The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Yes First
I said yes first, in his kitchen at two in the morning, with my coat still on.
The hall had taken four hours to empty.
People had come to the head table one by one.
The old tug captain had taken my hand in both of his and said nothing at all.
The widow of the surveyor who drank himself to death had held me by the shoulders and looked at my face.
A man who had lost a halibut boat twelve years ago had wept openly, and Katarina had given him a plate of cake.
The investigators had taken the ledger in a clear bag, with a form for me to sign.
I had signed it standing at the head table, and I had kept my mother's oilcloth.
Now I stood in the middle of Niko's room above the freezers, where I had once said I would never be unarmed.
I had been unarmed for four hours.
The knife was still in my sleeve, and I was not thinking about it.
He had not touched me since the hall.
He stood at the far end of the kitchen counter in his black suit, with the jacket off and his tie in his pocket.
His hands lay flat on the steel.
He looked as though he had been through a wall.
"You said you'd walk me home," I said.
"I walked you to your car," Niko said.
"You said to bring you here."
"I know what I said."
"You do not have to say anything," he said.
"You have read a murderer's book to two hundred people, and you stood.
"If you want to sleep in that bed with the door locked, I will sit in the chair, or I will go to the yard."
"Stop talking," I said.
He stopped.
I crossed the floor.
The freezers hummed under my boots, as they had on the first night.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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