They met at the rear of Matt’s van, parked right out front, stood there while he chewed nicotine gum and rifled around, pushed aside homewares Donna had obviously bought and forgotten were there. There were wicker baskets, muslin wraps, a wooden chandelier. A bag of laundry sagged against the rear seats. The wine had made Andy’s head warm. Flashes of Ben’s body beneath her as she rode him came now and then, made her stomach plunge. His hands on her hips. He’d disappeared the morning after while she showered again, the tension humming between them, his words ringing in her mind.
What good is a promise from you?
The truth was, she didn’t know the answer to the question. She’d walked off on him, afraid that he was right, that she’d not given everything she could to finding Luna and Gabriel, so entranced was she with the case as a whole. Had her instinct to burrow, burrow, burrow into the crew, to embed herself as deeply as she could in the lives of her host and the suspects around the case, blinded her to some aspect of Luna’s disappearance? Titus Cliffen and Ivan Willstone’s images pulled at her as she dug through their lives. Titus’s courtly, stoic photograph on the wall of the station, his eyes fixed on the camera, his rigid, uniformed body screaming of strength and potential. Of dreams and plans. Titus had been barely thirty. Probably on the cusp of getting over his defiance of his father, of dropping the anger and realizing who he was. Willstone’s image was friendlier, warmer. He’d taken up the karate class on the encouragement of a cop friend, was reportedly terrible at it, had all the balance and majesty of a baby giraffe on the hard-polished floorboards of the school.
Andy had taken out her phone several times across the two days she worked at the case, prepared to text Ben.
And then she hadn’t.
The silence was wire-taut.
She was so lost in the dreams of him that she found herself now standing there at the back of Matt’s van, looking at the closed iron shutters over the front windows of Borr, the big polished brass lettering above that shone in the light from the streetlamps. She followed the building up until she saw the apartments that straddled both the restaurant and the storage facility. Someone up there had cluttered their window space with indoor plants. Huge fiddle-leaf figs, palms spread against the glass. In another window, a cat perched, licking a paw.
Matt found what he was looking for, a couple of paper files. He smacked them against Jake’s chest. Andy saw FDNY logos on the cover.
“By Monday,” Matt said. Jake glanced into the mess.
“What’s that?”
A sudden, uncharacteristic jolt of pleasure seemed to ripple through Matt. “These are the new TICs.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.”
They crowded in, the giant and the lanky, ponytailed boy, shoulder-to-shoulder and smiling as Matt opened the box. For a moment, observing from nearby, Andy might have been able to forget that one terrified the other so badly he probably had irritable bowel syndrome, and nightmares, and cardiac microtears from it, was probably actively rewiring the neurological pathways that governed his self-worth because of it. Working for someone like Matt was bad for a person’s biology. Andy knew. She’d been bullied sick plenty of times.
Matt brought the thermal imaging camera out of the box and fiddled with the trigger. Jake fooled with the paper files in his hands, obviously itchy to play with the device, which was shaped like a futuristic plastic gun. To Andy’s surprise, Matt turned the camera on and handed it to Jake. Jake swung it around, watched the camera feed to a screen on the top of the device the thermal signatures of everything around them.
He pointed it at Engo, swept it over his body.
“What you got in your pockets, Engo?” Jake asked. “I’m seeing a cold, empty hole where your dick should be.”
“You’re not looking for his dick, you’re looking for cash,” Matt quipped.
“There’s no money.” Engo put a hand over his jeans pocket. “So don’t even think about it.”
Engo turned to Andy. “You’re next, you know. He’ll do a sweep on you looking for dimes.”
Andy covered her pockets.
“Oh that won’t help.” Engo dragged on his cigarette. “You don’t got it now, you’ll have it at some point, and Jake will be right there with his hand out.”
“Huh,” Andy said.
“Yeah. You’ve been around, what? Couple of weeks now? You should get a knock on your door soon. Jake asking for a loan.”
“Don’t do it,” Matt told her. “Never do it.”
“I won’t. I can’t.” Andy shrugged, blew smoke over her shoulder. “I got—”
“You got four hundred bucks to your name,” Matt said. “We know. It was part of the vetting.”
“Oh, great. You know I got my period, too?”
“We know you haven’t sorted your apartment out yet,” Matt said. “Unpack your fucking clothes, will you? Get your life in order. You’re living like a teenager over there.”
“You broke into my apartment?”
“Come on.” Matt watched Jake sweeping the camera around. “Of course we did.”
Andy smiled inwardly, but outwardly shook her head, pissed. She knew it had all been worth it. The endless miles walking thrift shops. Peeling price stickers off random junk. Forging bank statements she would leave open on the counter for the guys to find, should they ever vet her. Worked like a charm, every time.
“He’ll hit you for money, though,” Engo insisted. “He’s hit everyone. Donna. Titus. He even hit Luna.”
Andy froze. Jake put the camera down.
“You probably raided Gabriel’s piggy bank, huh.” Engo grinned.
“Fuck you,” Jake said. The words were humorless. Almost automatic. Andy looked over at his blank, distant eyes. A tingle ran up the back of her spine.
“You ever hit my daughters for money and I’ll put your head in a pot, Jake,” Matt said. “I’ll cook it until all the meat falls off. I’ll feed my family with it all winter long.”
Jake thrust the thermal imaging camera back to Matt. Matt put it away and pointed the Finger at Andy.
“Text your squeeze and tell him to get that key swapped out.” Matt slammed the rear doors of the van.
Andy nodded, flicked her cigarette into the gutter.
Jake was just standing there staring at it, her cigarette dying, fizzing out in a puddle. His hands were hanging by his sides. It was something about that, the frozen posture of him, his bent neck, that quickened that tingle on the back of her neck, increased a growing uneasiness in the pit of Andy’s stomach. Jake turned and walked away, maybe a little too fast. Didn’t say goodbye. But neither Matt nor Engo did either.
Andy walked to her car and slid in. She put her hands on the wheel and knew something was deeply, deeply wrong.