“I know, man. Sucks to be us, huh?”
Sock’s voice faded into the distance, coming down a long tunnel. “Sock…” Sweet Jesus, help me.
You are too weak, Thomas Morgan. I will gut them and splatter their fucking brains all over their walls. My baby boy will have justice!
“What is it, Tom? You need me to get someone in here?”
Morgan sat up and stretched his neck from side to side. He pushed away from Sock and slowly staggered back to his feet. “No. I don’t need anyone. I’m good. I’m going to kill them, every last one of them.”
“That’s the spirit,” Sock said, slapping him on the back.
“Yes,” Morgan said and grinned. “It is.”
Chapter 1
Jackie woke from her recurring dream of the past two weeks where she had been chasing down Laurel through the shrouded, gray streets of Chicago’s Deadworld. Laurel continually stayed ahead of her, slipping into the swirling fog, only to reappear moments later. Sorry. A simple yet significant word. If Laurel would only stop so Jackie could say it, but she led her on a never-ending game of cat and mouse, taunting and teasing, until the end, when waking finally peeled back the layers of tequila-induced sleep, and Laurel would stop in those crystallized final moments of dreams, when everything was painfully real.
“I don’t love you anymore!” The damning statement came with such force it physically knocked Jackie backward. No matter what she did, she could not get the apology out of her mouth before the depressing light of day intruded and sent the dream scattering away, back into the recesses of her mind.
Jackie lurched up from the couch to the buzz of her doorbell, driving tiny little spikes into her throbbing skull. Bickerstaff blinked at her from atop one of the couch cushions.
“Shit. Go away!”
The cat leaped off and jumped for a safer perch atop the piano, hidden among the empty tequila and wine bottles, half-empty glasses, and open Chinese-food containers.
“Not you, dummy.” The buzzer rang again, followed moments later by her ringing phone. Jackie put her hands to her ears. “Oh, my God.”
She swung her feet off the couch and pushed herself up. Her head weighed fifty pounds. The motion knocked over the carton of fried rice in her lap, sending the remains spilling across the floor.
“Damnit!” Jackie brushed rice off the couch. She needed at least one clean spot in her apartment. The answering machine finally picked up.
“Jackie? You awake? I’m downstairs. I know you’re home.”
The voice brought Jackie to her feet, feeling like a wobbling, overstuffed bobblehead. It was Belgerman.
“Oh. Oh, fuck.” Jackie turned, looking quickly around her apartment to see if she might be able to sweep the collected crap of two weeks’ worth of slumming and depression out of sight from John. There was shit everywhere. And she realized the litter box was officially too full. He could not come in. Could. Not. Likely, he’d just fire her on the spot.
Jackie made her way through the clothes on the floor, spilled mail off her entry table, and hit the intercom button for the downstairs entry. “S-sir?” She was forced to clear her throat to get the word out. “What are you doing here?”
“I stopped by on my way in to give you a file you might want to look at before you come back.”
“A file? For what?”
“Your new partner,” he said. “Figured you might like to get a head start on him so you can be a bit more up to speed when you come back.”
Jackie let her head sag against the wall. New partner. Holy hell. The thought had been completely gone from her mind. “Let me get something on, and I’ll come down and get it.”
“Just buzz me up, Jack. I’ll hand it to you.”
And see my place? I don’t think so. “That’s okay, sir. Just give me one sec.”
“Jack! For Christ’s sake. We could have been done already. Buzz me up.”
Jackie jumped at the startlingly loud volume of his voice and hit the button without even thinking. “Shit.” She was standing there in a knee-length T-shirt that stated ALL GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES. Jackie opened the hall closet and pulled out an overcoat-a button-down, belt-at-the-waist, traditional khaki-colored raincoat that had been a gift from Laurel on Jackie’s first day on the job. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d worn it. She yanked it off the hanger and barely got it wrapped around her as Belgerman walked up to the door. She stepped halfway out and held the door closed against her foot. A couple inches of space did not afford much of a view, or so she hoped.
“Looks like I woke you up, Rutledge.” He smirked at her appearance. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were rather happy to see me.”
It took Jackie a moment, looking down at herself, to realize what he was getting at. It looked as though she might be naked beneath the overcoat. She could feel her cheeks begin to flush. “You did, sir, but that’s okay. I should probably be getting up now anyway.”
He glanced at the door. “Hiding someone in there, are you?”
“What? Oh. God, no. I was just sleeping, sir. I’m not much of a morning person. Sorry.”
He laughed kindly. “Don’t be. I was just giving you shit. You going to keep me standing out here in the hall like your local Jehovah’s Witness?”
Jackie glanced back into her dumping ground of an apartment. It was not the home of a well-adjusted agent. It was an embarrassment. “The place is kind of trashed. I haven’t really done any cleaning since I’ve been off. If it’s all the same, sir, I’d rather you didn’t see it this way.”
Belgerman looked over her head through the crack in the door. “I’ve never pictured you as the neat and tidy sort, Jackie. And you’re talking to a guy who lived on his own until he was thirty-two. I’ve seen and lived in my share of trash heaps, so quit worrying.”
She winced, keeping a firm grip on the door handle. “I know, but, uh… it’s bad.”
John rolled his eyes. “How many times have I been out here, Jackie?”
“You’ve never been here, sir.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I don’t care if you’ve been punching holes in the walls. I know how hard this is. I’ve been there. I lost a partner to some gunrunners about fifteen years ago. One of the shittiest times of my life. I think I can see past the mess. Honestly, I’m curious. I’m not your father.”
Jackie looked up into his very fatherly eyes. He’d always had some of that feel about him. She had more respect and admiration for his work than anyone. And somewhere, buried in the vaults of her mind, a twelve-year-old girl desperately wished she could have had a father just like him. Her shoulders slumped, and Jackie let go of the door.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said and stepped back in to give him access. She wanted to run and hide, shut herself away in her room and make him put the file down and leave. After closing the door, she found him standing at the threshold of the living room.
“So this is the infamous piano,” he said.
Jackie leaned against the wall behind him, arms crossed over her chest. Please, please, please don’t ask me to play. “Yeah, that’s it. Doubles as a bar.”
There were three empty tequila bottles sitting on top, a half-empty bottle of red wine, half a dozen Chinese-food cartons, and a mostly eaten package of Oreos. None of this would have been so bad if it weren’t for the pair of flies eagerly buzzing around the treasure trove. If he didn’t go in any farther, he would miss the kitchen, where every last dish and cup sat unwashed in the sink and overflowing onto the counter.
“You have a cat?” Belgerman turned to face her at last. His face was slack, noncommittal.
Jackie looked around but didn’t see Bickerstaff. This only meant one thing. He had smelled the cat-or, rather, the cat box. Another one of those things she had been meaning to get to, but it had never made it on the to-do list above drinking or channel surfing. He had to be thinking she was completely disgusting.