“You put me in here to do a job,” I said. “I’m not leaving till I get it done. I’m not fighting about it, Frank. I’m just telling you.”
This time Frank understood. His voice didn’t sharpen, but it had an undertow that made my shoulders go up. “Do you want me to pick you up off the street, find drugs on you and throw you in jail till you pull yourself together? Because I’ll do it.”
“No you won’t. The others know Lexie doesn’t do drugs, and if she gets dragged in on a bogus charge and then dies while in police custody, they’ll kick up such a stink that this whole operation will go up in flames and you’ll be cleaning up the mess for years.”
There was a silence, while Frank evaluated the situation. “You know this could end your career, don’t you?” he said eventually. “You’re disobeying a direct order from a superior officer. You know I could haul you in, take your badge and your gun, and fire you on the spot.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” But he wouldn’t do it, not Frank, and I knew I was taking advantage of that. I knew something else, too, I’m not sure how; maybe from the lack of shock in his voice. Sometime in his career, he had done this same thing himself.
“And you know you’re making me miss my weekend with Holly. It’s her birthday tomorrow. You want to explain to her why Daddy can’t be there after all?”
I winced, but I reminded myself that this was Frank, Holly’s birthday was probably months away. “So go. Let someone else monitor the mike feed.”
“Not a chance. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have anyone else. The budget’s run out on this one. The brass are sick of paying officers to sit around listening to you drink wine and strip wallpaper.”
“I don’t blame them,” I said. “What you do with the mike feed is your call; leave it to monitor itself, if you want. That’s your half of the gig. I’m just doing mine.”
“OK,” Frank said, on a long-suffering sigh, “OK. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’ve got forty-eight hours, starting now, to wind this up-”
“Seventy-two.”
“Seventy-two, on three conditions: you don’t do anything stupid, you keep calling in, and you keep that mike on you at all times. I want your word.”
Something prickled inside me. Maybe he did know, after all; with Frank you can never be sure. “Got it,” I said. “I promise.”
“Three days from now, even if you’re an inch away from breaking the case, you come in. By”-watch check-“quarter to midnight on Monday, you’re out of that house and in an emergency room, or at least on your way there. Until then, I’m going to hang on to this tape. If you stick to those conditions and you come in on time, I’ll erase it, and no one else ever needs to know about this conversation. If you give me one more iota of hassle, I will haul your arse in, whatever that takes and whatever consequences it has, and I will fire you. We clear?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re crystal clear. I’m not trying to fuck you around, Frank. It’s not about that.”
“This, Cassie,” Frank said, “was a really, really bad idea. I hope you know that.”
There was a beep and then nothing, just waves of static in my ear. My hands were shaking so hard that I dropped the phone twice before I managed to hit End.
The irony of it: he was millimeters from right. Even twenty-four hours earlier, I hadn’t been working this case; I’d been letting it work me, free-falling into it, full fathom five and swimming deeper. There were a thousand tiny phrases and glances and objects that had been scattered through this case like bread crumbs, going overlooked and unconnected because I had wanted-or thought I wanted-to be Lexie Madison so much more than I wanted to solve her murder. What Frank didn’t know, and what I couldn’t tell him, was that Ned of all people, without ever having a clue he was doing it, had pulled me back. I wanted to close this case, and I was ready-and this isn’t something I say lightly-to do whatever it took.
Probably you could say I came back fighting because I had been suckered, almost fatally, and this was my last chance to make up for that; or because the only way I would ever get my career back-It’s my job, I had said to Daniel, before I knew the words were going to come out-was if I got a solve here; or because our lost Operation Vestal had poisoned the air around me, and I needed an antidote. Maybe a little of all three. But this was the one I couldn’t get away from: no matter what this woman had been or done, we had been built into each other since we were born. We had led each other to this life, this place. I knew things about her that no one else knew, in all the world. I couldn’t leave her now. There was no one else to look through her eyes and read her mind, trace the silvery lines of runes she had left trailing behind her, tell the only story she had ever finished.
