“Why not? What exactly are we doing here?”
Baine turns her wrist to check her watch again. “We’re waiting.”
A current of trepidation moves through me. I ignore it. “No, you’re waiting. I’m leaving.”
Before I can even edge around the table, there’s a deferential tap at the door. “Missus Baine?”
“Constable Mayhew?”
“Another visitor is here.” Mayhew sounds relieved to be reduced to a mere butler in this production.
Baine smiles at me as she says, “Finally. Show him in.”
The metallic jangle of keys, a low voice. Then the door opens, and Arthur Starling walks into Conference Room C of the Muhlenberg County Detention Center.
I’ve never seen Arthur outside the grounds of Starling House, and I can’t say I like it much. He looks awkward and over-tall, as if his dimensions don’t agree with ordinary rooms. His face is meant for slanted sunlight and old amber bulbs; beneath the overhead fluorescents it looks pale and lumpen, like an old bone pitted by the rain. His lip is freshly split and one eyebrow is misshapen, swelling fast.
His gaze spins wildly across the room until it lands on me with the quivering certainty of a compass needle, and God, he should not look at me like that where Baine and Gravely can see, and I shouldn’t look back. The two of us are a pair of clumsy card players, showing our hands to the whole table.
“You goddamn fool,” I breathe.
Arthur doesn’t flinch, his eyes moving from my face to my scorched shirt to the painful angle of my shoulders. His jaw tightens. “Why,” he grates, “is she handcuffed?”
Elizabeth Baine is smiling at him like he’s her firstborn son, fondly indulgent. “The keys, Constable?”
Mayhew unhooks a key ring from his belt, but hesitates. “I recommend against it, ma’am. This one committed petty theft the same day her mother drowned herself.”
I bare my teeth at him. “She didn’t drown herself. And maybe if you got me more than a Happy Meal I wouldn’t have been picking your pocket, you cheap motherf—”
I’m interrupted by Arthur, who makes a sound remarkably like the hellcat and snatches the key from Mayhew’s hand. He crosses the conference room in two enormous strides and kneels behind me. I can feel the heat of him at my back, but nothing more; my hands are swollen and nerveless, like plastic gloves blown into balloons.
There’s a metallic tick and my arms fall forward, shoulders grinding in their sockets, blood pulsing in my palms. My flesh is a shiny, unpleasant pink, deepening to purple where it swelled around the cuffs.
I turn and find Arthur standing so close that my eyes are level with his throat. Jagged lines cut across his carotid, lurid pink and puckered. I wonder if he’s been keeping the wound clean or letting it fester.
I swallow hard and hiss up at him, “Did you let Jasper take those notes? Because if you did, I’ll slit your throat again.”
“No. Crime runs in the blood, apparently.” Arthur’s voice is pitched low, lips barely moving. “Is he alright?”
“I think so.” I fight a reckless urge to lean my forehead against his chest and burst into exhausted tears. I bite the inside of my cheek instead. “He wasn’t there when it happened.”
Arthur’s voice goes even lower. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” He lifts a hand to the matted crust of blood and ash on my cheek, fingers hovering just above my skin. I bite my cheek harder. “No.”
“It’s my fault. I’m so—I tried to stop them—there were two this time, and one of them—”
I can’t stand this. The grief of him, the guilt that hurls him into battle after battle and leaves him bloodied and bruised.
I push my cheek into his hand. “It wasn’t your fault. None it ever was, okay?”
He chokes.
I take a step backward. “What are you doing here? What are you thinking? You know what these people want—”
“I’m glad you could make it, Arthur.” Baine lobs her voice like a polite bomb between us.
Arthur’s hand falls back to his side. His spine hardens. “Of course,” he says, and his voice is the careless sneer I remember from winter. Gravely is watching him with an expression of sick satisfaction, but Arthur keeps his eyes on Baine.
“Thank you for your assistance, Opal. You’re free to go.” Baine dismisses me with a cordial nod, as if we’re at a business conference or a job interview. She gestures to the empty seat at her side, beaming at Arthur. “Take a seat. Let’s talk.”