Page 82 of Looking Grimm

“You hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He looked out of place in his polo and khakis. He must have been enjoying a vacation day prior to the Capitol attack. Felix wasn’t the only one flexing his good luck today.

Briggs pulled a set of keys from his pocket, then beckoned to my still-shackled wrist. “I bet you’re ready to be rid of those.”

My hand trembled as I held it out. Briggs worked the lock quickly, then removed the cuffs and tossed them onto the nearby desk.

He gave my arm a pat. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

I let him pull me standing, a bit unsteady as sensation returned to my legs in a stinging rush. With a gentle tug on my elbow, he guided me away from the gruesome scene. He held on until we made it to the trickling wall fountain where he eased me down to sit on the edge of the basin base.

“That was a hell of a thing you did,” he said as he lowered himself beside me. “You are a remarkable young man.”

My attention roamed past him, through the glass entry doors, and into the sunshine outside. “Are Nash and Rip all right?” I wondered aloud.

Briggs frowned. “Who?”

It didn’t bear explanation.

Briggs bent forward and braced his arms on his knees. He looked ahead along with me, quiet until he grumbled a soft sound. “You know, I always hoped we would save you but, in the end, you saved yourself. You saved the wholecity.”

There was pride in his voice, but I wasn’t sure why. I saved myself from a fate of my own design. A prison I built brick by bloody brick. I avoided the end I rightly deserved, but it wasn’t too late for that to change.

“Do you still believe you’re a villain?” Briggs asked.

I glanced at where Holland stood over Grimm’s ruined body. I’d been called many things in my short life, few of them kind. Criminal, killer, psychopath, traitor… Those descriptions fit, but I wished they didn’t.

“I don’t know what I am,” I admitted.

The older man hummed, still facing forward so the sun cut across his hook-nosed profile. “What you told me about your father,” he began, “about him being disappointed in you…”

My fingers twitched. Disappointment was a far cry from the revulsion my cop dad would have felt seeing my mugshot plastered across newspaper front pages and knowing my body was inked with gang tags and tally marks for every life I’d taken. More than even that, I let Donovan die. I failed at the single task I’d been given. Grimm’s speech on the execution stage was but a shade of the disdain my real father would have had for me. For Marionette.

“I knew Thierry pretty well,” Briggs said. “Maybe better than you did.” When he turned toward me, his expression was kind in a way I wasn’t sure I deserved. “You were his joy, Fitch. His greatest achievement. I don’t believe there’s anything you could do to make him turn his back on you. And if he knew what you’ve come through and how hard you’ve fought to get here, I think…” He shook his head. “No. Iknowhe would be damn proud.”

The words rattled around in the hollow of my chest until they sank into my gut and sat there. I wanted it to be true, more than I realized. Perhaps as desperately as I wanted to be more than the string of shitty names Grimm called me and the worse ones I called myself.

I sat silent, rubbing my hand across the chaffed skin of my wrist and trying not to look at the skull tattoo I’d used to end Grimm’s life.

The click of high heels against the floor announced Holland’s approach. She stopped within a few feet of Briggs and me and drew my attention with a brusque question.

“What happened?” She gestured to Grimm, sprawled in a pool of his own fluids.

“Cleaning house.” I forced a tight smile. “Mineandyours.”

Holland nodded while avoiding my eyes. She removed the walkie talkie clipped to her belt and offered it to Briggs. “You mind calling this in?”

With a grunt of affirmation, he rose from the ledge beside me. He gave my shoulder a parting squeeze before walking toward the side wall of windows. His voice was a distant drone as he raised the radio to his mouth and launched into a stream of cop jargon.

In front of me, Holland crossed her arms. Her head hung low as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Finally, she cleared her throat.

“Tobin and Felix told me everything,” she said. “I owe you an apology. And my thanks. That’s the second time you’ve saved my life.”

She glanced at the macabre mess on the floor behind the desk, then past it toward the stage on the distant hill. She’dapologized then, too, like it was the last thing she wanted me to hear.

After a long pause, she faced me. “Why did you do it? I was prepared to send you to your death. Had the tables been turned, I can’t say I would’ve done the same.”

---