A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,76

with him on this shitshow.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Exactly. Why didn’t he?”

“If I understood what made Jake tick-tock, maybe he’d still be alive.”

From outside, the sounds of the city waking broke the quiet in the apartment. “You don’t really think that,” Sam said. “Do you? It’s not your fault, Rufus.”

Rufus put his hands on his hips. “I don’t know why Jake didn’t tell his partner, but can we not study a throwaway comment under the magnifying glass? It has nothing to do with last night—just forget about it.”

Ripping open the ruck, Sam dug out another of the same white T-shirts and his dopp kit. “Yeah. Forget about it. Forgotten. So where’s the phone?” And then he went into the bathroom.

“Sam,” Rufus started, following and flexing his tingling fingers. “Let’s focus on this problem.”

He must have heard Rufus coming because he kicked the bathroom door shut. “Focused,” he shouted through the door. “One-hundred percent.”

Rufus had come up short when the door closed. “Wow. Ok. Well, I’m going to go look for the phone,” he called.

“Not without me,” Sam said, yanking open the door, toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth so he could jab a finger at Rufus. “I’m the one who came here to find out what happened to Jake. I’m the one who’s been fucking focused on figuring this out. So you can wait five minutes for me to get ready.”

Rufus could feel his face flushing. “You’re being an asshole again,” he warned before fetching his Chucks. “I’m just going downstairs to check Jake’s mailbox.”

“His mailbox? What the fuck?”

Rufus slipped his shoes on. “That’s what I said.”

“I’m being an asshole,” Sam repeated before retreating into the bathroom again. The door crashed in its frame.

It was painfully clear that last night was still in the forefront of Sam’s mind, and Rufus’s attempt to shut it down, to pack it into a box and deal with it another time—never—was not what Sam wanted to do. Sam will have to deal, though, Rufus thought as he left the apartment. Sam might have wanted him to see someone—a therapist—and just the idea made Rufus break out in a cold sweat, but there wasn’t time for that. Rufus wasn’t the priority. Jake needed justice. Those kids needed rescuing. Heckler needed to be wearing a pair of handcuffs for the rest of her life.

Rufus sat on the handrail at the stairs and slid down to the landing below. He considered the idea of a burner phone being the pickup Jake had played hot potato with. It was small and easy to hide. So where would it be safe until he felt he could enter it into official evidence? Where would no one check but his trusted CI—Rufus?

Jake would have given Rufus the address to this secondary apartment and Rufus would have pretended he didn’t already know it. He’d have asked Jake were the pickup was, and Jake would have done something like tap, tap, tap Rufus’s forehead. Because Jake knew Rufus had a thing about mailboxes.

He slid down the next handrail, then the next, all the way to the ground floor. Rufus walked to the vestibule, stopped at the wall of mailboxes, and took out the lockpick tools from his jacket pocket. He stuck the sharp tips into the lock of 9F and worked the tumblers. Rufus had been so hyperfocused on opening the mailbox, and with the tink, tink, tink of his tools echoing, he hadn’t heard the approach of footsteps.

Then a hand wrapped around his mouth and it was too late to scream.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Fuck Rufus was becoming a common refrain in Sam’s head lately. He indulged in a few verses while he brushed his teeth. Through the closed door, he heard Rufus leave the apartment, presumably to check the mailbox—which was what he had told Sam, and that wasn’t necessarily the same thing as the truth. And as soon as the thought went through Sam’s head, he felt guilty for thinking it. And then he was mad at Rufus for making him feel guilty. And then the fuck Rufus hallelujah chorus started up again. And then Sam decided to take a shower.

A shower hadn’t originally been on the agenda, but it moved up the list pretty fast once he thought of it. He smelled like Rufus. Could smell the redhead all over him. And he smelled like Manhattan, which was its own unique funk of sweat and grime and hot garbage. And he even smelled a little bit like Jake, or at least