of the detectives had clustered around the dumpster, comparing notes and shaking their heads. A few looked up at Matthew and gave him a nod.

He nodded back.

Matthew manhandled Jack across the street, into an alley, and out the other side.

The Ford pickup chirped twice and unlocked when Matthew hit the key fob. He released Jack’s cuffs and let them fall into the gutter as Jack climbed into the passenger seat.

Matthew shed Brust’s badge, left it with the handcuffs in a trickle of dirty water by the curb drain, and drove off.

Whac-a-Mole

Returning to the Lincoln Heights house felt like defeat.

And yet here Matthew and Jack were, standing on the splintered floor of the living room, a grim silence filling the darkness between them. They’d barely spoken on the drive here, staring through the windshield, lost in separate thoughts.

“I thought it was over,” Matthew said. “I was wrong.”

Jack’s posture was clamped down, his arms half crossed, one straight, the other gripping the opposite biceps. His knuckles were bloodless, his hand shaking down by his thigh. It looked like if he let go, he’d fly to pieces.

“Jack. Jack.”

A focus came back into his eyes.

“You’re safe now,” Matthew said. “Right now, in this moment, you’re safe.”

He took out Nu?ez’s Turing Phone and thumbed through recent calls. The directory had been completely wiped.

Except for one outgoing call.

He felt a tickle at the back of his skull, the next threat worming its way to the surface. Three problems had arisen. And he’d dispatched all three.

But if this mission had taught him anything, it was that the next problem was waiting just around the corner, blade in hand. And if his concussion had taught him anything, it was that he was playing Russian roulette. There were only so many dry clicks he’d get before the hammer dropped on a live round. It seemed cruelly fitting that his final outing as the Nowhere Man refused to end, as if the universe itself would not allow him to let go.

The time stamp on the Turing showed that the number had been dialed shortly after Jack entered the Hollywood Station and turned himself in. The call had lasted twenty-seven seconds.

As the lead officers on the case, Nu?ez and Brust had been alerted to Jack’s presence by the desk cop. And then Nu?ez had immediately contacted whoever was at the other end of that phone number.

Not Petro, since Petro was dead.

But another shot caller, even further up the food chain.

Nu?ez and Brust had gotten their marching orders. And then headed to the Hollywood Station to murder Jack.

The Turing Phones were links in a chain stretching up. How high that chain went remained to be seen.

Matthew slid the shiny slab of Liquidmorphium back into his pocket.

“What’s that?” Jack asked.

“Something else I have to handle.”