Page 24 of Saint of the Shadows

“In half an hour?!” The evidently eavesdropping officers pricked up to attention. Civilians in police precincts had an expected level of decorum, which Marisol wasn’t displaying. She sighed away her frustration. “I’m on my way.”

Marisol pulled her sweatshirt aside before she tucked her phone in her jeans. Sweatshirt boyfriend accused her of being too distant and busy to make anything work. One-sided. Too much work. And she couldn’t blame him. Her romantic relationships yielded to either a crisis at work or a crisis at the Novotny household. Falling head over heels for a weirdo in a mask who could swoop in as her schedule saw fit seemed all-the-more reasonable. “I got to head to work.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Tobias said.

“I don’t own a car.”

“Then I’ll give you a ride.”

“It’s not that bad of a walk.”

“It is in this weather without a good coat.”

She untied the sweatshirt from her waist. She wasn’t a child who couldn’t dress for the weather. As she pulled the sweatshirt on, she said, “See? I’m okay.” But the sweatshirt knocked her stocking cap askew, exposing the white bandage on her head.

“Doesn’t look like it.” Tobias indicated the bandage.

Marisol shrugged. “What I get for opening a medicine cabinet in the dark.” Her face warmed from the lie.

“C’mon, kid. I’ll take you in one of our unmarked cars. City’s best taxi. As an honest taxpayer, you’ve already bought it, so you might as well accept.” He put on his trench coat that hung off a hook.

She nodded like a bobblehead. A shot of alone time prickled in her throat like a cheap whiskey. Warm and giddy, she followed him outside to a maroon, four-door gas guzzler. The muscle car stood out among the parking lot’s basic sedans with its long, smooth body and fat grill. If the car moved forward, backwards, and braked as planned, it would impress her. That it reached freeway speeds in split seconds or power steered around tight corners was gibberish to her. When Tobias started the car and revved the engine, she flopped into the passenger seat with an eye roll. Was that necessary?

In the close quarters from the passenger seat, she picked up his faint scent. The night before, she felt close enough to taste him—like burnt air molecules leftover from a lightning storm. Nothing like that in the car. Here, Tobias smelled of artificial pine.

Tobias maneuvered the car through traffic. When the driving became less hazardous, he asked, “What made you become a nurse?”

“Fell into it. My sister needed the tuition money for a good high school, so I dropped out of med school and landed on my feet.”

“You were studying to be a doctor.” Tobias tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. The tapping crescendoed into a loud slap. “Damn, I knew you were too smart for me.”

Maybe she should follow Annie’s advice. “I suppose I could go back to school, but I like being right in the trenches with people, where I know I make a difference.” She looked out the window at an old woman waddling to the bus stop with a pull-cart of groceries. The car zoomed by, and she watched a gangly teenager cradling a basketball. The vapor of his breath trailed behind him like car exhaust.

At a stoplight, Tobias asked, “How is Caz your brother? You seem like you’re not cut from the same cloth.”

She pulled her hands inside her sleeves, afraid Tobias saw in her skin and the pattern of her veins the same hands that Caz had, the fists that crunched bones, the grip that swung bats against bodies. And the finger that pulled triggers.

She stared at the glove box. “When the dock jobs dried up, he felt like Dad wasn’t even a man. Enforcing for the Shadows gave him purpose. It made him the tough guy. I’d like to say that he made the wrong decision—that he should’ve handled life like me, but I didn’t have my greatestrole model let me down. Another roll of the dice, it could’ve been me.”

The light turned green. “More evidence that I shouldn’t make you angry.”

“I’m not an angry person.” She recoiled, squeezing her limbs together to take up less space. She’d spent her whole life listening to others label her with negative words she was somehow supposed to be flattered by—angry, outspoken, and fiery. But a worry lingered. Was she an angry person?

“I know that, but you could kick my ass.” As he rubbed the top of the gearshift, he added, “And I just might let you.”

Finally feeling that same heat from last night, she sat higher in her seat. “I wouldn’t do that out of anger.”

Tobias’s mouth twitched at the corners as if he was holding back a smile. “You hungry? We passed a corner store that has the best microwaves in the whole city. Nuclear grade. It shaves off a whole ten seconds of cooking time.”

Once she accepted the offer, it wasn’t long before they sat on the hood of the muscle car with piping hot cups of noodles in their hands. Stationed on the top floor of the hospital parking ramp, she saw all the people who entered and exited the main entrance of the hospital.

Below, a silver roadster shined like a mirror and stuck out from the dirty street. Someone had strategically parked the car as close to the hospital’sentrance as legally possible. The tires appeared centimeters away from the tow zone. Tobias whistled. “Who do you think drives that? Not sure if it takes stupidity or cajónes to street-park that kind of car.”

Marisol laughed. “There’s only one person in this city that I know has that kind of money and cajónes. Vincent Varian.” From their brief interaction last night, Vincent seemed too in control to be completely stupid. Vincent couldn’t simply be a fool. As she looked at the shiny, expensive car below, daring to be vandalized or sideswiped, she had a suspicion that Vincent wanted people to think he was stupid. She scratched the inside of her wrist. “What do you think about the Patron Saint? The guy that dresses up and fights crime?”

Tobias guzzled the last bit of noodles stuck to the bottom of the cup. A lone straggler dangled from the corner of his mouth, which he heartily slurped. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and squinted toward the distance. “I suppose you reap what you sow. If our city makes people desperate, they’re going to resort to desperate measures.”

“I heard he’s a part of a super-cop program.”

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