Chapter 33

“WHY?” I ASKED.

Tox just looked at me. I wasn’t going to get an answer that easy.

I shifted against the wall and sighed, let the rumble of the van rock me back into tired numbness. We seemed to be driving for an hour. I got up and tried to look through the slats in the door and figure out where we were.

“Where are they taking us?” I wondered.

“Not the Kings Cross police station,” Tox said.

“Of course not the Kings Cross police station!” I sneered at him, fell into whining. “God, I should be in bed asleep now. I should have had a nice hot shower. I should have my lovely soft pajamas on.”

“Pajamas?” Tox snorted.

The van stopped. I looked out the slats but could only see darkness, the occasional orange light. Two officers came around the back of the van and opened the door.

“Get out.”

“I can’t get down there with my hands cuffed behind my back.”

“Get. Out.”

I noted the names on their badges—Demper and Loris—and then gave up and let them have what they wanted, the humiliation they thought would make them feel like heroes. I made a jump for the ground, landed badly, and fell on my face. It sounded as if Tox didn’t fare much better. I heard him slump onto his backside, try to slide off the edge and stumble.

One of the cops dragged me up. I’d bitten my lip. My mouth was full of blood. I sat on the ground as instructed, next to my partner. I was just getting an idea of where we were—some sort of industrial area near a canal—when blinding torchlight flashed in my face.

“Obviously you have no idea who this is.” The cop flicked the light from my face to Tox’s. My vision was clouded with green explosions.

“It’s Tox Barnes,” I said. “I’m well aware.”

“Well, clearly you need an information session on who you’re working with here, because you couldn’t possibly know who he is—or you wouldn’t be hanging out in bars with him. No one with any self-respect would,” the cop carried on.

I sighed. Tox was squinting into the torchlight with one eye open. The light flicked between us, blinding us over and over.

“Tox Barnes and a few of his friends beat a woman and her young son to death.”

“I know! I know!”

“Aren’t you in sex crimes?” The second cop jabbed me in the shoulder with his boot, causing me to topple over. “How could you dismiss the gang rape and vicious beating of an innocent—”

I looked at Tox, thinking he’d jump in and correct an accusation as outlandish as this. He hardly seemed to be listening.

“Gang rape, too, now?” I struggled upright and squinted at the cop before me. I felt strangely defiant on Tox’s behalf. “I can’t keep up with all the versions of this story. What’s next? Cannibalism?”

“She’s on his side,” one of them sneered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Where’s your badge?”

“What?”

“Where’s your fucking badge, bitch?”

I was shoved to the ground. The cop took my wallet from my back pocket and tore out the detective’s badge. They took my cuffs off my belt, and my gun, too. Tox, they left alone. He watched, passive, from the dark beside me.

“You’re an embarrassment to the force,” the cop said, giving me a good kick in the ribs. He uncuffed me roughly and shoved my head into the dirt. “Have some dignity and leave this vicious dog alone.”

They left us there in the dark, miles from the road.