Page 89 of The Way We Rot
“Do you think we can ever get through this?” I asked. “Do you think I can ever get over what you did to my brother?”
She laughed, that sweet laugh I hated and lusted after in equal measure. At last. A noise, a reaction, gorgeous, disgusting, she was just toying with me. She was so far under my skin it was like a disease, full of festering rot that something like relief struck my heart.
“No,” she replied, reaching up to stroke my cheek, blinking away tears as she stroked under my eye. “But I think we can die trying.”
I carried her across the stage, past the patches of dried blood and discarded tools. Down the stairs and through the aisle until we were back on the balcony.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her voice high, soft, gentle in a way I hadn’t heard from her.
I sighed. “To the place where it all began.”
With a grunt, I settled us into the dusty old seats, cradling her body to mine, letting her head fall onto my shoulder with a sigh. The rough velvet made my ass cheeks itch, but I ignored it.
“This was always our favorite spot to sit in, my brother and me,” I told Penelope, stroking her smooth skin, enjoying the way she held onto my bare chest, playing with the scatter of hair there, her fingers relaxed and heavy. “Not too close to the action, far enough away that we could see the mechanics of it, the attention to detail needed to make these puppets come to life.”
“Tell me more about it, please,” she whispered.
So I did.
We sat there.
In that theater.
A knife in my hand, from the toolbox I’d abandoned up there the last time.
I told her everything.
Until there was nothing.
And soon, I was rotting with her.
Epilogue
Phoebe Handler
“Oh, Adrian,” I muttered to myself as I looked up at the old theater. It took a lot of effort, weeks of work, but I found him. My partner, the man who could have one day been my brother-in-law. My friend, once upon a time.
No one was aware I’d started looking; an entire task force set out on a different floor of the precinct, myself excluded because of the history I shared with him. But we all shared a history. Adrian was a well-liked detective before he left us.
Before everything went so wrong.
But I beat them. Pushed aside and threatened with extended leave when they caught me going through their files, I beat them.
He’d covered his tracks from most, buying this place under a false name, but I knew him too well. Withjust months working together as partners, I had him figured out. They were right about that, I guess, that I was too close to him, but it would have been useful information, not detrimental.
Idiots.
I spoke to his new colleagues, learned about how bad things had grown in the prison, from COs being murdered by inmates to nurses quitting in one big walkout after the riot when they were given no updated safety measures. Sally Collins, a nurse, and the only person from the prison who would actually give me the time of day, led the walkout, citing budget cuts and poor treatment of both staff and inmates as their reason.
As far as I knew, a bunch of temps were brought in and nothing changed apart from some lost jobs, but it showed me the culture of the place.
Of course things could go so wrong. Sally told me she was retiring early and not to give her another moment’s consideration. Only when I pushed did she tell me she suspected something might have been going on with Adrian and Karner, that he was too interested in her, and she was too focused on him.
She sighed when she spoke of them, like the thought exhausted her.
My heart felt heavy as I stepped up to the once grand double doors of the theater and gave them a firm rattle. The sound of chains on the other side told me I’d never get in this way, so I turned away, back down the wide steps and around the building. This was a shitty neighborhood now, dilapidated and worn out from years of underfunding, this building fitting right in amongst the deprivation.
There must be a way in.
