Page 28 of The Dead Come to Stay

“That was a very dangerous thing you did,” MacAdams said. He was sitting in the back of a police SUV with a cold compress

on his head.

“At least I ducked,” Jo said, which was true. The assailant narrowly missed clocking her with the pipe he’d thrown—a pipe

presently being dusted for fingerprints. MacAdams winced a bit.

“Yes, and good. But I meant pretending you were the police.” His words were coming through gritted teeth, and one eye kept

blinking on its own. “What if he hadn’t been fooled?”

“I had at least already called the police,” Jo reminded him.

It took Jo rather longer than anticipated to climb the fence; the toe of her Doc Martens didn’t fit right into the links,

so there had been a lot of scrambling. By the time she made it over, MacAdams had gone into the building, and two other people had come out . She’d waited in the dark until the ones unloading began making noises of return—then she ran in ahead of them to warn MacAdams

to hide. At least, that had been the plan.

“Ms. Jones?” an officer asked. “Can you please give your statement?”

“Now?” Jo looked back at MacAdams, who nodded she should, then looked sorry he’d moved his head that way.

“I had just got into the stairwell. It was pitch-black, so I was crawling up and there were twelve steps instead of eleven

per flight. It should end on an odd number because most people step off with their right foot.” Jo pinched her own thigh.

Stop doing that. “Sorry, um.” Architectural Elements and Design, 2014. “The door on the second floor opened and I saw someone climb to the third.”

“Where Detective MacAdams had gone,” the officer clarified.

MacAdams made noises of agreement. Jo took a moment to look back at the building. They had floodlights on it, and the actual electrics inside were on, too. A crew from Newcastle were sweeping through each floor.

“Right. I followed, and I saw him get hit.” Jo winced in spite of herself, not least because Ronan Foley had been murdered

that way. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I shouted ‘Stop! Police!’”

“And you say you recognized the man? How?”

“I turned my phone light on when I yelled,” Jo said. The hope was to blind him and keep him from seeing her . There he was, the same sallow, heavy jowls, eyes squinting over grimace. A big brick of a human. “He owns a butty van I’ve

seen in Newcastle and Abington.”

“About that.” MacAdams pulled out his phone and stared at it blearily. “Green has the license for the other butty van. We need to fast track.”

MacAdams was now on the phone, and it seemed he’d not been the first to call Green.

“Yes, I’m fine. Mostly fine... Yes—all right, yes, I’ll have myself checked over at A do your ears ring? Do you feel dizzy? Blurred vision?” She inched forward to stare right into

his pupils, “Your eyes are dilated.”

“It’s bright in here, Jo.”

“It’s not that bright. What if it’s a mild traumatic brain injury? We need our brains. You and me especially,” Jo said, putting both hands

in her lap. They were in little fists. He’d seen her do that before. Angry? No. Nervous. Anxious.

Worried.

“I’m... fine. I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to placate.

Jo’s head darted up in a way his might never do again. “You might have been very not fine! That guy— big guy—” she aped a Herculean figure “—had an honest-to-God- Clue -murderer lead pipe ! And I saw him, and I didn’t even stop him hitting you!”

Her fists returned to her lap, squashed between knees. She wasn’t looking at MacAdams anymore but at the floor, worry lines

creasing her brow between strands of hair dislodged from her ponytail. MacAdams could blame things on the incessant pounding

at the base of his skull or on the sudden influx of new case information, which included an apparent rare artifacts trade

happening in Yorkshire , of all places. Or maybe he was just too unforgivably thick to make the realization that—first—Jo just saved his life. Second,

on some level, despite having absolutely no grounds in reality, she was blaming herself for not preventing the attack. Often Jo baffled him, but especially in this moment. Five feet and a few spare inches of unaccountable

behavior. She once jumped out the window of a (burning) building; tonight, she broke into one to keep him getting his head knocked in.

“Jo? Can you look at me?”

“Probably.”

“Try.”

Jo slumped her shoulders and looked up, and the semipetulant expression would have been funny except it wasn’t. MacAdams took

a breath against his pounding headache.

“What you did was dangerous and reckless. And brave and selfless. Thank you for doing it. And—” There was a compliment swimming

around in MacAdams brain. And , they would not have taken an interest in the butty van without her. And , they wouldn’t have known his assailant was connected to it without her. Fucksake, she made a better detective than half

the people on the force. How did you wrangle that into words? Jo was still waiting on him to finish, perched forward on an

uncomfortable chair with her knees together and her feet apart, all scuffed Doc Martens and dirty jeans.

“Honestly? I’m just glad you’re here,” he said finally.

“Really?”

“Yes. If I don’t look appreciative it’s because someone hit me with a lead pipe.”

“It’s not an improvement on you,” Jo said. And it was funny enough to laugh at, but he was afraid his brain might explode.

“James MacAdams?” the desk clerk announced, and he hobbled off to have his war wounds dressed, knowing Jo would be there to drive him back to

the murder hotel. And that was just fine.