It had taken the doc eleven stitches to cinch the wound up. The job had left a puckered spot the size of a quarter in the fresh bald spot on his scalp.

Leaving the hospital, Tony said, “Get it over with.” Ray had just smiled to himself. He hadn’t said a word.

Tony dried his hands on a paper towel and made his way down to the muster room. Everybody was there already, sitting around the table, shooting the shit. They all stopped talking when he walked in.

He looked around. “What?”

“Meow.”

Tony couldn’t tell who said it.

Carla Billup started making a purring sound. She pretended to lick the back of one hand, smoothed it over her ear.

Pretty soon everybody joined in.

“Meeeow.”

“Reeow.”

“Mrrrowwww.”

Down at the end of the table, Ray Salcedo had a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Tony glared at him. Ray just shrugged: Don’t look at me. Even Sergeant Williams was smiling.

Pathetic. It sounded like a bunch of goddamned back-alley strays in there.

“Hey, I get it,” Tony Briggs said. “You guys are a bunch of pussies.”

Carla Billup made a claw and swiped at the air. “Fffft.”

The whole crew broke up over that.

Hilarious.

21

The woman pulled out her debit card and laughed. “I thought Halloween was tomorrow.”

When Worth made eye contact, her grin faltered and slowly collapsed. He watched her eyes flicker to his shield, down to his gun, widening slightly with the recognition that neither was a costume prop. It didn’t seem to matter that he was smiling. That he’d spoken to her in a friendly tone of voice.

“Oh. Gosh,” she said, evading his eyes now. “Um, plastic, please?”

What did people think? Worth remembered his father coming home with plates of food from people in the neighborhoods. Was it like this back then, too? Reach out to the average law-abiding citizen and half the time they acted like you were there to shoot them or put them in jail.

Worth tossed eighty bucks’ worth of shampoo and vitamins into a one-ply sack. He handed the sack to the woman and said, “Watch your ass.”

The woman inhaled sharply.

Then she tucked her chin and scuttled out of there.

Watching her go, Worth could feel LaTonya looking at him. He looked back at her. “What?”

LaTonya just held up her palms. “Baby, I ain’t said a word.”

All night long, the minutes seemed to crawl. Worth saw an old man with ashy skin lift two packages of D-cell batteries. Instead of busting him, Worth handed him a ten-dollar bill. The man said, “Lord bless you, brother,” and walked out without paying for the batteries.

At 2 A.M., he normally walked the outside perimeter. Tonight, Worth went to the break room for coffee instead. Ricky and Curtis were there, eating Snickers bars and reading the newspaper.

“Hey, Supercop.” Curtis threw him a nod. “What’s shakin’?”

“Guys.” Worth poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup. “Thanks again for all the help yesterday. I owe you.”

Curtis waved it off. “You bought the beer. Hey, we went by to see Gwennie today. They let her out, huh?”

“This afternoon.”

“When you think she’s coming back to work?”

“Few days, maybe.” Worth shrugged. “She’s still pretty banged up.”

“You guys find jerk-off yet?”

Worth sipped his coffee without answering.

Curtis nodded. “Sooner or later, right?”

Worth said, “I expect.”

Ricky got up from the table. He tossed his candy wrapper in the trash, tied his apron strings around front, and went over to the time clock on the wall. He punched back in, gave Worth a nod, and went back to work.

Since his second or third week in exile at the SaveMore, rare was the occasion when Ricky failed to flip him some type of good-natured shit. The kid’s recent demeanor was beginning to nibble around the edges of Worth’s thoughts.

He was about revisit the subject with Curtis when his cell phone buzzed on his belt.

Worth didn’t know the number on the ID screen. He stepped out of the break room and answered.

“Matthew?”

The safe unit. Worth felt his pulse kick up. “Are you okay?”

“I…yeah,” Gwen said. “Not really. I don’t know.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Can you come over?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good—”

“Please come over,” Gwen said.

She answered the phone after three or four rings and buzzed him into the building.

Ray Salcedo opened the apartment door.

It was 2:35 in the morning. Salcedo and his partner should have gone off duty over two hours ago, but Ray was still dressed in patrol gear: long sleeves, turtleneck, comset on his shoulder, trouser legs bloused into the tops of his boots. He must have arrived at the apartment just ahead of Worth. He still hadn’t taken off his gloves.

“What happened?”

“Eight-eight,” Salcedo said.

Situation secure. Worth had been on channel 2 all night; he hadn’t heard this address go over the radio. “I thought you guys went off at midnight?”

“Covering sick-outs,” Salcedo said. He held the door and stood aside; Worth entered the apartment, feeling a tingle in his gut.

Another cop appeared from the hallway to the bedroom. Salcedo’s partner, Tony Briggs. Worth could see the stitches in the guy’s head from across the room.

“Goddamn,” he said, adjusting his belt. He wore gloves just like Ray. “That bitch knows how to suck dick.”

Worth wasn’t sure he’d actually heard what he’d heard.

But there wasn’t any mistaking the sound of the apartment door closing behind his back. He looked over his shoulder, saw Salcedo giving the bolt a twist. Click.

All his senses went hot. He suddenly became hyperaware of the size of the space, the layout of the room, his position between Salcedo and Briggs.

Briggs walked straight toward him. “Matt Worth in the house.”

Worth stepped back and angled himself so that he could see Briggs and Salcedo both. Briggs kept walking. Salcedo leaned against the door.

Worth moved his right hand to his radio. “Where’s Gwen?”

“Gargling, my guess.” Briggs laughed. “Swear to God, Ray? My balls feel lighter.”

Worth felt something flare in his head. Like powder burning out of a priming pan. Down the hall, the door to the bathroom was closed. Light glowed along the bottom edge.

“Hey, man, you gotta tell me something.” Briggs stepped close, tapping him on the chest with the back of one glove. “She ever let you—”

Worth hit his hand away.

Briggs grinned and slapped him.

Worth saw it coming from his blind side, reacted a split second too late. Leather smacked his cheek. The blow landed much heavier than he’d expected, throwing off his response.

The room shimmered, then dimmed.

He wasn’t sure how things happened from there. One minute he was stepping in tight, coming up under Briggs’s jaw with a short left. Then a grenade went off in his solar plexus and he was on his knees, unable to breathe.

Worth fell to his hands and time stopped for a little while. He tried to inhale and couldn’t. The carpet went out of focus, and his nerve system began sounding alarms. Worth forced himself not to panic, knowing it would just make him pass out that much quicker.

At last he managed to drag in a small sip of air. Then another. Worth finally crouched back onto his heels and looked up, into the muzzle of Tony Briggs’s nine-millimeter service weapon.

“Welcome back,” Briggs said. “Stand up.”

Worth discovered that his own Glock had already been removed from its holster. He had a lockback knife in a belt pouch, but he knew he couldn’t do much with it at this point except make things worse.