Page 69 of Looking Grimm

“You caught the bad guy.” A rattle of my handcuffs emphasized my point. “Your work here is done.”

She worked her jaw like she was chewing up and spitting out responses before finding one she liked. When she turned to face me fully, shadows darkened her features. “You know, you didn’thaveto be a bad guy,” she said. “You had the chance to change.”

“You really believe that?”

If so, she was more delusional than I thought.

“I tried to help you,” she retorted, sounding severe. “I even forgave you for what you did to my father—”

“Keeping him alive when Grimm wanted him dead?” I shot back. “Or setting him free with a squeaky-clean memory? Which did you object to more?”

Holland bristled, and her hands tightened into fists. “You only wiped his memory so he wouldn’t send us to gunyou down.”

I rolled my eyes. “Maybe.”

I wished she would leave then, but misery loved company so maybe she thought I needed some. Her posture relaxed, and her gaze traveled from me to the shock collar remote on the bedside table.

“It’s sad,” she said at last. “You used to be a good person. I thought you could be good again. I see now that I was wrong.”

The comment dumped salt in a very deep, very old wound. She’d said something similar outside her father’s house months ago. Claimed she missed the me she’d known when we were kids. I’d had no response then, but this time I was prepared.

“You know what, Holland?” I glared at her. “Fuck you.”

She blanched, then a blistering flush chased the pale from her cheeks.

I struggled to push up on my elbows, still feeling weighed down but angry enough to fight it. “Fuck you and all your self-righteous bullshit.” The words slid between gritted teeth. “You didn’t do shit for me besides make my life harder and get my brother killed to make a goddamn point. I trusted you more than you ever trusted me, and all it got me was fucked.”

Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t respond before I continued.

“You say you tried to help me, but you had no clue what I was dealing with. You think leaving the gang was easy? Grimmownedmy ass.” I snorted a laugh. “Hell, he still might.”

Holland’s expression became a war between anger and shock, and I couldn’t decide which was winning.

I stabbed a finger at her, rattling the handcuff chain again. “I risked my life to help youandyour dad. I gave up everything trying to be better. Trying to be good. It wasn’t in the cards.”

My momentum was flagging, overcome by the exhaustion from losing half my blood then being pumped full of someone else’s. My hand throbbed, my shoulder ached, and my heart twinged with the pain of an irrefutable truth.

“I’ve been headed toward this end for half my life. Damned and doomed to fail. And you can’t fathom that,Investigator.” I sneered the word. “Be glad you can’t.”

Silence filled the room as I drew shallow breaths. Holland’s gaze traveled everywhere except to meet mine. She ended on her own feet, stuffed into a pair of pointy-toed stilettos that she tapped against the linoleum floor.

“I should go,” she said quietly. “Your bartender friend is waiting for me in interrogation.”

I perked at the mention of Nash, suddenly willing to take back every scornful and slanderous thing I’d said if it meant changing her mind about letting me see him. But she was already headed toward the exit, detouring only to scoop the shock collar remote off the table and tuck it in her slacks pocket.

Before she cleared the doorway, I called after her.

“Are you going to watch? When they kill me?”

She paused with one hand on the doorframe. She didn’t turn around, but her head angled back so I could see her profile as she answered. “I suppose I’ll have to.” A sigh caused her narrow shoulders to rise and fall. “And I won’t enjoy that, either.”

My return trip tothe Capitol would not have been complete without a stopover in the fanciest holding cell in the city. Despite being topped off with vital fluids, I felt drained. I had no concept of time or how long it had been since I’d arrived here. The hunger gnawing between bouts of nausea reminded me I was past due for at least two meals, but even that didn’t have as strong a pull on me as the exhaustion that had me laid out flat on the wall-mounted bed with my arm thrown over my eyes.

As tired as I was, sleep evaded me. My brain churned through thoughts like a meat grinder, none of them good. Holland’s itinerary for the upcoming days served as a daunting play-by-play for the end of my life. In isolation at Thorngate, I would have entirely too much time to think about every despicable thing I’d ever done and regret it all, but no amount of apologies or regret would change the guilty conviction when I made it to court. Then, death. A bloody, public spectacle in front of a mass of peoplewho would be glad to see me gone.

Testing my fingers caused my bandaged hand to twinge. With jagged scars from Jax’s panther attack dragging down my left arm and wrist and now a slice across my right palm, I was growing a collection of near-mortal wounds.

The smell of smoke clung to my hair, and I desperately needed a shower. The cell’s en suite had everything I needed to scrub off the blood and soot, plus a towel I could fashion into a noose if things got too dire. My nose wrinkled at the thought. If I had the courage to kill myself, I would already be dead. Fantasizing about it now was about as much fun as endless edging.

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