stuff.”
She nodded.
“Do you have it on you now?”
He reached filthy hands toward her. She backed up, tripping over a pile of clothes on the floor but quickly righting herself.
“Of course not. They took it all. I need to find some more. But there’s even better shit. It’s not out yet, but it will be. That’s what I really want. You heard of it?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the rumors, but it’s bullshit. There’s nothing.” Marc stared at his unexpected guest. “What do you know, Sweet Pea?”
“I know it’s not bullshit. Some cop let it through his fingers. And it’s good, Marc.”
“Really?”
“Really good. Way better than fen. Whoever has it will make a fortune. Will have everything they’ve ever wanted. Forever.”
“Everything?”
She nodded.
“Forever?”
She nodded. “No more shitholes. No more turning tricks. No more wondering where the next hit’s coming from. We’ll have lots of everything.”
“We?”
“I need your help. Look, I learned things in the academy. Useful things, like how to organize, how to fight. The cartels are gone. Everyone’s scrambling, right?”
He nodded.
“I can take over.”
“You?” He looked at the small girl and laughed.
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight…” she said. It was, she knew, his favorite saying.
“It’s the size of the fight in the dog.” He studied her for a moment. “You are quite a bitch.”
She laughed. “You’ll help?”
He looked at her with both hope and suspicion.
“You know people, Marc. I’ve been gone too long.”
“Not just gone. You were a cop.”
“Not quite,” said Amelia. “And since when can’t a cop also deal drugs? Not exactly a stretch. Will you help?”
He looked out the window, then back at her. “The streets aren’t what you remember.”
She needed no proof beyond what she saw in front of her. He wasn’t what she remembered.
“You don’t want to mess with what’s out there, Amelia.”
He opened his arms in display. What happened. When a tipping point was reached—and exceeded.
“Go home, Sweet Pea.”
“I am home.”
Marc looked at her. And his weary brain considered. “Everything?”
“Everything,” she said. “All we have to do is find the shit.”
He nodded, coming to a decision. “What the fuck. I have nothing to lose. Maybe that should be our motto.”
Amelia grunted. “Maybe.”
Thanks to Gamache, she too now had nothing to lose. It was, she realized, a very powerful place to be.
“Come with me,” he said.
* * *
Marc hadn’t lied. The streets of inner-city Montréal had changed. Never safe. Never clean. Never fun, now they were many degrees worse. Darker, filthier. Clogged with excrement, puke.
The faces that met her were gray. But the looks were canny. She was a stranger to them, even with Marc to vouch for her.
“Don’t tell anyone where you’ve been,” he whispered.
“No shit,” she said.
“If anyone asks, I’m going to say you were in Vancouver, living on the streets.”
They approached a loose knot of dealers, who stared at her.
She still had some meat on her bones. Pink in her cheeks. Clothes that hadn’t hardened with a crust of frozen puke. And piss. And cum.
“If she was in Vancouver,” a dealer asked Marc, as though Amelia weren’t standing right in front of him, “why’d she come back?”
“I’m right here, fuckface,” she said. “Talk to me.”
She was at least six inches shorter. She had to tip her head back to glare up at him.
The dealer stepped forward, thrusting his pelvis into her. Pushing her until she was against the brick wall of the alley. Then he ground himself against her.
He was twenty-five at most but looked ancient. Like something dug up at some primitive burial site. They all did. A mass grave, under micrograms of fentanyl, on the streets of Montréal.
His breath on her face smelled of rotten eggs. Of sulfur. Of hellfire.
“You know why I’m here,” she snarled, not bothering to push him away. “You know what I want. What I can’t get in Vancouver.”
He thrust his body against her.
“You came for this, did you?” Grinding his pelvis into her. “I remember you, little girl. Amelia.”
He said her name in a drawl, dragging it through the mud.
“You have one thing I want.” She reached between his legs. “And it isn’t this.”
She squeezed. Though what she felt was soft. Like a mitten in his pants.
“That’s it, little girl. Squeeze harder.”
She brought her hand up from his crotch to his throat and gripped it in exactly the way the martial-arts instructor at the academy had taught her.
Then she squeezed.
“Like this?” she asked.
His eyes widened. And she tightened her grip on his throat.
His eyes bulged. And still she squeezed.
“Amelia,” said Marc. “Stop. You’ll kill