Page 101 of Long Way Down

Prince’s nostrils flared, and Pongo sensed this bit was hard for him to say. “Essentially. When it comes to the way you comport yourselves, the Dogs’ approach lines up best with my own. I’m proposing that the Alpines assist when and where we can – I’d imagine mostly through intel gathering and info dissemination; we can provide logistics, even, if the heat’s laser-focused on you. In exchange, we would want to fall under the club’s wing of protection, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Pongo echoed, grinning. “Now, I’m not saying ‘no’ – only my boss can do that. But if we’re as powerful as you’ve been saying, how helpful could you possibly be?”

Here, Prince settled back, hands lacing and falling in his lap. He crossed his legs, and with the lamplight gleaming on his silver hair, looked more like a king than an heir. “I’ll start with a show of good faith. Gratis. Katsuya tells me you’re hunting a rapist. I can give him to you.”

~*~

The fire escape ladders ran down the side of Dana’s building, in the narrow alley between it and the office complex next door. It was badly-lit and worse smelling, in the way of all alleys, and, given Dana was on the tenth floor, Melissa’s flashlight beam couldn’t reach the landing outside her window. Light bounced off black iron, throwing crosshatched shadows on the concrete façade, but revealed nothing. Worth a try, though.

Melissa debated pulling down the ladder and climbing up, getting the drop on whoever might still be lurking up there…but given the way their perp had pummeled his victims, she didn’t relish the thought of getting tossed over the rail to a ten-story drop. She went around front and pressed the buzzer, instead. Dana let her in with a crackled, watery-edged “please hurry.”

The elevator lumbered its way up to the tenth, and, alone in its cigarette-scented confines, Melissa adjusted her gun and shield, where she wore both openly on her hip. If there was someone lurking outside Dana’s window, now wasn’t the time for subtlety. But that was a bigif. Had anyone truly been out there, spying on her, chances were he was long gone by now.

Melissa spotted her the second she stepped off the elevator, standing in the open doorway of her apartment in a purple terrycloth robe and matching slippers, the cheerful sheep printed on her headband at odds with the wild look of panic on her face.

“Is he still there?” Melissa asked, hand landing on the butt of her gun as she approached.

“Yes.” Dana waved her onward, frantic flaps of her hand beneath her chin. “Hurry. He’s just sitting out there staring at me!”

Melissa’s pulse jumped, palms tingling with anticipation. She thumbed the leather strap off the top of her holster and drew her weapon, muzzle angled at the floor. “Show me,” she said, voice coming out firm and police-official.

This is it, she thought, as she followed on Dana’s heels, the taller woman’s robe flaring out behind her like a cape in her rush. Melissa was dimly aware of the apartment around them, cluttered and faintly sour-smelling, and her gaze snapped straight to the window in question as they neared it. Interior light spilled through its white mullions and fell on the Xs of the fire escape floor; limned a misshapen lump in the corner that looked like a man sitting with his knees drawn up. A metallic gleam, like an animal’s eyeshine.

“Stay back,” Melissa told Dana, waving her to the side, and aimed her gun through the window. With her free hand, she unclipped her badge and pressed it to the glass, angled so the crouching man could see it. “Police,” she said, voice raised so he could hear. “Stay where you are. Show me your hands!”

There was a rustling sort of shift, a flicker of movement.

“Stay where you are,” she repeated. “I’m opening the window.”

Here was the part that left her stomach clenching: sliding her badge back to her belt, and levering up the window; it was old, and sticky, and her gun’s aim wavered. Here was his chance to rush her, to dive into the room hands-first, and shove her down, climb on top of her, disarm her.

A voice from memory whispered in the back of her mind:I’ll kill your mama, and your daddy, and your granddaddy. I’ll cut ‘em up into little pieces and throw them to the gators, and no one will ever know. I’ll kill them because that’s what God wants me to do, to punish you for being a tattletale. God hates tattlers, Missy.

But then the window was open, chill air pouring in, lifting the scent of car exhaust and distant fryer oil into the apartment. She took her gun in the proper, two-handed grip, and ducked quickly out through the window. Her boots clomped onto the floor of the escape, and she leveled her sights on the man in the corner.

“Hands,” she barked. “Let me see them!”

Again, there was that rustling shift. Now, she could hear it: aswish, swishlike nylon.

Melissa frowned. Snagged her flashlight from her jacket pocket and clicked it on. With her heartrate up, and her blood singing in anticipation, it took far longer than it should have to make sense of what she was seeing.

A small, tripod grill stood in the corner of the fire escape, swathed in a nylon cover to keep the elements off it. Wind funneled up from the street below in a fresh gust, and stirred the cover, so that it rustled, edges whispering over one another.

Melissa’s adrenaline rush stalled out, and turned to sludge in her veins. She scanned the rest of the fire escape, but, unsurprisingly, found nothing save some rusty barbecue tools on a rack mounted to the wall, and a few sad herbs in a clay pot.

When she stepped back inside, Dana stood in the center of the living room rug, one arm banded tight across her middle, her other hand shaking around a glass of wine, the red liquid inside nearly to the brim and threatening to spill with her tremors.

Melissa let out a deep breath. “Dana, why don’t we sit down?”

~*~

Pongo rested an elbow on the arm of his chair and propped his chin on his upraised fist. “You’llgivehim to us,” he said, voice dripping skepticism. “Does that mean youhavehim?”

“It means that my information channels are faster and more reliable than yours, and that I can find him before you can,” Prince said, as though it were a simple matter of fact. “I would then hand over this information, freely, as a show of cooperation and friendship.”

“Well, that’s sweet,” Pongo said, grinning.

The angle of Prince’s head deepened, and he remained unsmiling. “Practical,” he corrected. “Word has it the Dogs are helping the police on this one. Is that something you’ll be doing more of in the future? Cooperating with law enforcement?”

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