Lena tugged my sleeve, and we fell a step or two behind. “Callum, we should talk about all this.”
“I know.” I patted her hand. “Later, though, okay?” If I didn’t sleep soon, I was going to shut down quite literally.
“Later,” Lena agreed.
I slept through most of the ride home. Fletcher sat in the front while Lena, Haruto and I rode in the back, and when the car rolled to a stop outside my apartment, I found that Lena had curled into my side, head tucked on my shoulder. I extracted myself carefully so as not to wake her, clapped Reed on the shoulder to thank him, then climbed out of the car on aching legs. Haruto was still awake, and he watched me go, eyes rimmed red. I doubted he would sleep well for quite a while.
It took me three tries to get the key properly fitted in the lock, but when I finally managed it, I staggered inside and changed out of my dirty clothes. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world.
Twenty-Seven
The next morning, I awoke to the incessant buzzing of my phone, bright shafts of sunlight slicing through the blinds and into my eyes. I groaned, disoriented, and slapped my hand around on the bedside table until it landed on my phone, and I squinted at the screen, struggling to read it with my sleep-blurred eyes.
Dunnel was calling me, and I wondered what the hell he wanted this early in the morning until I realized that it was almost noon. My battery was at two percent, so I put Dunnel on speaker as I hunted around for the cord.
“Hello?” I said as I fumbled the charger into its port.
“I’d love to let you sleep the day away, but we’ve got things to do,” Dunnel said. “Finn and his mother are waiting for you to get here before they make their statement.”
“How long have they been there?” I asked and began to hunt around for trousers.
“A half-hour.”
I felt guilty making them wait for me when they’d already been through so much. “My car’s still in the shop.”
“It’s all fixed up for you,” Dunnel said, and a flash of excitement curled down my spine at the thought of having my own wheels again. “But it’s in the station lot which doesn’t help you much now. I woke Fletcher up first and sent her to pick you up.”
I had a shirt and trousers under my arm and was searching for a pair of socks and my belt. “Great. Apologize to the Wairs for me, will you? And tell them I’ll be there soon.”
“Will do.”
I hung up the phone and finally found the rest of my clothes, tossing them unceremoniously into the bathroom across the hall. I could definitely tell I hadn’t showered the night before, so I let the water warm-up and then took the world’s shortest rinse. It wasn’t nearly enough to get rid of the pervasive chill in my bones, but there was no time to waste. I would just have to make do with the thought of using up all my hot water this evening.
Fletcher honked her horn when I was mostly ready to go. I swiped my only partially charged phone off the table and staggered down the stairs still trying to button my shirt. I walked out of the apartment in only my socks, regretted it instantly as the damp pavement soaked into the fabric, and three my boots into Fletcher’s car before I got in.
Fletcher looked like hell, and I was sure I did, too. That was why I hadn’t looked in the mirror this morning. She had dark bags under her eyes, and her bun was ragged and lopsided as if she hadn’t bothered to redo it after sleeping on it.
“Do you also want to kill Dunnel?” she asked.
“Very much so.”
I stuck my feet in my shoes, glad that I’d managed to grab a different pair than I’d worn the night before since those were no doubt still wet, cold, and smelly.
“I’m going to take next week off,” Fletcher decided. She had dirt caked under her fingernails, and her knuckles were still red and swollen from the fight.
“That sounds like an excellent plan.”
I hadn’t taken a vacation in a while. Maybe this was the perfect time.
Fletcher parked as close to the station doors as she could and killed the engine, resting her head on the steering wheel and closing her eyes for a moment. I knew how she felt. Like she’d been hit by a truck.
We rallied and climbed out of the car. The station was a hive of activity when we entered as every available pair of hands worked hard to process the huge haul of suspects we brought in the night before. I didn’t know how to thank them for all they were doing, especially when I should have been there right along with them but had been fast asleep in my bed instead. Perhaps I’d get them a cake.
Dunnel was on the lookout for Fletcher and me and spotted us the moment we walked through the door. He sat in the break room with Ainslee and Finn, since that was the only room in the station not currently filled with chaos or criminals. The Wairs had their backs to us, but Ainslee hand an arm wrapped tightly around Finn’s hunched form as if she would never let him go.
It would be a hard stretch of time for the two of them. Kids were amazingly resilient, so Finn would bounce back faster than Ainslee and then would begin to chafe beneath her extra safety measures, leading to tension within their home. How much of this ordeal would he remember when he was older? Seven was one of those ages that you either had crystal clear memories of or you remembered nothing at all. It was hard to say if this week would be seared into his mind or if he would
