Pack of Lies. Laura Anne Gilman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ started to straggle back from the scene. Nick was the first through the door. He stopped short when he saw me, and pasted on a snarky grin.

      “Hey, Dandelion.”

      He loved calling me that, because of my hair being short and fluffy and naturally blond. I let him think it annoyed me, because it amused both of us. The things we did, the way the Guys pushed us, and we pushed ourselves, a lot of stress built up and there was only so much drinking you could do and still do your job. Teasing let us blow off some of that tension in reasonably healthy ways.

      I’d been in some situations—high school being the prime example—where the allegedly friendly sniping could get nasty. Not here. Not to say we didn’t occasionally do damage, especially Sharon’s smart, sharp tongue, but it was never intentional.

      From the very beginning, it had been like that, all the parts that didn’t seem to fit somehow fitting anyway. Stosser and Venec had handpicked each of us, not just for our individual skills, but how we’d form a team. I don’t know how they did it, but … it worked. God knows there was the normal tension you get when you throw high achievers into close contact, but there was more to it than just being coworkers, from that very first day. We counted on each other to be there—the job required us to work together, or fail.

      The closest I could describe it to J had been that we were packmates. You didn’t eat your own.

      While all this skittered through my brain, Nick was waiting there, his body language expectant.

      I sighed and gave in to ritual. “Bite me, Shune.”

      His put-on grin softened to a smile with real humor. “Am I the first one back?”

      I was curled up on the couch in the ready-room, which had once been the lobby of the original office. I suppose there might have been better, more private places for us to hang out, but the kitchenette was there, and the comfortable chairs, and somehow we all just naturally gathered there when we were all in the office and not otherwise working. That meant that anyone walking in saw us immediately, but we didn’t get many unannounced visitors. In fact, other than our first client and her son, I don’t think anyone had come to the office except us.

      “No,” I said in response. “I was. You’re second. As usual.”

      My heart really wasn’t in banter today, though, and I guess he realized that, because he just nodded, letting the conversation die quietly. I spooned up some more of the soup—a decent tomato bisque—and watched him put his coat away.

      “You get your shit from the cop?” I asked, I guess as a peace offering.

      “Yeah.”

      He didn’t sound like his usual puppy-dog enthusiastic self in that, and I sat up and looked more closely at him. Nick was slight, almost scrawny, with perpetually tousled brown hair that always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, but he’d started out the morning looking if not dapper, then decently put-together. Now, he looked like crap, and his brown eyes had a cast to them that I was starting to get all too familiar with. “What?”

      “Nothing. I don’t know.” He shrugged, a gesture that drove me crazy.

      “What?” Unlike with Venec, I pushed Nick. Unlike Venec, Nick liked to confide.

      “Nothing.” He saw the look I was giving him, and smiled again, this time with the real sweet warmth I was used to seeing from him. “Seriously. I got the guy’s signature, so we can rule him out of the evidence. I’m tired, that’s all.”

      Uh-huh. We’d been working together long enough he couldn’t bullshit me quite that easily. Smile or no, he was upset about something.

      “Guy was scummy?” You couldn’t always tell from a signature, but … sometimes it just oozed.

      “No.” Nick shrugged again, not finding the words he needed. “It’s just … he’s a cop.”

      Ah. I understood, the way I wouldn’t have a couple of months ago. You work with crap, no matter how clean you are inside, a stink of it stays with you. It’s like the smell inside the workroom—enough people throw up over time, and the smell won’t ever go away, no matter how much lemon-scented cleanser we used. Cops stank. Even the good ones.

      There wasn’t really anything to say. Part of the job. Like carrying around the memory of an assault that didn’t happen to you. I lifted my spoon. “You want some soup?”

      Nick made a face, indicating his opinion of soup. “Nah. Nifty said he’d pick up a pizza on his way back.”

      I must have gone green or something, because he grabbed the container of soup and had the trash can under my face before I was halfway off the sofa. My boy’s got good ref lexes.

      “Sorry, ah, hell, Bonnie, I’m sorry … here.” He put the soup down and grabbed a paper towel from the counter, wetting it under the faucet and handing it to me.

      I sat back and wiped my face with the back of my hand, then realized what he’d given me the paper for and wiped my hands with it, instead. So much for that soup.

      Nick got me back on the sofa, and dropped himself down next to me.

      “You okay? You got a stomach bug?”

      Easier to claim that, but … his concern was real, and we were honest with each other. You had to be, if you expected them to have your back. Nobody got to pretend to be a hero. “Scummy,” I said, and tried to smile. He got it. He knew what my job on the scene had been, and what it meant.

      He put his arm around my shoulders, his brown eyes puppy-sorrowful. “These things … nobody should have to go through it, and we shouldn’t have to witness it, either.”

      I smiled a little and nodded, but there wasn’t any comfort in his words. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t really. Oh, he got it intellectually. Intellectual understanding had shit to do with it.

      You talk about rape, and every female over puberty understands, way more than a guy ever could, even the most sympathetic gay-or-straight male. Women know, instinctively; hammered into us by society, every single day of our lives, even before we know what sex really is. Even if you never talked about it, it was there, lurking behind your left shoulder, an awareness of risk, even if nobody ever touches you without your consent.

      But that wasn’t what was making me uneasy, why what I’d seen was bothering me so. Not exactly. Violence I could handle. I had never been a sheltered child, and I knew that people weren’t angels—not that the angeli were all that nice, from what I’d heard. It was the entire concept of sex-as-violence that was … More than alien to me, it was supersize noncarbon-based life-form alien. J said I was a hedonist, I just believed that mutual pleasure was a noble goal. To me, sex was play: it was an expression of affection, of mutual satisfaction, and yeah, when time, of procreation. That someone could use it to hurt someone else? Being reminded that, in the wrong minds, it can also be a weapon? Scummy. Scary.

      I struggled to hold on to my anger from before. Anger was better than fear. Anger I could use.

      Nick rested his head on my shoulder, almost a cuddle, and even though it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, on tough days, my body shifted away from his. Then he sighed, and I felt a sudden urge to comfort him overriding my own discomfort. Unlike me, Nick had been sheltered. Dealing with scummy took СКАЧАТЬ