“I want you to do something for me,” Preacher said. “About that store on Washington.”
They were parked on a short block of Magazine Street, outside a custom furniture shop, positioned in the middle of a stretch of bars and restaurants that stayed open late. Maureen, in the passenger seat of the parked cruiser, sat looking out the window. Her heel thumped on the floor. She chewed her thumbnail. She turned to Preacher, blinking. “What?”
“You okay?” Preacher asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s tough, you know, sitting here in the car after so much time off. I would’ve liked the grocery store gig. Talk to people. Move around some.”
Preacher said, “That’s what I’m asking you about. The grocery store. Believe me, I’m not leaving the whole thing up to Wilburn and Cordts.”
He resettled himself in his seat. Being parked for hours at a time wasn’t doing him any good, either, Maureen could tell. She knew his back hurt. He glanced at her, then returned to watching the street through the windshield.
“I know you’ve come back gung-ho,” Preacher said. “Which is why I thought you’d be better off easing back into it. That’s why you’re out here with me, instead of alone in a car of your own.”
“I figured it was something like that,” Maureen said. “So we’re babysitting Magazine Street, and you’re babysitting me. I get it. Making sure no frat boys get their asses kicked.”
Preacher sucked his teeth. “Not that I owe you an explanation for your orders, as your commanding officer and such.”
Maureen blew out her breath. She lowered her head in supplication. “I know, I know, I’m being an ungrateful bitch. Again. I’m working on, what’s the word for it, processing, what happened six weeks ago. It’s weird being back, in the car, in the uniform. More so than I thought it would be. Brings a lot of it back. It makes me edgy, the discomfort. Part of me feels like I never left, part of me feels like an impostor. I’m in a hurry to feel normal again, you know?”
“I do, believe me,” Preacher said. “I spent a few years, never mind weeks, after the storm trying to feel what you want to feel, but I don’t think there’s any way to speed up that process. If there is, I never found it.”
“It’s not just what happened here in New Orleans with Quinn and those guys,” Maureen said. She thought of Skinner’s admonitions. Who did she trust more than Preacher? “There’s things I brought with me here, things from home. From back in New York. This time of year, it makes me kind of squirrelly. Like people here get at the end of August.”
Preacher kept looking out the car window, distracted, watching the traffic. Maybe thinking, Maureen wondered, about late August six years ago. He shifted his hips again, trying to relieve the pressure on his low back. Maureen considered the pain pills at home in her medicine cabinet. Wouldn’t take but ten minutes, less than that, to pass by her house and get them. One for him, one for her. Did she want him asking, though, where she got them? He wouldn’t ask, she realized, he would just know.
“We every one of us got baggage,” Preacher said, turning back to her. “Don’t hafta be a cop for that. Three hundred years people have been coming here to be somebody else. It’s not new, what you feel.”
Maureen was sure he thought she meant she was feeling some boy, maybe some family drama. What would Preacher do, she wondered, if she flat out told him she’d killed people in her past? Imagine saying it, she thought. Imagine spitting out the story like a mouthful of bad milk. She couldn’t do it. Not yet, if ever. “You don’t want to hear this sentimental shit.” She shrugged at him. Smiled. “You’re in the car with me, so you get the blowback.”
“And that’s why you are in the car with me,” Preacher said. “So no one else gets the blowback. I don’t know who else could handle you.”
Maureen turned in her seat to face him, hands in her lap, her chin raised to him. Work was what they should be talking about. Work. “The store on Washington, you have something you want me to do.”
“I want you,” Preacher said, “to track down Little E. Tomorrow night, you’ll be back in the saddle on your own. Find out what he knows about the guy with the white pit bull. Little E’s dealt with you before. He knows you have my trust. He’s my best informant. Green as you are, you’re the only one on this squad I trust with him. If he’s got any info, he will give it to you.”
“Gotcha. And thanks for that,” Maureen asked. “What do I do for him?”
“Slip him a couple of bucks,” Preacher said. “He won’t need any more than that. I’ll get you back for the money.”
“I got it,” Maureen said. “No worries. Where’s he staying these days?”
“No idea.”
“Okay. Where do I find him?”
“Your best bet is gonna be somewhere he’s looking for work. Dinnertime, maybe one of the new cafés on Oretha Castle Haley. They don’t know him yet. Late night, check the bars. They’ll usually let him help clean up at the Fox Den because of his father and the Indian thing. He drinks at Pop’s House of Blues, or the Sportsman’s Corner. Maybe the Big Man. Chances are he’ll work at one, spend it at another. He moves in a small orbit.”
“I got it,” Maureen said, grinning.
Preacher frowned at her.
She grinned again. “Indeed.”
Preacher stared at her.
“What?” Her throat was dry and tight. Why was he doing this to her? “Why you looking at me like that?” She willed herself to leave her hair alone. She set her hands on her thighs, and immediately started kneading her quads like a cat. Her palms were sweaty. “Big Man. Fox Den. OCH.” She gave him a thumbs-up, a gesture she was fairly sure she had never used in her life. “I got it. I’m good.”
Preacher continued staring, narrowing his eyes. He was close to breaking her, and Maureen knew that he was aware of it. She didn’t even know what it was he wanted her to confess. She broke eye contact with him. Her foot began thumping on the car floor again. She looked at it like it was a sick small animal, like she had no control over it or attachment to it. She felt sorry for it. She thought for a split second about shooting it.
“Out with it, Coughlin,” Preacher said. “You mentioned New York. Did you get bad news? Something’s got you squirming in your seat like a dirty-diapered toddler. I wanna know what it is. Is it this FBI thing? If you’re not ready to be on the job, we need to talk. You have no more room for error out here. None.”
She reached for her pack of cigarettes on the dash. She lit up, checked the time on her phone, stalling as she reviewed her options. Where to start?
She could confess that roll call and this night shift now added up to the longest stretch of hours she’d gone without a drink or a pain pill in six weeks. That she could feel the information he’d given her moments ago dissolving in her brain like sugar in hot water. Her head hurt and her mouth was dry and her eyes itched and the chemical void in her bloodstream had her feeling like someone had slipped sandpaper between her skin and her muscles. She hated moving. She couldn’t not. Her legs jumped with a twitchy life of their own. Since they’d parked the car, her brain alternated shouting lame excuses to stop by her house with growling bitter admonitions for leaving the pills at home. She had found herself glad and relieved when Preacher’s back had started hurting him, and she hated herself for feeling that way.
She licked her lips. What had she been thinking, going cold turkey? Because you didn’t need a quit strategy, she thought, if you didn’t have a problem. Just one would make it better. Half a one so she wouldn’t feel quite this bad.
If she didn’t want to talk about what she knew damn well was withdrawal, and she sure as hell didn’t, she could bring the conversation back to roll call. She could continue poking around the edges of the investigation into the beatings, trying to see how far along things had gotten and running the risk of exposing herself. Could she find out how much Lamb knew, what theories he had, if any? She wondered again if Preacher suspected her, but she couldn’t devise a way to discern that from him without leading him to suspect her, if he didn’t already.
He was smarter than she was, and decades more savvy. That she might con or cajole him into revealing his thinking was a ridiculous idea and she knew it. She worried that the real reason they were on the street together was so he could be alone with her, so he could question her without really, officially questioning her.
She felt like that loony guy in the Edgar Allan Poe story, the guy with the beating heart hidden under his floor. She remembered the end of the story. The guy was batshit crazy. That was the point and the punch line. He was crazy with rage. With guilt. Too crazy and angry and guilty to shut the fuck up and sit still. Like any other criminal. Was that where she was headed?
“Nothing’s up,” she said. “I’m fine. I just, I’m anxious, like I was saying before. I feel like a dog that’s been cooped up in the house all day, you know, like for weeks.” She gestured at the crowded bar a block ahead of them. “I’ve been in a cage and we drive to the dog park and now you won’t let me out of the car. I just, you know me, Preach. I want to be moving.”
Preacher shook his head. “No. No, you’re not the usual you. I’ve never seen you, never seen anyone crush half a pack of cigarettes like you have in the past two hours. Bored dog, my ass. You smoke like someone who’s cuffed up in the interrogation room. Like inside the cigarette is the only place that there’s any air.”
A neon-green Jeep packed with college kids, the music cranked, caught his attention as it sped past. He watched it continue on in the rearview. Maureen watched his eyes, his hands, his right foot, urging him in her mind to start the car. Please.
She dropped her half-finished cigarette out the window. She was that dog again, panting, watching her master stand there ball in hand, waiting, dying for him to throw it.
Instead Preacher said, “How is it you smoke like you do and run like you do? Those things don’t go together. You got an extra set of lungs at home in the closet?”
“The nuns in high school used to ask me the same question,” Maureen said. “I’m a walking, running contradiction, Preach. It’s part of my charm.” She lit another cigarette. “I make it happen like I do everything else. Through sheer force of will.” She shrugged. “I’m in great shape. I have the resting heart rate of a professional athlete.”
“That’s the thing,” Preacher said. “I know you can run for miles. I saw you cruising around the track in the park. Graceful as a racehorse. But when you stop moving, and I can see you, you don’t look healthy. That’s my point.”
Maureen looked away from him. “What the hell does that mean? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes me wonder what’s driving you. I need to know my officers. I need to know what they carry, and how much it weighs.”
She climbed out of the car. “I need to stretch my legs. Boredom, that’s what’s driving me. And it weighs a fucking ton.”
It wasn’t untrue; she needed to stretch. Not that she was about to start bending over and doing stretches in the middle of Magazine Street. But she felt better standing than she did sitting.
She walked around to the front of the car, leaned her backside on the hood. The night was cold. The wind picked up. She crossed her arms, rubbed them. She’d left her leather jacket in the car. It would have to stay there. She couldn’t even look at Preacher. Not right then. Every now and then someone standing around in front of the bar glanced her way. The wind carried music and voices to her. She jammed her fists into her armpits. She looked down at her boots. The chemical withdrawal was appropriate, she thought. November was now her white-knuckle month.
* * *
After her dealings with Sebastian, she’d made it through the New Year before her first meltdown. It caught her by surprise. She thought she was doing great. She hadn’t even known what a panic attack was until she’d been having them for two weeks. Once, she had passed out on the staircase in her mother’s house, the fall leaving her with a bump the size and color of a plum on her hairline above her right temple.
And days before that accident another attack had left her staggering across busy Amboy Road, fighting to stay conscious and upright, finally crumpling to the sidewalk when she made the other side. A year should feel like a long time, especially because so much had changed. That had been the whole point of everything she had done in the past twelve months.
Yet, right at that moment, standing on a nighttime New Orleans street, a cop leaning against a police car, she could reach back and hear the tires screeching from the cars on Amboy Road that had barely missed her. She could feel the cold concrete of the sidewalk against her cheek as she lay there with her heart fluttering inside her like a dying hummingbird. She almost missed it, the breathless emptiness. The forced surrender of the complete collapse. She thought she might die right there on that Staten Island sidewalk. She remembered thinking she should feel more afraid of death than she did.
But then her breath had returned and her heartbeat had settled. The bird inside her either died or escaped. Her limbs had gathered underneath her of their own volition and she’d stood, unsteady and wet-eyed like a foal. And something told her she had to get up and get away from the scene of her collapse before the ambulance came. She didn’t know what kind of hospital the men in white would take her to should they get their hands on her. She wanted no one strapping her down on the gurney. She’d been captured once in her life. Never again.
Nat Waters, who had been there through the days of the silver-haired man, who in his decades in the NYPD had seen more people short-circuit than he cared to remember, had convinced Maureen to start seeing the shrink early that spring. He was the first one to use the acronym PTSD. The shrink had been the second.
Maureen rubbed her hands over the backs of her arms. PTSD. She’d thought she’d left those letters in the doctor’s office. She thought she’d left them, all those names, her diagnosis, her condition, the reason for her prescriptions, thirteen hundred miles behind her on Staten Island. On the banks of the Arthur Kill where she’d lost her favorite switchblade slicing open one man’s throat and stabbing another’s leg, where Sebastian’s blood had run hot down her arms to her elbows, stinking like copper and steaming off her hands in the cold night air.
This was why, she thought, no one understood her pursuit of Caleb and Solomon Heath, and why she didn’t know if she could ever make anyone else understand. Atkinson. Detillier. Even Preacher. She wanted Caleb, she needed him, she had to have him because no one else could, no, because no one else was willing, to see his future like she could. And she could see his future as clearly as she could see her past. Heath was the larva. He needed to be crushed and smeared before he got too big and too quick to catch.
The trunk of a car. The stink of the Arthur Kill. The roar of the oncoming train.
Maureen had already seen what Caleb Heath would become.
She had already killed him once.
And for the life of her, Maureen couldn’t think of a sane way to explain everything she knew to Preacher, or even to Atkinson. Forget Detillier. There was no talking to any of them without sounding like she had Poe’s beating heart under her floor. Not without telling them that, on a cold November night very much like this one, she had killed two men with her bare hands. She didn’t know how to talk about what she had done. Or how it had made her feel. Not without revealing that deep, deep down inside her, in places where no man’s breath or body, where no doctor’s probing fingers or questions, where no other human being had ever reached, in the abyss inside her where the darkest things with the sharpest teeth lived and swam and hunted, she missed that killing feeling, the blood running over her hands, through her fingers. The unassailable power of being the one who lived.
Not everyone gets to be the killer. Most don’t. Most women who’d been where she had, they became the killed. The dead. The forgotten parts of someone else’s story.
* * *
Maureen’s phone buzzed in her pocket, calling her back to Magazine Street. She checked the screen. The number was private. She answered anyway; she had an idea who it might be. “Coughlin.”
“Officer Coughlin, it’s Agent Detillier. I thought I’d hear from you tonight. We need an answer from you about meeting with Gage. We want to keep him interested while he’s in town.”
“I understand,” Maureen said.
“I’m sorry,” Detillier said. “I have another call coming in. Hang on.”
“Sure,” Maureen said.
Voices rose outside the Balcony Bar up the street, catching her attention. Two short fat girls in high heels, tight tops, and too-tight skirts had started screaming at each other, thrusting fingers at each other. The front of one girl’s top was damp. She’d had a drink thrown in her face. That wet spot was gonna get cold, Maureen thought.
By the door of the bar, Maureen could see the large form of the bouncer rising above the crowd. He had his massive arms folded across his chest, and he was paying close attention to the unfolding conflict. She knew there was another door guy there, too, somewhere in the crowd. A smaller man who checked IDs. Unlike the NOPD, she thought, the bar had enough staff to handle their business. She saw that no boyfriends or wanna-be shining knights had stepped into the conflict. Good news. Alcohol-infused testosterone always made things worse. Always.
Even if the girls came to blows, Maureen would make a move only if a weapon appeared. She’d see it and hear it from the crowd, which would open up like a slow-motion explosion if something got drawn. Unlikely, considering the combatants. Which was fine with her. She really didn’t feel like jumping into a drunken catfight. Not the return to action she’d had in mind. In a minute and a half to two minutes, the incident would escalate or defuse.
Maureen turned again, her phone held to her ear, looking at Preacher through the windshield. He was watching the busser at the Rum House across the street sweep under the outside picnic tables. He was picking his nose. What was Detective Atkinson doing right then? Maureen wondered. She thought about the Sixth District task force, the one that specialized in dangerous arrests and warrants. She thought about Homicide, Vice, Special Victims. The fast track to plainclothes work, like Detillier had mentioned, that was what she wanted. Plainclothes, property and persons, they were the way out of uniform and into the bigger and better work. It was never too early to start thinking about the future, now that she was putting past calamities behind her.
“You there?” Detillier asked.
“I’ll be happy to talk to him,” Maureen said. “Anything it takes to get these guys. Do I need to wear a wire? Because I’m okay with that.”
“Won’t be necessary,” Detillier said. “This isn’t an investigation of the man. Think of it as a fact-finding mission, a feeling out, to see if he’s worth continuing attention after he settles matters concerning his son. You won’t have to wear a wire. You won’t have to make an arrest.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Give me a time and place where he can meet you,” Detillier said. “Someplace you’ll be comfortable. Someplace informal.”
“You don’t want him at HQ? Or maybe at the Sixth District?”
“We don’t want the meeting on police property,” Detillier said. “He’s paranoid. Fearful. We want him to relax if he can. Put him at ease. Again, the meeting should come across like a favor, like the NOPD is reaching out and complying with his wishes, not like an interview or an inquiry. He’s coming back to HQ in the morning; we’re going to send someone out to him with the details on where to meet you.”
Maureen sighed. The fucking feds. They loved to overthink things. Okay, where did she want to do it? Someplace she’d feel more comfortable than Gage would. Someplace that would give her the upper hand. If he was nervous and paranoid, she wanted to use that against him.
“Tell him Li’l Dizzy’s,” she said, “corner of Esplanade and North Robertson, at one o’clock.”
Detillier paused, mulling over her idea. Maureen wasn’t entirely surprised. Detillier was local. That meant he’d know Dizzy’s.
She waited for his response and watched as a man wrapped one of the yelling girls, the one with the wet top, in a bear hug from behind. He lifted her off the sidewalk and walked her away from the crowd. She did not like it, and threw her drink in his face, over her shoulder. The other girl stormed away up Magazine Street, stopping and turning once to point her finger and yell something about “acting the ho.”
Maureen, thankful she’d been spared getting involved, closed her eyes and imagined a hot bath. She thought about how a pill and a whiskey would make that bath even better.
“He’s not going to like that place,” Detillier said.
Exactly, she thought. “Hey, guess what, it’s not a freakin’ date. I like that place. I feel safe there. And I don’t know this guy from Adam. If I get shot at again, I don’t wanna be the only gun in the room. That’s my offer.”
“If we thought your life was in danger,” Detillier said, “we wouldn’t set it up like this. We wouldn’t even ask.”
Lies, Maureen thought. She didn’t hold it against him. Everyone had to play the part they were given. “My life is always in danger until we chase the Watchmen out of New Orleans.” She switched her phone to the other ear. “Listen, Dizzy’s is a good place to meet him. Strategic. It’s not far from HQ. He won’t feel like we’re trying to lead him somewhere. Maybe instead he feels special, like we’re sharing our turf with him. The café closes at two, so there’ll be a natural end to things if I have trouble getting rid of him.”
“Fair points,” Detillier said after a moment. “Dizzy’s it is.”
“Thank you,” Maureen said. “Any tips?”
“I think you know what you’re doing,” Detillier said, a laugh in his voice. “Let him talk as much as he wants. Let his thoughts wander. Wait until after he’s left to make any notes. I guess the one rule is this, do not let him know the FBI is interested in him. You are a local cop doing a grieving father a favor and that is the extent of it.”
“And I’ll hear from you when?” Maureen asked.
“I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” Detillier said. “But if you need to get with me before you hear from me, don’t hesitate to call. Thanks for doing this, Maureen.”
“You’re welcome,” Maureen said. “I expect Uncle Sam will pick up the tab for lunch.”
“Save your receipt,” Detillier said. “I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up.
Maureen slipped her phone back in her pocket. Behind her, Preacher got out of the cruiser. He came around to the front, handed Maureen her jacket.
“Atkinson?” he asked. “I’m sure someone has told her by now you’re back on the job.”
“Detillier,” Maureen said. “We set up the meeting with Gage. Dizzy’s at one.”
“Good choice.”
Maureen put her jacket on, zipped it. She blew into her hands. The temperature was plummeting, and the night air was turning damp. The moisture in the air blurred the streetlights overhead and the colored lights of the Caribbean restaurant across the street.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Preacher said. “You have to know there’s no traction going right at the Heaths, not unless Caleb himself starts spraying bullets at cop cars on Canal Street. I’m not one to stick up for the FBI, but Detillier is being smart. He’s not being lazy.”
“Everyone says Solomon’s such a stand-up guy,” Maureen said. “I think we should give him a chance to prove it. He’s got Caleb by the purse strings. I don’t care if he’s in Dubai, Detroit, or DeRidder. If Caleb’s daddy wanted him here, he’d be here.” She stabbed her finger into the hood of the car. “Tomorrow. Make everyone’s life a lot easier.”
“Not happening,” Preacher said. Maureen felt him looking hard at the side of her face. “It’s not happening. No one is talking to Solomon Heath, not in uniform, especially not even if someone runs into him accidentally jogging through Audubon Park. Were that to threaten to occur”—he made a running figure with his fingers—“that running person would run her skinny little ass right on by. We understand each other?”
Maureen saluted. “Ten-four, Sarge. I hear you. I’m fresh out of the doghouse, I’m not looking to get back in.”
Preacher settled his rump against the hood of the car. Maureen felt the cruiser dip under his weight. “Besides, someone in New Orleans is killing the Watchmen, and we can’t catch whoever it is. Even if Solomon agrees that his kid is a criminal, he’ll never bring him back here while the killer’s at large.”
He bummed a cigarette from her. “I’m trying to cut back on the cigars. Shit’ll kill you.” He lit up. “So you haven’t heard from Atkinson since you got reinstated?”
“No, I haven’t,” Maureen said.
“I thought maybe with you getting your badge back, she’d reach out.”
“I thought she might call, too. You know, maybe, now that I’ve been officially forgiven. I thought maybe that was what she was waiting for. We haven’t talked since I got back to town.”
“Aw, give it time,” Preacher said. “She’s Homicide. They keep their own clock. And it’s not like there was a department-wide memo that you’re back. Maybe she hasn’t heard. Your reinstatement is supposed to be quiet.”
“I guess,” Maureen said. “I may have blown it with her. I did some things.” She found herself getting choked up. Fucking pills. “I don’t make it easy.”
“Dial it back on the martyrdom,” Preacher said. “Your Irish is showing. If squeaky clean was the only kind of cop Atkinson had time for, she would’ve flamed out around here a long time ago. A long, long time ago. She’s known, and knows, much worse than you. Believe.”
“Anyway,” Maureen said, “if I’m talking to her vic’s father, I guess she’ll come looking for me regardless. She’ll want to know what he tells me as much as Detillier does.”
“See, there you go,” Preacher said. “You two are meant to be together. Like Batman and Robin, the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Fried shrimp and brown gravy.”
Maureen lit a cigarette. “So, this meeting I’m having, with the father of a murder victim, on behalf on the FBI. Am I making a mistake?”
“I hope not,” Preacher said. “I encouraged you to do it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“This Sovereign Citizens business,” Preacher said, “it’s a new thing. I think Detillier meant what he said at PJ’s. I think the feds are really behind on this thing. I think they’re desperate for information. And I understand his wanting to use you.” He paused, grinning. “You figured out the real reason they picked you for the meeting, right?”
“Because I’m being groomed for intelligence work,” Maureen said. “The FBI is obviously recruiting me.”
“Uh, well, that could be true,” Preacher said. “It could be that, sure.”
Maureen laughed. “Gotcha. C’mon. We both know Detillier looks at me and he sees a short, skinny girl. What he said about my experience dealing with the Watchmen, my connections to the case, about them wanting to help me get even—the entirety of that was bullshit. We both know it. Detillier picked me because Gage will think he can intimidate me. He’ll be a lot less cautious with his talk than he would be around a man, or even blond bombshell Detective Sergeant Atkinson, all broad-shouldered six feet of her, and because of that—he’ll talk to me. Once he gets over the insult of me being what he gets, he’ll run his mouth because he’s not afraid of a little girl like me.”
Preacher looked at her a long time, like he was seeing her from across the street instead of a couple of feet away.
“What?” Maureen asked. “You’re making me nervous.”
“This thing happens with your voice sometimes,” he said. “Since you came back from the beach. You ever seen a scorpion curl its tail over its back? The poison kind of shining on the stinger? That. You sound like that shine looks.”
Maureen looked away. “Whatever. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, it does,” Preacher said. “You know exactly what I mean.”
From inside the car, Maureen could hear the dispatcher raising their car over the radio. Preacher rose off the hood, went to the driver’s door. “Like you said, whatever. Let’s get back in the car. It’s cold out here. Somebody’s looking for us, anyway.”
Maureen went to her side. She paused after opening the door. “Preach, listen—”
“You make me nervous,” Preacher said across the top of the car. He had that faraway look again. The radio kept calling. “I sit next to you, I can hear you ticking. Like a bomb.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maureen lied. “I don’t hear it.”
“That right there,” Preacher said, “is the problem. I know you don’t hear it. That is what makes me nervous.” He dropped into the driver’s seat, reaching for the radio mic.
Maureen climbed into the car, the door creaking as she pulled it closed.
“You got your wish,” Preacher said. “We’re done sitting here for the night.”
“Do tell.”
“Anonymous tip. Seems there’s a body in Lafayette Cemetery.”
“I’d think there’d be plenty of—”
“Don’t,” Preacher said, slamming the car into drive, hitting the lights and sirens. He was trying not to laugh. “Just fucking don’t.”