Amberlough(98)

A noisy group of officers came shoving down the center of the hall, scrabbling around one man like a litter of hungry pups. He held his shoulders as if he was sick of their assault, his hands up high to ward them off. Light from the overhead sconces flashed off his spectacles. She recognized that face, lean and hawklike, ashy with fatigue.

He’d already passed her, and was still walking. She had to grab the chance. “Commissioner!”

He stopped. She couldn’t see if he turned—he was hemmed in by flunkies. They started to move on again, and she shouted his name, more desperately this time, with less formality. “Alex!” Her voice broke on it. He’d never recognize her. Not after one night of drinks and flirting. Especially not with her face rammed in like this.

Dry, cool fingertips touched her jaw and she jerked back, not realizing she’d closed her eyes.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you all right?”

One of the hounds was tipping her face up to catch the light. She squinted, and saw the shine of Müller’s spectacles over his shoulder.

“Alex,” she said again. Müller tipped his head, staring at her with a wrinkle between his eyes. He didn’t remember. His flunkies started ushering him away. Cordelia stuck out her foot and tripped him. One of the officers kicked at her ankle and she cried out.

“You.” Müller’s voice was cold. “Don’t you dare. Officers in this force do not strike prisoners. Not on my watch.”

Cordelia bit back a sob of gratitude.

Müller crouched at her feet. He took off his spectacles and looked at her, so close she could smell the bitter remnants of his aftershave.

“Ah,” he said. She looked into his eyes. “The Kelly Club. You drank a dry white, didn’t you?”

Cordelia, who couldn’t remember what she’d poured down her chute, nodded. “Yeah. You tried to slip your hand up my skirt under the table.”

A flush crept past his collar, and he glanced at his hangers-on like he was daring them to say something. None did. “Cordelia, right? What happened?”

“Whole mess of things.”

He ground his teeth, looked around at the people scuttling down the corridor, at the officers waiting for him to stand up, and said, “Let’s go someplace quiet, and we’ll get you sorted out.”

It sounded like a pickup, but she was miles beyond caring.

*

“I really can’t spare the time,” he said, shutting the door behind him as they ducked into a borrowed office. “Those daggers they were looking at me … all deserved.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, sinking gratefully into the leather chair behind some police captain’s desk. “Why all the ruckus?”

“You mean you don’t know? I’d have thought you’d been out in the worst of it, looking like you do.”

“I ain’t been out since … late last night?” she guessed. “Or maybe the night before? What day is it?”

He didn’t answer. “What’d they cart you in for, then, if you weren’t brawling?”

Rubbing her good wrist against her dress, trying to erase the memory of the steel cuff Müller’s deputy had cut away—and more, the thin, cold edge of Rehimov’s knife—she spoke to her knees instead of to him. “Some big stuff. I been—I don’t know where. The Ospies wanted to find out what I knew.”

A muscle in his jaw tensed, but he didn’t press her further.

“What are you doing at the DOC?” Her question sounded odd in the silence. “I thought this was just for stamping and stocking the criminal set. Getting ’em ready for the trap.”

“Headquarters was … compromised.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I told you. There’s rioting everywhere. Three of the primary representatives stepped down. Acherby’s assuming control of the whole country.”

“Mother and sons.” She let her head fall against the back of the chair. “He can’t.”

“He did. Nothing we can do about it.”

“Swineshit.” She sat straight again, breathless with the effort but filled with anger. Müller just looked at her with badly shuttered pity and she fell back, winded. “I don’t wanna believe that. Bet you don’t either.”

“You know what I want?” He sat on the corner of the desk and stared across the room, talking to a cork board pinned with notes and scraps of colored paper. “I want a force that isn’t sour through with crooked hounds. I want a state that works the way the law says it should.”

“And you think you’re gonna get it? Is this it?” She lifted her good hand—what a joke, good hand, when she was missing pieces off it—to indicate the chaos of the riots, then spread it wide to show her chopped-up fingers. Ragged spots of red showed through the cotton bandage. “Is this?”

Müller went green, finally figuring out her arrest hadn’t exactly been by the book. “Of course not. DePaul promised—”

“Oh I’m sure he did.” She spat. Strings of pink saliva slashed across the green leather desktop. Müller, to his credit, didn’t flinch. “If you believed all that, you’re gonna get what’s coming to you.”

He stared at her, fierce and unblinking. When she didn’t shrink, his face turned tired and he stood.