Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

the counter tones as he spoke. “You talked me into not reporting it missing. So there’s no record of it being gone, and no proof that it was ever on the body.”

“No,” I admitted, “nothing that would stand up in court. But that doesn’t mean we can’t tell anyone.” I turned and looked at Captain Bryyh’s office.

“We could have avoided this by just talking to her in the first place,” he said.

“We live in the world created by our mistakes, kid.”

“It’d be nice to live in a world where the mistakes are my own.” He looked at his watch. “She ought to be here within the hour.”

But she wasn’t there within an hour, or two hours. It wasn’t like her, and it sent a tickle of concern down the back of my neck. After three hours we admitted that we each had to go home and sleep. We’d have to pick the case back up that afternoon.

21

RUMPLE GLOWERED AT ME WHEN I got home, and he stalked back and forth while I crawled out of my clothes and into the shower. It wasn’t until food fell into his bowl that he seemed to forgive me for my absence. Watching him eat, I dropped into a kitchen chair and lost myself in thought.

I thought of a teenager with an unnatural mouth in his stomach, devouring his own entrails as he took vengeance on an old man who’d killed him an hour earlier, all of it driven by the invisible maddening buzz. I thought of the sinkhole and the screams of the crowd, of the people I’d saved and the many more I hadn’t. I thought of burned bridges, of Gellica and what we could have had. I thought of burned lives, of Ronald, and his mother holding my hand as she died. I thought of all of them, and I wondered how I could face one more day while I was running on little food and no sleep. I stalked over to the tall cabinet that served as a pantry, and rummaged for a bottle of rum that I occasionally used for cooking. Just a little drop, I thought. Just for today. Just to get through the madness.

I found the bottle and hefted it, peering inside. If there had been anything in it, I don’t know what I’d have done. Instead, I decided I’d stop on the way home and buy rum. Or maybe whiskey. Something cheap and potent.

I tossed the empty bottle into the trash, slipped on another cheap suit, and managed to make my exit without looking at myself in the mirror.

Bryyh’s office was still vacant as noon approached, an absence that was fairly out of character. Rather than wait around, Jax and I decided to visit the site where I’d found Klein’s body. The entire area was suspect and off-limits except to those workers deemed essential. We, of course, were essential. Along with everyone else who kept the wheels of the city turning so that the wealthy could feel safe as they cashed their paychecks. As for the furloughed rig workers and the employees sitting at home and worrying about their rent? No one seemed to care too much about them either way. It was almost enough to make me think Vandie Cedrow was on to something.

The hole had stabilized when it reached the edges of the cavern below, spreading little farther than when I’d seen it last. The area immediately around it was cordoned off, and dozens of construction workers and firefighters worked the site. The frantic rescue of the previous night had given way to a slower, more methodical retrieval operation.

We slipped past the caution tape barrier and approached the edge of the sinkhole, close to where I’d found the body. The ground was like walking on cake sponge, pocked with holes and giving slightly under our weight.

“Maybe we should go around the front,” Jax said.

I crouched, looking into the nearest hole in the pavement. The spring sun was behind us, shining deep into the irregularly shaped hole. At the bottom, or perhaps on a ledge, a truck’s side-view mirror had come to rest. Its miraculously intact surface reflected the surrounding skyline and our faces. I saw myself, arm propped on one knee, unshaven and disheveled; Jax stood behind me, always organized and prepared. Both of us were so deep in the hole that we might never come out.

“Hey!” A shouted warning from a supervisor. “Area’s unstable. Clear out!” She wore a hard hat and neon vest, and sweat beaded down her temples and neck, a combination of the normal warmth of the Mount’s proximity and the relentless heat and sulfur fumes that rose from the sinkhole.

We stepped away, abandoning our reflection, and approached the work crews. The teams had found a path of stable footing, and they spiraled down the edges of the main opening, a living chain of human, Mollenkampi, and Gillmyn hands lifting debris and passing it up and away. Occasionally they came to a stop as they uncovered a body, and the entire chain fell silent, hoping for word of a survivor. Every time, the hope was shattered. Every time, the work began again.

Jax and I watched the work progress.

“You want to get in there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I do.”

The supervisor who’d chided us earlier at first turned us away, but relented when we identified ourselves as TPD. She handed us each a vest, gloves, and hard hat, and we joined the chain of workers. For hours we lost ourselves in the work. Moving one rock, one steel beam at a time, searching for a clue that would lead to a life clinging to a fragile thread. Finding only death.

It wasn’t difficult work, not where we were placed. Just passing rocks from one set of hands to another. But the heat of the vents and the intensity of the sulfur smell made it feel like we were working in the tropics. Worse, the