Page 51 of Don't Shoot Me Santa
Kenny accepted it.
“I’d like to take them home.” He slipped the stick into his inside pocket. “I need to immerse myself. Voice, pattern, tempo. If they’ve done this before, I’ll see echoes.”
Parry leaned back. “We’ll give you full access. But if this escalates, and we think it will, we may need you more involved. Officially. We’ve got units actively pursuing every lead we have. So far, everyone with known contact from the shelter and his old home has accounted for their whereabouts.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re cleared.”
“Agreed.”
Kenny said nothing for a beat.
Outside, a police car reversed across the lot, sleet streaking the windscreen. The world smelled of gingerbread lattes and wet tinsel. Somewhere, a hallway tree blinked half-lit and listing, its paper angel crooked on top.
He glanced down at Luke’s file.
Then nodded once. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
And as he stood, he noted the time.
Shit.
He was late.
* * * *
Aaron stood outside the shelter, Chaos’s lead clutched in one gloved fist, freezing his fucking bollocks off. But he refused to wait inside. Way past four p.m. and the sky had bled itselfdry hours ago, leaving only blackness above the car park. Thick, quiet, and endless. A winter darkness that didn’t fall, it settled. Heavy. Like a memory he hadn’t asked to remember.
Hadn’twantedto remember.
He yanked his hat down lower, blew a cloud of frozen breath towards the ground. It vanished almost instantly. Figures.
That was the problem with this time of year. Not the tinsel or the songs, not even the smell of fake cinnamon everywhere. No. The darkness. Waking up in it. Working through it. Walking home in it. And it curled around the edges of things, too early, too often. Made it feel as if the sun had left for good.
Made him remember the dark.
Aaron stared out across the empty car park. Only the floodlights from the kennel yard lit the gravel, casting a pale-yellow wash across the slush-streaked ground. Everyone else had gone home an hour ago. No one stayed past five anymore. Not unless they had something to prove, or something to control.
Only one person did that.
Blackwell.
Still inside. Probably in the back office, scrolling through spreadsheets as if he was God, deciding whether the staff would get a party or the dogs would get to eat. Those dead-fish eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses, always watching, always weighing. Aaron had spent the day dodging him. Taking dogs out, running supplies, hiding in routine. Anything not to answer that question.
The one about tomorrow.
He hadn’t said yes.
But he hadn’t said no, either.
Chaos whined at his feet, then curled closer to Aaron’sleg. Warmth, or protection. Maybe both. Aaron’s breath caught when headlights appeared at the top of the lane. Kenny’s Discovery. The shape of it, the way it moved untangled him.
But as the relief cracked through the cold, a voice cut across it.
“Aaron?”
He tensed.
Turned.
