Page 55 of Last Violent Call
“Mars?”
His pistol had been hiding under the seat. Benedikt lunged for it now, the safety off in seconds as he pointed forward. A dozen scenarios flashed in his head: The stowaway emerging while Benedikt slept. The stowaway putting a bag over Marshall’s face to muffle his yell. Maybe injecting him with something to knock him out. Slitting his throat and killing him before moving his body to guarantee he would make no sound. Benedikt hadn’t seen any blood or a sign of a struggle, but as he inched through the dining carriage, inspecting the dark corners and waving his pistol in every direction, he didn’t need any actual evidence to conjure up the image in his head.
He could hear his heartbeat going as loud as thunder in his ears. Somehow, above it all, he still managed to pick up the shuffle of movement at the end of the next carriage, where the compartments were.
He stepped over the threshold. The door was being held open by a large encyclopedia, the same one Marshall had been reading from, jammed in place to keep the mechanism from springing forward.
It was too hard to see. The passageway didn’t have any natural light source. Benedikt could only rely on his eyes adjusting fast, using the barest illumination that streamed from the moonlit dining carriage, showing the dark carpet below his feet and each door that he passed. He trekked past his own door. Then, the room holding the corpse.
The sound was coming from the washroom. There was someone in there.
Benedikt lunged forward, his finger on the trigger.
“Whoa, whoa—”
And it was Marshall who reared back, his hands coming up.
“By God.” Benedikt lowered the pistol, shoving the safety back on before putting the weapon away. “You scared thehellout of me, Mars!”
“I only needed the toilet!” Marshall said. In the low light, his eyes were wide and bewildered. “I didn’t want to wake you!”
“You—”
Benedikt reached for him, arms tight around Marshall in an instant before he could protest. There was none: Marshall only embraced him in return, albeit with an air of confusion over why Benedikt was so worked up. He hadn’t realized the amount of sheer adrenaline that had been coursing through him until his panic started to ease, until the roaring sound in his ears subsided and the breakneckTHUD THUD THUDof his heart tried to sync up to Marshall’s.
“You wake me,” Benedikt said, pulling back a fraction. “When there is a killer on the loose and you’re you and I’m me, youwakeme.”
“I’m sorry,” Marshall breathed, seeming to realize where the panic had come from. After what they had gone through, it was only instinct to assume the worst at the earliest moment. Benedikt had lost him once. And it had been such a dismal and miserable world that he couldn’t bear to do it again. “I’m sorry, Ben. I wasn’t thinking.”
Benedikt tried to pull himself together. Leaned in again until their foreheads were touching, breathed and breathed alongside the comfort and the ease that Marshall’s proximity always offered.
“It’s all right,” he whispered slowly. “It’s all right as long as I have you.”
The sun was going to rise within the hour. With no result to their stakeout, there wasn’t much point carrying it on until the bitter end. Soon, passengers would be rising and beginning their morning, and it wouldn’t do to have them see the investigators milling about, looking tired and clueless.
Marshall seemed to come to the same conclusion, easing back slowly. Before Benedikt could take a proper step away, intent on pushing down the last of his distress and pretending it had never reared its ugly head, Marshall stopped him, his hands sliding to each side of Benedikt’s face.
“Hey,” he said quietly. His gaze was focused intently, wanting his words to be heard. “I love you, okay? I am never, ever leaving. I will tell you however many times you need to hear it. Just tell me when you need to hear it.”
Benedikt’s breath caught in his throat. “I know. I do know.” He paused. Backtracked. “And by that, I meant to say I love you too.”
A twitch of Marshall’s lips. He breathed a laugh, then kissed him, as if it sealed in the assurance he had just made.
“We need sleep,” Marshall decided. “Come on. It’s a new day when we rise.”
8
The time zone had changed again overnight, which meant when Marshall lifted himself awake and peered at Benedikt’s wristwatch on the bedside table, he was rather confused. The display hands didn’t match the high sun streaming through the window. The hours kept moving forward, and his watch couldn’t catch up.
Benedikt was pushing the curtains back. Once he noticed that Marshall had stirred, he tossed something over, giving Marshall scarcely a second to register the object flying at him before his sleep-addled reflexes caught the apple.
“You are quite fond of tossing fruit at me, do you know that?” Marshall remarked.
“I’m feeding you, and you protest?”
“I was not protesting. I was fondly admonishing.”
Benedikt snorted, reaching into the wardrobe. He shook out a towel. “I asked Vodin to check everyone’s shoes in soft-class on the chance someone didn’t clean the paint off.”
