Page 104 of Long Way Down

“Guess we’ll find out.”

“Ifmy president says yes. And it might even have to go higher up than him,” Pongo warned, though he figured, given Ian’s marching orders from earlier, the deal was as good as done.

Kat nodded. “We understand that.”

“He said he could deliver the rapist. Can he?”

“I can,” Kat said. Then, without a shred of smugness: “I’m the best tracker in the whole city.”

Pongo took another sip. “And yet, you haven’t found him yet.”

Kat’s brow furrowed, expression darkening. “Gimme a little more time. I will.”

~*~

Before she left, Melissa took one last, thorough look around the fire escape. She didn’t expect to find anything, but she thought it might ease some of Dana’s jitters. Also…if someone really had been out there, and left evidence behind, and she’d missed it…she wasn’t going to forgive herself.

She swept the beam of her flashlight back and forth across the width of the fire escape, slow sweeps side-to-side. She peered into each of the four corners, and halfway up the staircase above, and down the one below. She pulled up the cover on the grill and examined its lid, its legs, and the grease trap below. Nothing but old, gray ash that drifted on the breeze and blew in fat clumps down onto the grated floor. She dropped the cover and knelt to collect the ashes with her fingertips…and that was when the flashlight beam skipped over a shiny patch that shouldn’t have been there.

She tossed the ashes over the rail and crab-walked forward, still crouched, to better examine the sheen over the black iron.

Just beneath the window she’d ducked through minutes before, her light fell on a fresh, liquid smear across the grate of the fire escape floor. Pulse giving a little thump-thump of excitement, she fished a clean tissue from the pack inside her jacket pocket, and told herself it was nothing; condensation that had dripped down off an air conditioning unit above. Carefully, fingers tucked so they didn’t come in contact with the mystery liquid, she wiped it and then turned the tissue over.

A blotch of bright red stared up at her, brilliant crimson in the glare of the flashlight.

Blood.

~*~

A few Scotches, and a dash of Kat’s unwavering confidence in himself, went a long way toward soothing Pongo’s ruffled feathers. If the club wanted to join forces with the Alpines, who was he to object to it? The more the merrier, and all that. He called Maverick when he left Hauser’s and relayed the conversations he’d had, both with Prince, and with Kat.

When Maverick learned of Prince’s true identity, he hummed thoughtfully. “Honestly, that makes me feel better, not worse. Jim’s good people. His little brother can’t be that bad.”

There was a whole passel of kids sprung from the loins of Devin Green that probably would have argued with him about the reliability of DNA, but that wasn’t Pongo’s business. He hung up feeling mostly okay, and walked the rest of the way home – such as it was – in the predawn gray of an approaching leaden morning.

The one thing that continued to bother him was the cold, lupine gleam in Prince’s eyes when he’d mentioned Dixie. Far too similar to the predatory flex of Ian’s gaze, like a lazing big cat gone taut in the haunches, ready to pounce.

Should he tell her?Hey, sweetheart, by the way, the guys I work with think you’re a liability. She would get huffy and accuse him of being a liability to her, but she was shit at hiding her fear, which she was fairly brimming with these days. Beneath every sneer and eye roll, behind every desperate, sharp-nailed touch, clutching as his back when he was inside her, boiled a choking, debilitating fear that he could feel like the static in the air before a lightning strike. What would he tell her if she asked if the club was a threat to her? He could lie like a sonofabitch, but he didn’t want to lie to her.

Better yet, he didn’t want tohave to. Didn’t want his club to sharpen its knives and side-eye the woman he wasn’t very indifferent about anymore.

When he let himself in the apartment, he found Toly, boots on and laced up tight, standing in front of the open fridge and staring into its depths with the same pinched expression Pongo’s grandma donned when someone blasphemed the lord in her presence. As if the moldering Chinese takeout and domestic beer had offended him personally. He stepped back at sound of the front door closing and let the fridge door fall shut with a thwap.

“You don’t have anything to eat,” he said, accusatory.

Pongo toed his boots off at the door and melted down across the couch. “There’s Hot Pockets in the freezer.”

Toly stared at him. “Hot. Pockets,” he said with cold, angry horror. Or maybe that was just how Russians talked, who knew.

“Yeah.” Pongo waved vaguely in that direction. “Pepperoni, I think. Maybe some ham and cheese – but I didn’t buy those. Ham and cheese is ass.”

“Right,” Toly said flatly. “Theham and cheeseare ass.”

“Eat ‘em or don’t, dude. That’s the best I’ve got.” He folded his hands over his stomach and closed his eyes, exhausted, suddenly – and not in the good way he’d been when he left Dixie’s hours ago. This was a weariness brought on by his busy, unhappy thoughts pinging off one another, striking with frustrated little sparks like ungreased ball bearings.

When it had been silent for too long, he cracked his eyes open – and startled when he saw Toly standing right beside the couch, the box of Pepperoni Hot Pockets held out to his side in one hand, as though it were radioactive waste. He studied Pongo with a notch between his brows.

“What?” Pongo asked, a little pissed to have been startled.