Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(10)

More than what she saw in the mirror frightened her. The visuals may have been what hurt her the least. What made her more nervous was that she could hear it, too, what was happening to her, when she was alone in the quiet of her house.

She could hear the grinding, the sound and the feel of stone working on stone, a feeling like the grinding of gears in her belly. Each day she was having a harder time ignoring the fierce devouring machine running every hour of the day and night in the arch under her ribs. And so she ran to take the machine’s energy away. To burn the fear and the rage that she knew fueled it. To exhaust it before it ate her alive.

Her suspension was the first time since she was eighteen years old that she’d gone more than a couple of days without a job or a class or both to go to. So she ran.

She ran too often, too long, to the point where her body had started breaking down in protest. She ran through shin splints. Through swollen knees. Achy hips. She ran through every caution sign her body threw up in front of her.

Because she needed it.

Running, being in motion, was the only time that the world these days wasn’t blurred and tilted ever so slightly on its axis, like she was looking at her surroundings through a turning wineglass. She needed the percussion of her feet pounding the dirt of the neutral ground between the iron rails of the streetcar tracks. Every long daylight stride pushed the silver-haired man farther back into the shadows. Every mile put the frightened, on-the-run woman she used to be farther behind her. She needed the shelter of the streetlight’s curled arms and the stretching boughs of the live oaks arcing over her head. She needed to feel protected, to feel embraced by her new city. Running was the only time she felt safe anymore.

Well, when she was running and when she was chasing. And when she was hurting someone else.

One thing that being a cop and these past few weeks of night work had taught her—chasing after something or someone could feel as good, maybe better, than running away. Maybe because there was a real, live person at the end of the chase. Someone you could catch. Tangible damage you could do. The things she was running from, they weren’t outside her, they were in her, and so she carried them with her. She knew that. One thing Maureen knew for sure was that neither the chasing road nor the fleeing road was anywhere near as frightening as the thought of standing still.

As she stretched in the soft grass of the park, she focused her vision on an ant crawling through the blades between her feet. She blew out her breath and the ant fell over on its back.

She moved her hands to the small of her back, did a slow back bend. When she’d righted herself she said, “You couldn’t have picked a spot by the water fountain, at least? I’m putting in work here.”

“We can walk over to it if you like,” Preacher said.

Maureen looked out over the lagoon, eyes narrowed. She had an idea why he was there. Disappointment crept over her. This evening was crashing down around her ears in a hurry. “We’re fine right here,” she said. “Go ahead and get it over with. What have you heard? Is the axe coming down?”

“Excuse me?”

“I told you last time we met,” Maureen said, “that I have my meeting tomorrow morning with the district commander. You’re here because you’ve heard how it’s gonna go. And you wouldn’t be if things were gonna go well.”

“Come sit on the bench with me,” Preacher said.

“Wow, that bad.” Maureen set her hands on her hips. She looked over her shoulder at the spot where Solomon had stood with his cocktail and his golf club. He was gone.

Preacher ambled over to the bench and sat. Half a dozen ducks waddled to him, quacking, their expectations renewed by his return.

Maureen hadn’t realized until that very moment that, despite everything she’d done wrong both to earn her suspension and while serving it, she had been completely confident the DC would reinstate her. For the past six weeks, as far as the NOPD knew, she’d done everything the department had asked of her. She had kept quiet and stayed away from other cops. She had told no one about her searching the streets for Madison Leary, not even Preacher. Had the NOPD found out anyway? Where had she blown it? Dice had said no one she had questioned while searching for Leary had made her for a cop. She couldn’t see how any of the guys she’d dealt with in the streets could know she was police. Not one of them got a good look at her face. They’d hardly heard her voice. She wasn’t sure any of them even knew it was a woman who had taken them down.

But why would Preacher cross town to stake her out in Audubon Park the night before her big meeting other than to cushion the blow of the bad news in person? He was brave. And professional. And he had always looked out for her. If she were walking into an ambush in her meeting tomorrow, Preacher would warn her.

“Do I need to buy a plane ticket and get out of town?” Maureen asked. She looked through the trees at Solomon’s house. He knew by now his bribe hadn’t worked. Maybe he’d tried different tactics and reached into the department. “Have the brass changed their minds and decided to bring charges?”

Preacher turned on the bench when he realized she hadn’t followed him. “Good Lord, woman. Would you come over here and sit? Did I say I’m here about your meet with the DC? I’m not. It’s something else entirely. You Irish, you always expect the worst. Most dour motherf*ckers I ever met. How any of you ever had the nerve to get on a boat I have no idea.”