Page 28 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there after Grimm stopped twitching, after I cried my eyes dry and the puddle of blood on the floor turned burgundy red and thick. I stayed balled up in the desk chair until my joints ached and my ass went numb.

It was only after all that when Holland and Briggs barreled through the entry with their pistols at the ready. It took them seconds to spot me, but I said nothing to their arrival.

Holland lowered her gun as she crept closer. Her cracked sunglasses were tucked in the collar of her button-down shirt, exposing her gray eyes to roam the space. She hadn’t seen Grimm yet, and didn’t before she spoke.

“Fitch, where is he?”

I angled my gaze toward the bloody corpse at my feet.

Holland came around the desk with her expression steeled. When she lit on Grimm’s body, she holstered her pistol and crouched beside him to check for a pulse.

Briggs arrived hot on her heels, his head swiveling in a thorough search of the room. He spared a glance on Grimm, then came up to me.

“You hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He looked out of place in his polo and khakis. He must have been enjoying a vacation day prior to the Capitol attack. Felix wasn’t the only one flexing his good luck today.

Briggs pulled a set of keys from his pocket, then beckoned to my still-shackled wrist. “I bet you’re ready to be rid of those.”

My hand trembled as I held it out. Briggs worked the lock quickly, then removed the cuffs and tossed them onto the nearby desk.

He gave my arm a pat. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

I let him pull me standing, a bit unsteady as sensation returned to my legs in a stinging rush. With a gentle tug on my elbow, he guided me away from the gruesome scene. He held on until we made it to the trickling wall fountain where he eased me down to sit on the edge of the basin base.

“That was a hell of a thing you did,” he said as he lowered himself beside me. “You are a remarkable young man.”

My attention roamed past him, through the glass entry doors, and into the sunshine outside. “Are Nash and Rip all right?” I wondered aloud.

Briggs frowned. “Who?”

It didn’t bear explanation.

Briggs bent forward and braced his arms on his knees. He looked ahead along with me, quiet until he grumbled a soft sound. “You know, I always hoped we would save you but, in the end, you saved yourself. You saved the whole city.”

There was pride in his voice, but I wasn’t sure why. I saved myself from a fate of my own design. A prison I built brick by bloody brick. I avoided the end I rightly deserved, but it wasn’t too late for that to change.

“Do you still believe you’re a villain?” Briggs asked.

I glanced at where Holland stood over Grimm’s ruined body. I’d been called many things in my short life, few of them kind. Criminal, killer, psychopath, traitor… Those descriptions fit, but I wished they didn’t.

“I don’t know what I am,” I admitted.

The older man hummed, still facing forward so the sun cut across his hook-nosed profile. “What you told me about your father,” he began, “about him being disappointed in you…”

My fingers twitched. Disappointment was a far cry from the revulsion my cop dad would have felt seeing my mugshot plastered across newspaper front pages and knowing my body was inked with gang tags and tally marks for every life I’d taken. More than even that, I let Donovan die. I failed at the single task I’d been given. Grimm’s speech on the execution stage was but a shade of the disdain my real father would have had for me. For Marionette.

“I knew Thierry pretty well,” Briggs said. “Maybe better than you did.” When he turned toward me, his expression was kind in a way I wasn’t sure I deserved. “You were his joy, Fitch. His greatest achievement. I don’t believe there’s anything you could do to make him turn his back on you. And if he knew what you’ve come through and how hard you’ve fought to get here, I think…” He shook his head. “No. I know he would be damn proud. ”

The words rattled around in the hollow of my chest until they sank into my gut and sat there. I wanted it to be true, more than I realized. Perhaps as desperately as I wanted to be more than the string of shitty names Grimm called me and the worse ones I called myself.

I sat silent, rubbing my hand across the chaffed skin of my wrist and trying not to look at the skull tattoo I’d used to end Grimm’s life.

The click of high heels against the floor announced Holland’s approach. She stopped within a few feet of Briggs and me and drew my attention with a brusque question.

“What happened?” She gestured to Grimm, sprawled in a pool of his own fluids.

“Cleaning house.” I forced a tight smile. “Mine and yours.”

Holland nodded while avoiding my eyes. She removed the walkie talkie clipped to her belt and offered it to Briggs. “You mind calling this in?”

With a grunt of affirmation, he rose from the ledge beside me. He gave my shoulder a parting squeeze before walking toward the side wall of windows. His voice was a distant drone as he raised the radio to his mouth and launched into a stream of cop jargon.

In front of me, Holland crossed her arms. Her head hung low as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Finally, she cleared her throat.

“Tobin and Felix told me everything,” she said. “I owe you an apology. And my thanks. That’s the second time you’ve saved my life.”

She glanced at the macabre mess on the floor behind the desk, then past it toward the stage on the distant hill. She’d apologized then, too, like it was the last thing she wanted me to hear.

After a long pause, she faced me. “Why did you do it? I was prepared to send you to your death. Had the tables been turned, I can’t say I would’ve done the same.”

It never felt like an option not to. Even when I was tempted to blow off Tobin and Felix’s pleas for help, leaving the Lyles to die at Grimm’s hand was not an acceptable loss. They were a lone, lingering part of my life before the Bloody Hex, reminders of a time when things were different. When I was different.

I nibbled my lip ring. “You’re one of the last people who remembers when I was good.”

Holland’s features went slack, and she turned away. She looked like she wanted to pace, rather than move, she pressed her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes, smudging the day-old makeup.

“What am I going to do with you?” she groaned.

It wasn’t a question I could answer.

Her cheeks puffed through a noisy exhale as her hands fell limply at her sides. “Frankly, you aren’t safe here. I can’t control the people or their opinions, and I’m afraid a single good deed does not outweigh a decade of bad ones…” Another long breath preceded her conclusion, “I don’t want to punish you, Fitch. I think you’ve been punished enough.”

It reminded me of our conversation in the bistro when she’d threatened to arrest me. She was ever aware of protocol and procedure and of the polarity between her position and mine. I’d asked her before what the other options were, but I couldn’t bring myself to wonder now.

Behind her, the glass doors swung inward. Nash barreled into the building, his red hair ablaze in the afternoon sun.

At the sight of him, a stifling weight lifted off me. I stood and shouldered past Holland in a scrambling dash. Nash and I met in the open middle of the room where I flung myself into his arms. He hugged them tightly around me, lifting me onto my tiptoes in a rib-crushing embrace.

It hurt every bruised and broken bone in my body, but I’d never felt anything so good.

He nuzzled into my hair, planting kisses between breathless whispers. “You did it. You fucking did it.” Grabbing my shoulders, he shoved me back and pinned me with a stern but teary glare. “And you’re never doing it again. That scared the shit outta me.”

He dragged me in again, grabbing my cheeks and kissing me fiercely on the lips. When he withdrew the second time, he fixed his eyes on mine as he asked, “Where’s Grimm?”

Breathless and suddenly choked, I glanced at the reception desk and the crime scene it obscured. “He’s gone,” I rasped. “They’re all gone.”

Nash didn’t look at anything but me as he replied, “Good.”

My eyes ached from too much crying, and they burned dry now. I squeezed them shut as if blanking out the reality of what surrounded me could make it all go away. Everyone could go away, too. Everyone but him.

I felt Nash tense and peered out to see the cause. Holland had closed the distance to us and stood a few feet away, visibly reluctant to interrupt.

Nash stepped up beside me. He tucked me under his arm and against his side as he faced the investigator. I snuck a glimpse of his features in profile. They were set and stern in a way I was coming to recognize. Assertive. Protective. Of me.

I pressed harder into him, and he responded with a reassuring squeeze around my shoulders.

“Mister Nash, is it?” Holland asked him.

“It is,” he replied.

Holland extended her hand for a shake. “I understand I also have you to thank for what happened out there.”

Nash stood, unmoving. “Respectfully, Miss Lyle, I didn’t do it for you.”

Holland’s cheeks pinked, and she let her hand drop. “Regardless, the city is in your debt. And Mister Vaughn’s, as well.”

The reminder prompted me to peel myself off Nash long enough to ask, “Is Rip all right? And Maggie?”

“They cleared out,” he told me, then added to Holland, “But I’ll be sure to send your regards.”

He had yet to relax. His stance was set, and his fingers dug into my bicep while he stood snugly against me. The mention of Ripley and Maggie’s departure spoke for what he doubtless wanted, as well. He must have wondered what we were all waiting for.

“Nash—” I stopped myself, then corrected sheepishly, “ Nick , do you mind giving me a minute? Loose ends and all.”

The corners of his mouth dipped in a frown before he loosened his grip on me.

“You’ve met Briggs.” I nudged him toward where the older man loitered beside a cluster of potted plants. “He was my dad’s partner. I think you’ll like him.”

In Nash’s absence, Holland ventured closer. While the other men engaged in awkward conversation, she turned toward me with a wistful smile.

“You may be interested to know that I’m ending things with Preston,” she said.

Her casual tone threw me, braced as I was for a doom and gloom discussion of my not-so-bright future. I glanced at the diamond ring glinting on her left hand. She fidgeted with it, spinning it absently around the base of her finger.

All I could manage in response was a barely audible, “Oh?”

She nodded. “I think I’d like a chance to have something more… meaningful.”

“You deserve that,” I said. I meant it.

“So do you.” Holland’s attention drifted again to Nash and Briggs. “Though, it looks like you may already have it. He’s not just a bartender, is he?”

I took the chance to stare at Nash, looking him over from his tousled ginger hair to his plaid shirt. I ended on his face, with his warm brown eyes and the dimples he got every time he smiled. He was gorgeous, and he took care of me, and I would never know how I got so damn lucky.

My cheeks warmed with a damning blush. “I think he’s my boyfriend.”

“You think ?” Holland teased.

I crossed my arms and shrugged. “It’s taking some getting used to.” I ducked my head into my shoulder, waiting for the heat and color to fade before I muttered, “Look, if you’re gonna arrest me—”

“I’m not going to arrest you,” she cut in. “I just… I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

Strain cut lines across her face as she considered. Finally, her head tipped toward me, and she fixed me with an earnest expression.

“What do you want, Fitch?” she asked. “I’m open to suggestions.”

I couldn’t remember the last time someone asked me that; at least, someone with the ability to provide what I asked for. It felt too dangerous to hope for much beyond survival, and I could hardly ask for forgiveness. At the end of everything, so much had changed, but a few things remained the same.

I was still a villain in the Capitol’s eyes; still the murderer Marionette to any stranger on the street. Holland was right in that I wasn’t safe here. Even if she set me free, my steps would forever be dogged by do-gooder citizens with an axe to grind.

Watching Briggs and Nash carry on, I remembered what the older man told me: “You are a remarkable young man.” It was familiar.

I’d had a similar conversation with Isha months ago, before Donovan’s twentieth birthday. I told her what I would do if I had the same freedoms as my human brother. What I wanted for Donovan was the same thing I wanted for myself; the thing Isha informed me I could never have.

“I want to be unremarkable,” I said.

Holland frowned, confused, until I explained.

“I wanna leave this town and everything in it. Be an unremarkable man with an unremarkable life.”

It sounded like bliss.

She started to protest with a meandering, “I don’t know how…” Then her brows arched up in realization. “The safehouse. The one I lined up for Donnie…” She flashed a briefly remorseful look before concluding, “It’s yours if you want it.”

The declaration stole my breath, leaving Holland ample time to tag on, “But that means you’d have to give it all up. Your name, your reputation…”

My propensity for bad behavior.

“I’m trusting you, Fitch,” she continued. “This deal is for the man I saw here today. That’s who I’m willing to send into the world. Am I making myself clear?”

I nodded long before I found my voice, and my head kept bobbing until I thought to ask, “Can he…?” I looked over at Nash. “Can he come with me?”

Holland’s grin held a hint of mischief. “That’s between you two. Asking him to move in with you would make things pretty official.”

My blush returned with fiery intensity. I stared at Nash so hard he must have felt it because he glanced over his shoulder, questioning at first, then easing into a smile.

I couldn’t wait.