Page 15 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

I drove without being sure where I was headed. Ethan and Ezrah grunted and whined in the hatch until I cranked the stereo loud enough to drown them out.

It had taken a day of sobering up to come to grips with the situation in which I found myself. I’d believed sparing the Everett twins might save Vesper and Felix, but I’d been wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things, and it was getting real fucking old.

One thing the raucous music couldn’t overpower was my own thoughts. I wondered how Briggs felt about what must have seemed like a kick in the teeth. He came to bring me back into the Capitol’s fold, and I’d convinced him I could do what was necessary to fix all the broken things in our shitty little town. Or Holland, who’d given me police equipment for exacting vigilante justice, and now believed I’d viciously turned against her and her team. I was willing to be a villain, but not like this.

The Bronco seemed to know the way along the lonely, two-lane highway toward the cemetery outside town. There, I parked the car and then hopped the fence with Donovan’s keys clutched in one hand and the burner phone I’d finally moved off the bathroom counter in the other. I wandered to the back corner of the property to my parents’ graves. To Donovan’s.

The turned dirt had yet to sprout grass, leaving a barren brown patch on the ground. My body felt heavy as I stood at the foot of it, staring at the headstone etched with my brother’s name.

“This is about right for me, huh?” I asked the emptiness. “Showing up unannounced and unprepared. Didn’t bring flowers or anything.”

A sigh seemed to ream all the air and feeling out of me, leaving me cold. I dropped to my knees, then rolled onto my back between Donovan’s grave and our mother’s, staring up at the star-speckled sky.

This was the longest I’d been apart from Donnie since he was born. I didn’t remember it well, but enough to recall that the energy in our home shifted. I went from spoiled only child to responsible older brother overnight, and that sense of obligation had grown as we did.

Our dad never meant for Donovan’s well-being to hang like an albatross around my neck. It wasn’t meant to be a burden. But, God, if it didn’t weigh me down. Now that Donnie was gone, I felt lighter but full of guilt because of it.

“I borrowed your car,” I muttered, sweeping my fingers through the patchy grass. “Hope you don’t mind.”

That was all I would have told him if he’d been here to listen. I would have left out the part about the cops impounding the Porsche, and that I was currently using the Bronco to ferry two Hex members to their deaths. Part of me still wanted to protect him, futile as it was. Or maybe I wanted to keep him from seeing the darker part of me—the side forever stained by violence and blood. He looked up to me. Wanted to be like me. I wanted anything else.

Tears blurred my vision, then broke free to run hot down the sides of my face. “I’m sorry, Donnie,” I said, my voice a rasp. “So damn sorry.”

I never got to apologize. Never got to say goodbye. I’d been there when Donovan breathed his last, but I’d been too shocked and scared to say anything worthwhile. I should have told him he was a good brother and that I loved him. But he’d faded too fast, bled out in a parking lot in the dark, more afraid than I was. I led him into danger, then left him when he needed me most.

“I did my best.” I argued with the niggling voice in my head. The one that reminded me it was my fault my brother died. Not Holland’s. Not even Grimm’s.

My eyes squeezed shut in a spiteful blink as I struggled to explain. “It’s just… my best is kinda shit sometimes. Most times.”

The burner phone rested on my chest, brimming with text messages I hadn’t read and calls I hadn’t returned. It had Nash’s number saved, but I needed to call someone else now. I shifted until I could get my wallet out of my back pocket. Opening it, I thumbed through the card slots to find a black embossed business card.

It read simply Holland Lyle with her contact info beneath. There was no need for a title or affiliation. In our corner of the world, she was as famous as I was infamous.

I dialed the number, put the cell to my ear, and waited through three trilling rings.

“Hello?” The edge in Holland’s voice was typically reserved for strangers and unknown callers.

“Hey, Investigator.”

There was a long pause.

“Fitch?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you… What do you want?”

Cold air nipped at my nose as it started to run along with fresh tears. I pressed my hand to my face, rubbing the moisture away.

“I don’t blame you for Donnie,” I said at length.

The silence that answered made me wonder if she was tracing this call, too. At this point, I should have expected it.

“Then why are you doing this?” she asked. “If not to punish me?”

Her pained tone made me wince. “I told you already. I’m not doing it.”

Hurt shifted to anger as she replied hotly, “We caught you on camera, Fitch. Ten people are dead. Maybe more…”

I knew she meant Felix, clinging to life thanks to his lucky stars.

“Grimm can illusion things. Disguise people.” I sat up as a sense of urgency overwhelmed me. I needed to explain, to make clear what she should have seen for herself. Dropping poison bombs and leaving witnesses alive wasn’t even my MO.

“He was in the Capitol building for weeks posing as your dad,” I continued. “You don’t think he could make one of his lackeys look like me?”

It shouldn’t have been this hard to sell the truth. But it may have been appropriately difficult to make up for a decade’s worth of bad behavior. I was a victim of nothing but the consequences of my actions.

Holland sucked a sharp breath. “Why would Grimm go to the trouble to frame you?”

“Because I’m not working for him anymore.”

And if he couldn’t have me, no one could.

“He wants me dead,” I said. “Has Hex members gunning for me, too. He’s willing to hand me over to whoever gets to me first.”

She made a sound I couldn’t place. Not sympathy, not even close. It was almost satisfied, like me falling prey to some nameless thug was a reality she was ready and willing to accept.

Her contempt carried across the line as a scornful expression in my mind’s eye.

“I’m alone out here, Holland,” I said, more raw than I meant to be. Without Donovan, without the gang, and having to keep Nash and Ripley clear of danger, I was floundering. I’d never been so isolated.

I chewed my lip before adding, “And I’m not killing your investigators, I swear.”

She gave another sort of grumble, no more comforting than the last. “I wish I could believe you.”

My fingers squeezed the cell so tightly I thought it might break. I pinned it against my ear while my free hand palmed the other side of my head, pushing in until my skull throbbed.

“Then believe me!” I exclaimed. “Please!”

“Vesper is dead,” Holland cut in. “Felix might not make it. Why would you hurt them? They actually liked you. Felix even vouched for you.”

I pulled my knees up and huddled between the graves while protest built inside me like steam ready to shriek from a boiling kettle.

“I didn’t hurt them!” I shouted at last. “I wouldn’t—”

Again, she stopped me. “If this is how you treat your friends, I’d hate to see what you do to your enemies.”

Damn tears again. Such a fucking crybaby. I scrubbed so hard at my eyes that my bitten-down nails scraped skin. A long moment dragged by while I grappled with the last shreds of my composure.

“I’m not your enemy, Holland,” I said quietly.

“Save the song and dance,” she retorted. “As far as I’m concerned, this is overdue. No one should get away with murder.”

She was a Capitol woman. Like my father was a Capitol man. He believed in justice and right and wrong, and he raised me to believe in it, too. So, I had no further argument because she was right. I’d had this coming for a long time now.

I felt so hollow that even my words seemed to echo as I said, “I hope Felix is all right.”

Holland’s scoffing snort grated on me before she spoke. “Go to hell, Fitch.”

I hung up the phone.