I couldn’t explain why Slick’s comment had struck such a nerve with me. It was burning a hole in my brain as I lugged yet another box up the stairs, taking them one creaking step at a time. He’d meant it innocently enough; the guy didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And yet I’d turned on him like a junkyard dog. Part of me wanted to apologize, but it was too late for that. I couldn’t back down in front of my men. It was one thing to joke around with them—they were my brothers, after all—but it was important to show that some lines were not meant to be crossed.
Still, why this one? Why let that get to me? I just couldn’t put my finger on it, the same way I was still struggling to come up with a way to describe the way I felt going home every day. The sudden but predictable surge of joy that slapped me sideways every time I put my key in the lock of the apartment door and opened it, when I knew Carmen would be waiting for me on the other side with a sunny smile and something new around the place to show me.
It felt domestic as hell. Downright silly, if I thought about it logically. And yet, somehow…right.
I shook my head and redoubled my effort. This wasn’t the way I’d expected shit to go, not by a long shot.
I dropped the box in the hallway with a thunk next to the pile of other crates that had yet to be inspected. I walked into my office, where Duncan and Jay were handling the job of sorting through the documents to see if there was anything relevant in the mess. Both of them were bleary and red-eyed. I saw papers, weighed down at the corners with random objects, beneath the stream of an oscillating fan in an attempt to dry out some of the wetness that had crept in after the floods of a few months prior. “Any luck?” I asked coldly.
“It’s slow going, boss,” Duncan said. His voice was thick with exhaustion. He ground the heel of his hand into his eye socket and blinked hard a few times like he was having trouble getting the world to sit still. Jay, sitting next to him, looked patently ridiculous with reading glasses on. In normal circumstances, I would have made fun of him, but I was still stewing over how sharply I’d reacted to Slick a little bit earlier.
“We’ve found a few things here and there. Whoever first organized that basement deserves a medal. They should be designing fucking cryptography puzzles, because I can’t make heads nor tails of any semblance of logic to the way they boxed shit together. And of the little pieces we do find that’re relevant, half of ’em are drenched or molded all to shit.”
I nodded. “Well, nothing else to do but keep on moving. This is important. Robinson gave us something valuable. I’m not about to let this investigation fall apart again. They murdered our brother. Don’t forget that.”
Both men nodded. They were beat to hell by the tedious job, but they knew how much it meant to me and to the club. They were good men, some of the few left in this shithole of a world.
“Both of you should go home for a bit. Get some shuteye,” I said. “You’ll be more useful in the morning when you’re fresh.”
Nodding again, Jay stood and rubbed at a kink in his neck. He and Duncan trudged out of the office with their heads hanging tiredly. I followed them out, pulling the door shut and locking it behind me. As we approached the open staircase that led down to the basement, Slick emerged with a dusty box in his hands. He dropped it down and straightened up.
“That’s the last of ’em,” he said.
I looked around. “Where’s Spark?”
Just then, we heard a series of smacks, shouts, and then a gunshot from below. I was the first down the stairs, with the other men close on my heels. We tumbled down and fanned out onto the dank wooden floor below. I saw that every man had a gun or a knife drawn in his hand.
Spark crouched with his back to us. “Spark, you okay?” I asked cautiously.
He slowly pivoted around and stood up at the same time. As he did, we saw that he was holding up by its tail the biggest, ugliest rodent I’d ever seen in my life. What was left of its head was a bloody mound. In his other hand, Spark held a smoking gun, and on his face, he wore a huge, idiotic grin. “Got the fucker,” he announced proudly.
The tension was sucked out of the room as we all laughed or groaned.