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Chapter Nine
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"Adam, I don't know how I feel about this." Malloy closed the top drawer of Grady's dresser, dropping her arms to her sides.
Adam looked up from the box he'd dragged from under Grady's bed, eyes sympathetic but determined. "I know it feels like a violation of privacy, but I don't care how good a reason he thinks he has for what he's doing, I can't just sit back and do nothing."
"I know," she said. "I wouldn't expect you to." She turned, scanning the room—the meditation wall, the bed, the photos. Everything she found represented the Grady she already knew. If there were secrets here, she wasn't seeing them. "I'm just not sure what we're supposed to be looking for."
"Me neither," said Adam, dropping the book in his hand back into the box. "Maybe nothing. Just keep looking."
She tucked a stray hair behind her ear and reached for the shelves next to the wardrobe, pulling out the laundry bag Grady had been messing with that morning. Pushing through a moment of hesitation, she unlaced the top and let the clothes tumble onto the dresser. Picking through the pile, she unrolled a pair of Grady's jeans, thinking maybe he'd left something in one of the pockets. They unfurled slowly, sticky instead of loose. Immediately, she stopped breathing. "Adam," she said sharply.
He stood quickly, coming over. She turned sideways to let him see. The left pant leg was matted with dried blood, stained above and below the knee as though it'd pooled around Grady's kneecap while he'd been kneeling. The material was stiff and dark, steeped with the hard smell of copper. Gingerly, Adam touched the hem. His jaw muscle tightening.
"That can't be… can that be Grady's blood?" she asked. It seemed like a lot—too much for him to have lost and still be able to walk around, even knowing he'd passed out just hours ago.
Adam shook his head. "I don't know. I... I don't know."
Malloy lifted her hand, letting it hover over the dark surface. Staticky silence crowded her ears until Adam gripped her wrist loosely, gently pulling it back. "I'll need to get this into the lab," he said, setting the world back to normal speed. He gave her wrist a soft squeeze then let it go and rubbed his face. "I'm going to have to go back into the station, find Rothman and Kelsey, see if they've had any luck with Miguel."
"What about the leaks?"
"Don't worry about the leaks. I doubt this is the kind of information they're looking for anyway." But he glanced away as he spoke, eyes dark and surface gritty, like sheet metal.
"What are they looking for?" she said without facing him. The walls bounced the question hollowly back at her. She did not expect an answer.
Predictably, Adam stayed silent. After a staggered second, he set a hand to her shoulder. "I'll handle it."
"This is bad, this time," she said dully, focused on the jeans. "Isn't it?"
"Looks that way."
Folding her arms close to her body, Malloy closed her mouth, the gap between them and Grady feeling wider by the minute. What would happen to the rest of them—to Adam—if that gap widened too far? She'd seen that destructive streak loop itself around Adam's life again and again while she'd been growing up, the missing and mysterious Grady holding power over Adam even in the midst of her father's death.
"Hey," Adam said, trying too hard to inject calm into his voice. It sounded odd after everything else he'd said that day, him suddenly trying to be the voice of reason. "Don't give up on him yet, okay?"
She shook herself. "Of course not."
He squeezed he shoulder harder. "We've survived worse than this. Aren't you the one that keeps trying to tell me that?"
She nodded again, as if it were a fact. And maybe it was. Even before they were a family, they'd faced war and death—varied forms of pestilence and famine—and they'd all come out alive. Yet this felt different. This felt like all of them and none of them. And even if she were suddenly able to identify this, this current plague, and rate it on a scale against what they'd faced before, she suddenly couldn't think why it should be comforting.
She didn't think Adam could either.
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Sitting at the bar with the books in front of her, variegated lights dimmed to orange-blue dullness, Malloy tried to concentrate. Her fingers flipped through the receipts, but her eyes kept reading the numbers backwards and she kept losing her place with the calculator.
The Closed sign had been sitting on the door since Grady's flight from the barroom floor. The blinds were drawn. The whole bar silent as the dead. It'd been that way for hours. She had no reason to stay and still couldn't get herself to leave. Drumming her fingers on the surface of the paper, she stopped and spread her hand, trapping the pen under her thumb.
All around her, it was quiet, clean, and empty. Abruptly, she shoved the calculator away, letting it sail off the bar and clatter across the floor. Slumping her head into her palms, she increased the pressure around her eye sockets and tried to be still.
She startled when the phone rang, heartbeat spiking in her chest. Catching her breath, she shoved off her stool and rounded towards it, plucking it up quickly. "Adam?" Good news. Have good news.
Nothing.
She balanced the base of the receiver with her other hand, steadying it against the shake in her fingers. "Grady?"
Silence.
"Grady, listen to me. You just need to tell us where you are, okay? Just tell us where you are, and we'll come get you. We'll come get you, and you can come home."
She waited.
"Grady?"
There was only silence. Silence and the swift click and dial-tone that indicated disconnect. She listened to the pulsing sound for an absurdly long moment, then carefully set the phone back on its cradle.
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tbc