Free Vulnerable (Barons of Sodom) by Abriella Blake Page B

dead
already or mortally wounded. A lone ambulance cry rang out in the distance,
puncturing the night. He lurched toward the person on the ground, toward
Bridie.
    “I don't recognize him,” Athena murmured for his benefit,
still rubbing Bridie's back with comforting strokes. “Bridie? Who is this man?”
    It was hard to tell. A neat gunshot—looked like a sniper's
shot, in fact—had landed squarely in the center of the victim's forehead. His
eyes were open, stunned, blue but lightless. Sandy hair, freckles. A young man.
But skinny, practically gaunt. Bending low, Tuck noted a plodding path of
track-marks up and down his right arm.
    “Bridie?” Athena asked again. “Who was he?”
    “Looks like a no-good dope fiend to me,” piped Spivey, who
had appeared at the little gathering. “Probably owed someone money.”
    “But he doesn't look tortured or nothing.”
    The ambulance was getting closer. Tuck understood then that
time was of the essence. He bent low, and with fumbling hands rooted through
the dead man's pockets.
    “What the fuck are you doing, Lieutenant? You want us all to
go to jail?!”
    Finding a cardboard wallet, Tuck nimbly moved his fingers
through a crumpled folio of photobooth pictures—a baby, a Husky puppy, a woman
with braids in her hair and crooked teeth. He slid the picture gently from its
slot, then proceeded to wipe down the folio with the back of his handkerchief.
    “Bridie,” Tuck asked then, holding the picture up so the
girl could see. “Is this your aunt? Your aunt who died?” Bridie fluttered her
eyelids, looking dazed. She reached for the picture, her hands grazing Tuck's
as she clasped it in her long, pretty fingers.
    “Yeah,” she said, confused.
    “Hey, geniuses? The fuzz'll be here any second! Don't you
think we better scram ?” Yak yelled to the team over the purr of his Harley's
humming engine as he secured the chin-straps of his helmet with fumbling
fingers. The other Barons rallied at this cry, racing toward their own
motorcycles. It was an instinct bred deep in a man outside the law: avoid the
stiffs, at all costs. And especially avoid the police.
    “We probably should go,” said Athena, her voice comforting
in its lucidity. She put her hand again on the small of Bridie's trembling
back. “Let's go, sugar.”
    “Wait,” the little girl murmured. She was eyeing Tuck, who now
swayed on his feet. “He's drunk as a skunk, he can't drive.”
    “Well we can't all ride mine.” Athena sounded
impatient. She, too, had a record she wasn't interested in rehashing with the
boys in blue.
    “I'll wait, then. Till he sobers up.”
    “That's stupid, Bry. He can make his own way, he's done it
before.”
    “I don't mind,” Bridie said. “And I'm not afraid of the
police.”
    The sirens were upon them now, screeching and furious. Red
and blue light danced over Dixie's facade.
    Wavering one more moment, Athena looked from her best friend
to her new charge. Bridie couldn't sense what she was thinking, and Tuck's gaze
was nothing but opaque. But Athena was aware of the gravity in this exchange.
It felt like she was giving something up, leaving these two beautiful people
alone here, together. But she rallied, as she had to, as she always did.
She got on her bike and kicked off from the ground just as three cruisers drove
into the parking lot.
    “What now?” Tuck managed, but Bridie was ahead of him. She
clasped his wrist and pulled him back towards the entrance of the bar.
    “Well, now it's just you and me,” she said. “That gonna be a
problem?”

Chapter Eighteen

     
     
    DET. RAMIREZ : How did you like your sandwich?
Pastrami alright?
     
    BRIDIE : What're you, detective? A New Yorker?
     
    DET. RAMIREZ : My mother. Why?
     
    BRIDIE : Pastrami ain't too chic around these parts,
is all. It's nice. Like a peppery piece of ham.
     
    DET. RAMIREZ : Bridie, did the Lieutenant kill that
man in the parking lot? The night you first went to Dixie's?
     
    BRIDIE : Excuse