Page 30 of Capitol Matters (Marionette #2)

If Ripley thought I had nerve to ask him for the plague cure after our clash at the gala, Nash must have felt similarly when I stopped him on my way out of the house with a request for five memory potions to go.

He didn’t ask questions, simply met the demand, then gave me a skeptical look as I hurried toward the exit. Donovan didn’t want me along for this task, and I wouldn’t put it past him to ditch me if I held him up.

I skidded out into the Bitters’ End’s gravel lot and found the Bronco idling with my brother in the passenger seat. He gestured to the driver’s side, and I wasted no time sliding behind the wheel while juggling the tiny potion bottles Nash had provided.

Donovan had his nose buried in his cell phone and the radio blaring. I took that to mean he didn’t want to chitchat, so I hummed along to the music. The queue of songs didn’t cut to commercial until we were nearly to Lock n’ Roll. In that time, I’d burned through a cigarette and roughed out a plan I was ready as I’d ever be to share. Over the monotone of the local weather report, I spoke.

“Everything’s gonna be fine. Let me do the talking.”

Donovan frowned. “What talking?” He tracked the memory potions as I stuffed them into my sweatpants pockets. “What are those?”

I raised the final bottle to the sunlight for a shake. The purple fluid inside bubbled. “Mind wipe,” I answered. “Can’t have these fine folks remembering anything except what I’m about to tell them.”

We cruised past the front office, hitting the entry speed bump well over the suggested 5 MPH limit.

“You still got that mask in here?” I peered into the passenger floorboard.

Donovan opened the glovebox and retrieved the scrap of black leather I’d worn the night I nabbed Lover Boy.

With a crook of one finger, it flew from my brother’s hand to mine. I pulled it over my mouth and nose and hoped it would be at least as effective as Clark Kent’s glasses at concealing my not-so-secret identity.

“What are you gonna tell them?” Donovan asked after a quiet moment.

Steering the Bronco down a row of units, I explained, “That if they want to walk away from this, the city gate needs to open. So, they’re gonna have to decide real quick what they value more: their political views or their lives.”

Donovan processed the words, but I wasn’t sure he understood until he asked, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? The last few days? The last few weeks? You’ve been…”

My eyes cut a hard angle to pin him with a look, warning him to proceed carefully.

“Weird!” He threw up his hands. “You’ve been really weird. Even before you went to prison.”

He continued despite my scoffing laughter.

“You tried to run me out of town. Nearly scared off everyone who wanted to join the gang. You gave away the plague cure. To an investigator, of all people. And you’re fighting with Grimm all the time. You even got Nash to ban him from the bar—”

“That wasn’t my idea,” I cut in.

Donovan shook his head. “It’s just a little crazy, is all. Like you’re a loose cannon or something.”

He shrugged and looked aside, but I couldn’t stop staring at him. Those weren’t his words. My brother, with his third-grade education, didn’t say things like that. But he did repeat them when he heard them from others.

We reached the far corner of the property and stopped before the row of units Grimm had reserved. I shoved the gearshift into park and let the SUV’s subtle rock drive a breath from me.

“What does that even mean, Donnie? ‘Loose cannon?’” I swiveled in my seat to face him. “Do you know?”

His mouth tweaked something between a frown and bitten-back words. Finally, he said, “Like… you’re dangerous.”

“ Dangerous ?” I echoed. “To who?”

And who had been filling his head with that nonsense?

I glanced at the phone gripped in his hand and got a pretty good idea.

“I’m no threat to you, Donnie,” I said. “That’s for damn sure. You have nothing to worry about.” Killing the engine, I swung open the door and bounded from the vehicle.

It was quiet save for the distant sounds of traffic in this industrial part of town. Walking forward, I jingled Donovan’s key fob, sorting through the small, silver keys corresponding to eight roll-up doors. Approaching the nearest one brought Donovan rushing up from behind. He darted around in front of me and raised his hands in a defensive pose.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “Let’s just forget about the vote and go home.”

“Go home? They can’t go home, Donnie.” I gestured broadly to the closed storage units. “They never could. Leaving the city is their only chance.”

“If somebody’s gonna die, better them than us.” His dark, doe eyes were pleading. “Right?”

Not even a flicker of surprise crossed his face. He already knew. Of course, he and Grimm had discussed gang matters that didn’t concern me. They had also, apparently, been slandering me behind my back. Grimm was planting doubts in Donovan’s mind and forcing him to choose sides.

Staring at him now, I wasn’t sure he’d chosen mine.

I pressed forward. My brother tried to counter, but my glare was enough to cow him. Donovan stepped aside and wrung his hands while I stooped to the base of the closed metal door. I still had no notion of who occupied which garage or what to expect when I raised the door.

Solitude brought out the worst in people. I remembered fantasizing about murdering the guards in Thorngate and didn’t doubt these people had ample time to imagine what they would do to escape their makeshift prison cells. When the lock clicked over, I gripped the lever handle and freed my other hand, ready to repel a potential assailant.

I pulled the door up.

Clattering metal shattered the quiet as sunshine poured into the narrow storage unit. Compared to the last garage I’d seen, twinkling with ice and snow, this was a desolate wasteland. Pizza boxes stacked waist-high against the wall, crawling with roaches that scurried as light beamed across them.

A five-gallon bucket lay on its side, spilling into a puddle of blue-tinted water with clumps of soggy toilet paper and pieces of wet shit. My nose wrinkled, and I was thankful for the leather mask muting my sense of smell.

Curse words jumbled together as I took a reflexive step backward.

I was still gawking at the raw sewage flooding the path when Donovan said from behind me, “It’s too late, Fitch.”

My head whipped around to find him abashed.

“They’re gone,” Donovan said, a revelation I should have arrived at much sooner.

Turning, I inspected the unit once more. The vacancy was better than a corpse suspended from the ceiling. Also better than an addled isolation prisoner ready to slit my throat with a piece of stale pizza crust.

But it symbolized something much worse.

“Fuck!” I shouted, pushing Donovan aside on my way to the neighboring unit.

I wasted no time with keys or locks, instead grabbing the door handle with a mental hook and yanking hard. The latch gave way, and the overhead door shot upward, grating against its tracks so fast it made sparks.

Inside, I saw pizza boxes, a thankfully upright shit bucket, and a folding chair as empty as the room around it.

Advancing down the aisle, I ripped the garages open as if they were flimsy tin cans. The doors hung at odd angles, nearly off their tracks, revealing ransacked units.

Chest heaving and face flushed, I yanked off the leather mask and threw it on the pavement. I whirled around to where Donovan hung back. He hugged his arms around his chest, but that damn cell phone never left his hand.

“I’m sorry…” Tears choked his voice.

I pointed at the cell, letting my finger lead me in a march toward him. “Who have you been texting, Donnie?”

“N-nobody,” he stammered, getting paler and a bit green as I closed in.

“Show me.” I opened my hand.

His head wagged, and he backed up quickly, stumbling into the corrugated metal wall between open doors. His body hitting it caused a rattling clang that made him flinch.

“I was trying to keep you out of it,” he protested. “You and Grimm have been at each other’s throats, and he’s so mad, Fitch…” Donovan paused and frowned. “The stuff he’s saying about you—”

“Like what?”

He gaped at me. “What?”

“The shit Grimm’s saying.” My fingers curled into fists, sending tension up my arms and across my chest. “He told you I’m dangerous. What else?”

Unreliable. Untrustworthy. Irresponsible and, more recently, a whore. I could fill in those gaps on my own, but I wanted to hear it from my brother.

“There’s nothing else.” Sweat glistened on his face as he fumbled through reply. “It doesn’t matter—”

“Gimme your phone.” I extended my still-open hand.

Rather than surrender or admit defeat, he slid the phone behind his back and set his jaw.

“No,” he said.

With a growl of frustration, I bound his arm with mental energy and straightened the bend in his elbow, forcing his cell-bearing hand out from his side and into plain sight.

“Dumbass,” I muttered, then called the phone through the air to my waiting hand.

I knew his password—he used the same one for everything—so it took scant seconds to unlock the device and click over to the messaging program. Unsurprisingly, a thread labeled “Boss” hovered at the top of the conversations .

Donovan lunged forward and grabbed for the cell. A swipe of my free hand knocked him back into the metal siding again with another echoing clang.

Turning aside, I opened the chat log and started skimming. The most recent incoming message showed as read about ten minutes ago.

Keep him busy. Almost done here.

I stopped moving. An ache stabbed deep in my gut as I scrolled down. While I read, Donovan sobbed protest.

Looking further back found the day’s conversation started with a text time-stamped one hour ago.

Morning. Vote today. Meet downtown ASAP.

Can’t come. With Fitch.

Stall him. We need time.

Hot tears blurred my vision before I was done scrolling. Lowering the phone, I looked at the buildings lining either side of us. The memory potions in my pockets felt as heavy as lead weights. They were unnecessary since this detour had given the gang ample time to collect the votes and dispose of the unfortunate souls who cast them.

Morbid curiosity tempted me to keep reading my brother’s texts, but I couldn’t force myself to focus or think of anything beyond what I’d already seen.

“Fitch, I’m sorry.” Donovan sniffled.

I blinked, scattering moisture from my lashes. No more tears came; everything dried up as I stared at him, composing myself enough to speak in a level tone.

“Where downtown? ”

Donovan’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“Where are they downtown?” I repeated, enunciating every word.

“They’re done by now,” he replied. “They’ll be leaving soon—”

“Damn it, Donnie, answer me!” My fingers tightened around the cell phone I still held, threatening to crush it.

“At the warehouse,” he confessed. “But please don’t go. It’s not safe…”

The sun blazed overhead, adding to the warmth that built in my chest until I felt like I might combust.

Fishing the key fob from my bulging pocket, I motioned to where the Bronco sat parked. “Come on.”

Walking ahead prompted him to follow so closely he nearly stepped on my heels. “Fitch, they could kill you.” His voice strained.

I tossed the cell for him to catch. Fear of the gang’s wrath was an old one, based on threats that had lost their cutting edge over time. I’d lived so long with the terror my brother showed now that I found myself numbing to it. Death sometimes sounded like the respite I desperately craved.

I pulled open the driver’s door and paused with my foot on the running board. A clash with Grimm was inevitable. If he’d finally decided he was done with me, or that his experiment of taking a kid from a good life and loving family and turning him wholly bad was a failed endeavor, he was welcome to put me out of my misery.

In fact, it was about damn time.