Page 149 of Long Way Down

A beat. He said, “You do realize that a six-year-old can’t save anyone, right? That you weren’t supposed to have prevented a crime while you were a child?”

“You and Pongo should spend more time together. You’re like this.” She twined her first two fingers together.

“If you mean ‘wise and handsome and sociable,’ then yeah, I agree. Dixon,” he said, seriously, and she turned to meet his gaze across the car. “I know he told you, but I’m telling you, too, because you sound like you need to hear it. What happened to your cousin is not your fault. You don’t have anything to atone for.”

She scraped up a smile for him. “Maybe not. But then I dropped out of med school and studied criminal justice. And then I took the detective exam. And then I jumped ship to Sex Crimes, because, and here’s the ugly part, it turned out I wasn’t ever really trying to help anyone. I wasn’t being noble. I just wanted to collar sickos and throw away the key.

“See?” She let her grin stretch, a flash of teeth in the dark that probably looked unhinged. “I don’t feel bad for a second about shooting Doug Waxman,” she admitted. “In fact, I wish I’d killed him. So I’m just as obsessed and bloodthirsty as the people we’re chasing.”

She twisted away and pressed her back flat against the seat again with another deep exhale. She felt cleansed. She felt like he was probably going to tell their captain she was unhinged. “Aw, fuck,” she said, tiredly. “He was a sick freak, and a pedo, and a murderer, but Keith was probably right about one thing: I’m going to hell.”

Quiet reigned a long moment, filled with the hum of the engine and the regular, flashing bars of yellow from the lights they passed beneath; they panned across the car like spotlights, gliding over her knees, and the dash, and his hands on the wheel before the dark swallowed them again.

Finally, in a surprisingly warm tone, he said, “Well, I don’t have a pastor, but I have a priest. A padre. Been going to the same mass since I was this big.” He held his hand a scant inch off the top of the center console. “And he’s got this saying, yeah? I always liked it. He says, ‘Hell is an awfully long way down.’ We all have sins, yes, but yours aren’t so heavy as all that. You didn’t fall too far.”

Taillights glowed red in front of them, and silhouettes shifted behind all the lighted windows that glowed around them; people moving in their own private worlds, acting out their own private dramas. The good, the bad, the evil, all existing in little parallel pockets. How many heavy conversations like this one were taking place behind those twitching curtains? Was anyone else as lucky as her, to have not one, but two men in her corner? Not absolving, no, because not even Contreras’s padre could do that…but listening. Hearing. Accepting.

She felt a smile tug at her mouth. “A long way down,” she murmured. “I like that.”

“Thought you might. And just think: Pastor Keith’s down there saving some seats.”

She barked a shocked laugh, and he echoed it.

Twenty-Seven

When she yawned wide enough that her jaw cracked, Contreras insisted on dropping her off at home and continuing on to Starbucks without her.

“You think I’m compromised,” she guessed, more than a little bitter.

“No, I think you’re hurting, and so tired you can barely function, and that you need to get some sleep. Preferably in a bed and not at a Starbucks table.”

“You shouldn’t have to go alone,” she said, and yawned again.

“Your boy’s gonna be there, right?”

“Oh God. This is a terrible idea.”

“Nah, it’ll be great. I’ll deputize him.”

“OhGod.”

Then there was the small issue of someone having written a message in blood on her door to contend with. In the end, he took her to Pongo’s place, and insisted on walking her up. The door was blood-free, but he still wanted her to go in and make sure there were no ugly surprises.

There was one surprise, though it wasn’t ugly: when she let herself in with the spare key Pongo had loaned her, she found Toly sitting on the couch, eating leftover pasta in front of…some sort of documentary; there were flamingos currently on the screen.

She froze in the threshold, and Contreras crowded at her back so he could look over her shoulder, probably thinking she’d spotted a threat, or something out of place. But, no, it was only a Russian, spaghetti sliding off his fork as he sat frozen, staring at her with a flat, inscrutable expression.

“Do we know him?” Contreras asked in a stage whisper, when she failed to come up with any sort of explanation.

She swallowed her initial swell of surprise. “Yeah. He’s one of Pongo’s…brothers.” That word was always going to seem strange in that context. Or, at least, it still did. Presumably, she’d attached herself to the club through Pongo and would now have to get used to all sorts of new phrases;old lady, for instance.

“Okay,” Contreras said, unbothered. She saw him lift a wave in her periphery. “Hey. I’m Rob.”

“You’re a cop,” Toly responded. His ability to remain toneless with that heavy an accent was a true skill.

“The partner, actually. I’m cool, though.”

“Ugh,” Melissa groaned. To Toly: “They still don’t know who painted blood on my door and I’m…basically dead on my feet. Is it okay if I crash for a little while?”