Page 125 of Long Way Down

“What can I do to help?”

Get there sooner next time. God, would there be a next time? Probably. Yes.

She took an insufficient breath. “I just wanna go home.”

She also wanted to smooth the creases between his brows, as his expression grew even more concerned. “Dixie–” he started.

And the curtain opened with a clack of its metal rings. She thought Pongo might move away, but he stayed, other hand finding her hip and squeezing in a grounding, but proprietary way. That muscle in his cheek twitched again: agitation, instinct. In that first split second before Contreras spoke and the tension bled out of him again, she thought Pongo might whirl and deck whoever had interrupted.

But itwasContreras, come to impart a warning. “IAB’s here.”

~*~

They would conduct her full, official interview in the morning, they told her, at One P.P., with the camera and tape recorder. Now, they needed an initial statement.

It took some convincing to get Pongo out of the room, which surprised her, though maybe it shouldn’t have.

“They won’t talk to her in front of anyone,” Contreras reasoned. “Better me pulling you out than them throwing you. Also, man…you’re wearing your cut.”

That got him out with a muttered curse. Melissa had no idea what was to be done about the security footage at the gallery: Pongo flying his club colors with a gun in his hand, squared off from a civilian suspect. That could potentially kick off a disaster for him personally, and the club collectively, one she didn’t have the brain power to worry about right now.

All her focus was fixed on the questions hurled at her, delivered in an offhand manner, detectives’ hands in their pockets, postures relaxed, but which were all designed to trip her up and make clear any gaps in her story.

“Did Waxman behave erratically in your previous meeting?”

“Did any of the evidence point strongest in his direction?”

No, and no. She was still baffled, and could tell them that honestly.

Then:

“You said you were having coffee, yeah? How much? Did you finish the whole cup?”

“You said he smelled like pot. Do you know that from experience? Or was it an educated guess?”

“When you pulled the trigger, did you know you’d strike the perp’s knee? Or did the gun just go off?”

She told them exactly what happened, with as much detail as she could manage, given the inside of her head felt like soup. After, she wondered if she’d beentoohonest, or if they’d manage to twist anything she’d said around on itself until she looked like Rambo squaring off from a cowering child.

She didn’t really care, at the moment.

“Thanks. You did well,” one of them said, and slipped her a card on her way out. “We’ll need you in at eleven.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

She gave them a few-second head start, and then collected her jacket where Contreras had left it draped over the table and went out to the waiting room.

Where she found Pongo.

Contreras, too, but she’d expected him. It was Pongo, always him, who surprised her, and froze her in her tracks.

He sat holding a cup of coffee, gaze fixed unseeing on the wall-mounted TV. In the moment before he noticed her, she had the chance to examine him at her leisure, without his worried stare boring into her.

His curls were loose and wild from running his hand through them over and over. He wore a small, fixed frown, a sharp contrast to his usual resting face, which always tended toward pleasant and relaxed, if not outright smiling. He looked as if he’d aged since she saw him last, not quite twenty-four hours ago. It seemed weeks, or months ago, and the sight of exhaustion writ in the lines of his young face brought her own fatigue to the forefront.

Contreras saw her first, and reached over to nudge Pongo. When they both stood and made moves to approach her, she went to them, instead.

Pongo’s blue stare was impossible to look at up close, so she focused on Contreras instead, discomfited by the way her vision blurred and slid. Shit, she needed to sleep. “How long will Doug be in surgery? We should go–”