He gives me a hard stare and then cuts a look at Kane. “We need a moment, and you outside the crime scene.”
Kane looks at me. “I’ll be above deck,” he says.
I nod, and as relieved as I was that he is alive and here, I am just as relieved that he is leaving. He knows me too well, and I connect with those things when he’s here. I can’t be that human right now. I have to be Agent Love.
Kane walks away. A number of official staff enter the room to collect evidence. Chaos erupts, and Andrew is drawn into questions that I let him answer.
I need to call Murphy. I head for the door, and right when I step onto the upper deck, Beth is doing the same. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
She gives me a once-over. “Holy wow. You look—”
“Bloody good,” I say. “I know,” and again, I ask, “why are you here?”
“Apparently I can’t use this town to escape reality and have it really be an escape anymore. What do I need to know?”
What do you know already and won’t ever tell me? is the real question. But it’s the question I have for just about everyone in this town. It seems like my world is infested with the Society. “Double homicide. I killed the one on the floor.” I step around her, take off my bloody shoes, and then jump off the boat and right into a gaggle of official staff. They clutter the boardwalk and part like I’m a horror-movie version of a goddess when I walk in their direction.
I walk left toward the end of the pier and hop onto some random person’s boat before digging my phone from my pocket, shocked that it’s still inside after I rolled around and played in a couple of people’s blood.
It rings in my red-stained hand, and the minute I note Rich’s number, I’m reminded of the errands I sent him on, and I answer. “Rich.”
“The woman you wanted me to talk to committed suicide.”
No, I think. She was murdered to shut her up, but I need to get him out of this. “It’s over anyway,” is a well-intended lie, meant to get him out of this before he “commits suicide” as well. Protect him when I should never have involved him in the first place. “The corruption points to Eddie, and now he’s dead, so it’s over.”
“What? Eddie is . . . he’s dead?”
“Yes. So is the assassin who killed him. I got in the way and he got in the way. I lived. He died.”
“When? How? Fuck, Lilah. Are you okay?”
“Like I said. I’m alive and he’s dead. End of story. I’m at the crime scene, though. I need to go.”
“Call me when you get out of there.”
“I’ll try,” I say, and hang up.
I’m about to call Murphy when I think about Pocher and his financial connections, not just to Laney but to my mother. I have to prove he killed her. And Lord help my father if I find out he was a part of it. I walk to a seat on the side of the boat, and since no one, me included, wants to see my butt imprint in blood, I decide against sitting after all.
I dial Murphy. “Agent Love.”
“I caught the assassin,” I announce. “I shot the assassin. He kept coming at me. I drove a knife through his chest.”
“He’s dead, I assume?” he asks, all casual and matter-of-fact as if I’ve just shared my grocery list. I don’t actually dislike this response. It’s better than, “Are you okay?”
“Dead and never coming back. And so is Eddie Rivera from the local police department.”
“Are you okay?”
“I hate that question,” I say. “I was just loving you for not asking it. I’m alive. He’s dead. I’m good.”
“First, it’s really damn nice to finally get some love instead of hate from Lilah Love herself. It’s okay to be human. You know that, right?”
“What I know is too much now to go back to LA.”
“You’re keeping the case open,” he assumes.
“No.” And then I add a necessary lie, to appease the Society while I rip them open and watch them bleed. “The assassin confessed.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I got the impression when he told me that he was going to kill me that he didn’t plan on letting me live to tell.”
“
Smart-ass. Who hired him?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“What were the motives?”
“I don’t know,” I lie again.
“What do you know?”
“They called him the Gamer.”
“You killed the Gamer?” he asks incredulously.
“It was him or me.”
“And you came out on top.”
I flash back to exactly that: me on top of the Gamer, Junior, driving the knife into his chest. I squeeze my eyes shut. “Yes. I won.”
“We won. He is a very big feather in your cap, Agent Love. And your success is my success.”
“Well congratu-fucking-lations.”
“I’m back to: Who hired him?”
“I don’t know,” I repeat.
“Then how are we closing this case?”
“It’s a dead end.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I can’t go back to LA,” I say, rather than tell another lie.
“If the reasons you’re staying relate to the corruption you suspect within your family, working for that New York City bureau could be a problem for you.”
“If they’re dirty, I’m a problem for them.”
“I’m not going to approve that transfer.”
“Then I guess I quit.”
“No. You work for me. You don’t get to walk away that easily.”
“I’m not going back to LA,” I repeat. “You can’t keep me if I don’t want to stay.”
“Don’t bet on that.”
He hangs up.
“Asshole,” I murmur, and turn to stare out at the darkness, where the water stretches into a sea of eternity and my mind replays the feeling of driving that knife into yet another man’s chest. I want it to freak me out. I want it to make me melt down. Instead, I think back to the night on the beach, my attack. My knife driving over and over into that Blood Assassin’s chest. Kane’s words play in my mind next: It’s okay to enjoy it.
“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.” I toss the bloody blanket still draped over me over the edge and watch it sink into the water, washing away the blood as it does. I grab my badge, remove the photo I have inside it, and then toss it as well, watching it sink. And with it, the rules it represents.