Page 48 of Sinful Sorrow

“Stop panicking because your best friend’s ex-wife has come back into his life. He wanted her before, he probably wants her now. If she’s making better choices, then it’s not for you to judge or condemn her. Just makes you look clingy and weird to take all this so personally.”

“Right. So if in some crazy, alternate reality, Christabelle fucks another dude and breaks up with Lix, you’re still gonna be cool with her?”

“Well…” He starts up the stairs with a smirk. “Yeah, but she was a terrible example for you to use.”

“Tiia, then. She screws with Micah’s heart and leaves him crushed into the ground. You still gonna be her friend?”

“I mean…”

“The answer is no. Because we protect the people we love. Fletch was a good husband, Cato. A damn good husband, even while working the kind of career that makes for bad husbands. He took care of her. Supported her. Trusted her. Even when shit was looking a little sketchy and I would casually mention my thoughts—which led to us fighting, by the way—he still trusted her. Then he came home to her fucking another cop on his couch and their kid sleeping in the next room.”

I shake my head and approach the second-floor landing. “Must’ve taken every scrap of willpower he owned not to murder the dude, then and there.”

“You’d kill anyone who lifted Minka’s skirt?”

I snort, dropping my hands into my pockets and nodding. “Without even thinking about it. I can move across the country to escape the Malone part of my family. But when shit is going down, my DNA is still my DNA.”

“What happened to the guy she was fucking?”

“Felix killed him earlier this year.” I glance to my left and meet his eyes. “Unrelated situation, but still. There go the Malones, doing what Malones do.”

“Sounds like he did everyone a favor.” He walks beside me, his shoulder brushing mine as we climb. “You gonna be able to forgive this chick if Fletch forgives her?”

I wrinkle my nose, subconsciously knowing what my manners insist I can’t speak out loud. But since Fletch isn’t here with us… “I don’t trust her. And if he loses his mind and looks for a relationship with her again, I’m gonna be watching close, waiting for the moment she fucks him over and I’m forced to catch him. I think she’s opportunistic and shitty. She showed some of those characteristics before everything went to hell—her career, and her position within it, already lent toward selfish—but now, on the other side of divorce, I think she’s more apt to take what she can get and run. And he knows it too. A man who trusts doesn’t sleep with his bedroom door locked.”

“Uncle Archer?” Mia jumps onto the fourth-floor landing, grinning and waving a red Care Bear with little hearts on its belly. She appears to be happy on first inspection. Her smile, wide, and her outfit, loud. But then I look closer. At the puffiness around her eyes and the mess of her hair. “You’re here, Uncle Arch!”

“Hey, Moo.” I quicken my steps and pray she didn’t hear any of that shit I said about her mom. Then I scoop her up and cast a fast glance along the hall to her open apartment door. “Are you okay, Moo?” I brush hair off of her face and wait where I am as Cato walks ahead of us and peeks into the apartment door. “What are you doing out here all alone? Have you been crying?”

“I’m not crying.” And yet, she reaches up and swipes her eyes, crushing her bear between us. “Daddy hasn’t been crying either.”

“Daddy?” My eyes swing to the door. “Is Daddy sad about something, Moo? What happened?”

The girl only shrugs, sniffling and twisting in my arms as I make my way along the hall.

“Is he okay, Moo? Is Daddy’s body okay? Did he get hurt?”

She shakes her head, her eyes welling. “His body is okay, I fink. He said so.”

“Fletch?” I want to set the girl on her feet and force her to wait in the hall. And yet, there’s no way in hell I’m leaving a four-year-old on her own while my adrenaline kicks the way it does now. So I burst through the apartment door and catch Cato’s eyes first. His wariness. His worry. Then I swing around, unholstering my service weapon as I move into the living room and find it… well, completely fucking trashed.

The couch has been thrown on its back, and cords hang from the TV cabinet where a fifty-inch screen used to be. Cupboard doors are open. The fridge door, open. DVDs litter the living room rug, and a medicine box lies strewn on the kitchen counter, packaging torn open, but any pills I might’ve expected to find, gone.

“Shit. Fletch?” I pass Moo off to Cato, practically tossing her and trusting he’ll catch. Then I cross the living room with my gun in hand and clear the space. “Where’s Daddy, Mia?” I press my back to the wall and wait at the mouth of the hallway. “Honey?” I peek back. “Where’s Daddy?”

“In the bafroom, maybe?” She shrugs and hugs into her bear and Cato, so they become a Care Bear sandwich. “Maybe he had to pee?”

But he’s okay, right? She said his body was okay.

“Charlie Fletcher?” I step into the hall, knowing Cato will protect Mia the way his family taught him to protect another, then I peek into the bathroom and find more mayhem. The medicine cabinet door ajar, and the contents spilled out into the sink. I check the shower, pulling the curtain aside to ensure it’s empty, then I back out again and move toward the bedrooms. Mia’s first, though I find it reasonably neat. The wardrobe door is open, but that could’ve been Mia herself, I suppose. “Charlie!” For every second I don’t find him, my heart thunders harder. Painfully. A heavy lump of anxiety nestles in the base of my throat, damn near cutting off my air and leaving me struggling for more. But I back out of her room and turn toward the main at the end of the hall. The one Fletch said he was locking himself in overnight.

I test the handle, giving it a jiggle and releasing it again as though it might be hot. When my brain registers that one, it’s unlocked, and two, it’s not hot, I grab it a second time and push the door wide open, sending it sailing until the timber hits the wall on the other side.

Finally, I find my best friend on his bed. His closed eyes, like a sucker punch to my soul. But then I process the fact that he’s sitting up. His elbows on his knees, a bit like Cato’s were earlier. His chin in his hands, and his hands pressed together, almost in prayer.

“Fuck.” I stride into the room to ensure it’s empty apart from him, then I re-holster my weapon and grab my best friend by the hair. It’s rough. It’s mean. But goddammit, my heart hurts as I yank his head back and force him to face me. “You’re okay, right?” I swallow as his golden-eyed stare finally flickers open. Then as the red, bloodshot exhaustion in them tears another strip from my soul. “Everything else aside, you’re okay?”

He reaches up and knocks my hand from his hair, then he flops back onto the bed and covers his face with his hands. “I guess we call me the Joker now. Since I’m such a fucking idiot.”

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