He Called Me His Weapon, So I Died and Came Back Free novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Deputy

I didn't sleep. At dawn I told Pru I'd caught a cold, and I spent the day lying on my bed, working out where to run.

By the next night I had no answer, so I went to work.

At closing I took the garbage out to the alley behind the Gull, because I wanted a minute alone.

"Sparrow," said a voice in the dark.

I had the bottle in my hand before I turned. It was a good bottle, heavy, and I swung it without thinking.

He caught my wrist.

"It's me," Emmett Hanratty said. "Easy."

He had lost weight. There was a yellow bruise on his cheekbone, and he had plainly not slept since the night of the gala.

I yanked my arm back and he let go.

"I don't know that name," I said.

"Yes, you do." He lifted his own hand and tapped his thumb twice against the inside of his wrist. "You did that in the hospital. The man in the grey jacket saw you through the glass. He reported it to Corvin, and I told Corvin it was nothing, and then I came to look myself."

"You followed me."

"I followed the man in the grey jacket." He gave a tired breath of a laugh. "You don't look like her. Not at all. But you stood in a doorway the way she did, and you counted the exits before you counted me."

I set the bottle down on a crate. My hand wasn't steady.

"How?" he said. "I watched you go over that dock rail into the harbor. I was one of the men who looked for the body."

"I don't know how. I woke up in a hospital in somebody else's skin."

He took that in slowly. He had always listened to me properly, even when it cost him.

Then he said, "Good," very quietly, and I realized he was shaking.

"Good?"

"If you were really dead I'd have to live with it." He swiped at his face with the back of his hand. "I can live with this."

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