Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Next Time

"Can I come over?" I said.

"Now?"

"Now. Before either of us thinks about it too long."

She breathed out. "I'll put the kettle on."

I was on O Street in ten minutes.

The old phone was on her kitchen table beside the sugar bowl: a silver flip phone with a cracked hinge.

"I charged it last night," she said. "First time in two years. I didn't sleep."

"We don't have to play it."

"Yes, we do. I'm not doing it alone again."

She put it on speaker and set it face up between our cups.

I turned my right ear to it.

Wind first. A lot of wind, roaring in the little speaker.

Then a big man's voice, cheerful and out of breath.

"Hey, Ma. You're at your sister's, I know. They've got me up in two on a late box."

A clank, steel on steel, somewhere below him.

"Somebody's on my ladder." A pause. The wind. "It's Truscott. He's got somebody with him."

His voice changed. It went careful.

"Kent. What are you doing up here this time of night?"

Then nothing.

Wind, for a long time. A scrape I couldn't name.

Then the beep.

The widow had both hands flat on the table.

"They told me he was alone up there," she said.

"He wasn't."

"I have something too," I said. "A piece of the coat Kent wore that night. There's something on it."

Her hand found mine across the table and held on hard.

"Not yet," I said. "When it goes to the police, it goes to somebody who'll open it."

"Then I'll keep this in the drawer till you say."

Zoya's studio was a brick storefront in Fort Point with a neon hand in the window.

She was bent over a bus driver's forearm, finishing a bunch of roses for his mother, and she didn't look up.

I sat on the stool by her mirror.

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