Ray turned to Lis.
She winked at him.
***
RAY STARTED some laundry, cleaned up the pizza boxes and left the last of the slices on a plate for Penn, then stared at the papers on the wall for a while. Cal and Benny were bickering about a particular online message board for magic-users that Cassandra had told them about. They had to talk to people it seemed; the way things could be hacked in movies was not real life, unfortunately. Cal decided to do this overnight while everyone else rested.
Calvin sat with Ray for a while to prompt him into any memories, no matter how slight, of his recent cases. The washing machine buzzed and Cal went to go deal with it. Lis handed Ray another palmful of human headache medication.
Ray closed his eyes.
He woke at the sound of Penn’s voice.
***
RAY STARTED TO get up to greet her but Penn must have brushed past the others because she was in front of Ray before he could do more than sit up.
Penn leaned down. She put a hand to the back of Ray’s neck and glared in his face before tugging him closer with no warning, putting his face almost to her shoulder. Her grip was like steel.
Ray breathed in sea salt, and whatever peppery dish she’d eaten for lunch hours ago, and herbal shampoo, and a trace of volcanic ash, probably part of a lotion or face mask. He smelled the stale air of the station, and bad coffee, and packaged chocolates, the kind from the department’s vending machines. More stress-eating.
“They don’t get to murder you,” Penn bit out as though she had been holding those words in all day. She pulled back to glare at Ray some more. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Cal wasn’t quiet.
“So he did tell you.” Ray held her stare. Penn released his neck but otherwise didn’t move. “I wasn’t sure if he had. I didn’t because it felt like something to say in person.”
“Ah, yes.” Penn’s tone was cutting. “Face-to-face, like, ‘By the way, two uniformed officers showed up out of nowhere today when I was at my weakest and were going to shoot me until some witnesses intervened.’ Fucking hell, Ray, what did you find that scared them so bad?”
Ray had no answer and she knew that. “You’re certain that’s what happened?”
“If nothing else, right or wrong—yes, okay,wrong—but if nothing else, I would’ve expected some reaction to this today.“ Penn slowly straightened. “Maybe some jokes from the patrol guys. An official statement of some kind from upstairs even if only a private one for us. I didn’t hear a single word about it from anyone. Although, the fact that they made sure to keep me there all day was annoying at first, then suspicious even before I got Cal’s messages.”
She looked up. “How did you get Cal in a shirt this early in the season?” she wondered, distracted, not seeming to expect an answer. She faced Lis. “You have to be Cal’s mother. I don’t think we’ve met, but how lovely to see you here.” She turned to Calvin with a smirk. “A nice thing in a horrible day.”
“Sirens,” Cal muttered.
Penn clapped her hands and carried on, talking to Ray but obviously aware of the rest of her audience. “They had me helping with other people’s paperwork. They had tech support on my computer because of avirus,“ the word dripped with sarcasm, “I was invited to sit in ontwomeetings that had nothing to do with me. I thought, maybe, just maybe, they were trying to show me a position I could have. That it was, well, something like a bribe. The equivalent of hush money. Except that nobody actually wanted me there, they just didn’t want me elsewhere. Then Cal texted and me and I knew why.”
She’d run her hands through her hair today, more than once.
“That still doesn’t mean I found something to scare them,” Ray pointed out anyway. Anxiety-sweat was both brittle and clinging, even to a were’s nose. Penn needed to get out some of the worry she’d been holding in all day.
“No,” she admitted, but her voice went up, “it doesn’t. Not in any provable way. I don’t give a fuck. They tried whatever they tried with you, and when that didn’t work, they split us up and tried it again—with a little assassination backup plan.”
“Assassination?” Ray got to his feet, not that Penn moved back any. “I’m hardly a political figure.”
“But you could be.” Penn raised her hand to tick off points. “Well-known. Hard to miss in a crowd. Ostensibly a law-abiding citizen, if that is the angle of choice, but a wild, uncontrollable monster if another angle is needed. Connected to one other well-known village figure.” She jerked her head toward Calvin. “Consorts with dangerous outspoken leftie types. And you photograph well. If someone wanted to choose a figure to spark something with a tragic—or justified—death, you might not have meant to, but you’ve made yourself ideal.” She pushed out a long, exhausted breath. “I had a lot of time to think today while I dotted I’s and crossed T’s at someone else’s desk.”
“I’m not,” Ray didn’t know how else to phrase it “all things to all people.”
“No, you’re a symbol. Which is an unknown a lot of peoplethinkthey know.”
“And can predict.” Calvin broke the following silence. “But they predicted wrong.”
Penn stayed focused on Ray. “So, did you stumble onto something big? I can’t say. You were you. Youareyou. You chose Cal, and you put Ross in prison, and you do what you feel is right, and they—one of them, several of them, I don’t know—made a decision and the rest will back them up. But I think,“ she grimaced, “they could have kept using you but decided on something else, on this instead. Like I said, you are you. So, yeah, I think you were on to something, and yeah, I think someone noticed.”
“Can you tell what they want?” Benny asked. Cal was surprisingly silent.
