Marked by Alex Hughes Page A

forms.”
    She looked up as Captain Harris knocked and opened her door. “Yes?”
    â€œWe have a problem,” Harris said, in an intense tone I only seemed to hear from cops when people were actually bleeding to death. “There’s an arbitration situation that is about to turn violent.”
    Paulsen looked at me. “Emergency?”
    â€œNo,” I said, and found myself ejected out to the hallway before I could blink. The door closed with a
snick
as I looked at it.
    The captain had been taking on arbitration gigs for years, and had been stepping up the high-profile ones lately (according to Paulsen) to help fund department paychecks. I wondered where the violence was coming from. Union situation? Gangs? Politicians with knives? Impossible to know. Whatever it was clearly was more important than me.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Instead of going downstairs to the interview rooms like I was supposed to, I locked myself in the coffee closet and took several deep breaths. I had debated going outside for a cigarette, as it had now been so many hours I couldn’t count since the last one, but they’d taken my cigarettes at the Guild, and my sponsor, Swartz, said people before poison.
    The coffee closet was dim today, one of the two lightbulbs burned out, the coffeepot still heating from last night; the smell of burned coffee and ozone filled the space. The two donuts left were so stale they clanked, and a small scout ant poked at the crumbs on the table.
    I killed him, feeling bad about it, but knowing there would be two hundred more in an hour if I let it go. You didn’t see many ants in the winter; I was betting they had an inside heated spot somewhere. Trouble.
    Okay, now I was putting this off. I wiped off my hands, picked up the phone receiver, and dialed Swartz’s number.
    Ringing came on the other side of the line. He was still at home, resting up, with any luck having remembered to turn the ringer on again.
    â€œAdam,” came over the phone, in an out-of-breath voice. “Where the hell were you this morning? I called the station, but they said you weren’t assigned anywhere. Do I need to come down there and kick your ass?”
    I took a breath. That voice—that voice was the most comforting thing I’d heard in a long time. Swartz had been my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor for years, and he always knew the right thing to say. To do. To think about. He didn’t let me get away with crap, and even since his heart attack, he was there when I needed him. When I didn’t know what to do. “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know, Swartz. No drugs—I haven’t even had a cigarette this morning. The Guild—”
    â€œWhat about the Guild, son?”
    â€œWell . . .”
    â€œI assume you’re on break. Might as well spit it.”
    Something inside me loosened. “Yeah. The Guild locked me up and then decided to tell me I was going to solve a murder for them.”
    â€œA murder?”
    â€œA guy I knew back in the day. Kara’s uncle. He’s, well, majorly important at the Guild now. On the Council.”
    â€œIntimidation? Really? What does Kara say about this?”
    â€œShe helped them throw me in that cell after I broke some stupid rule. Maybe I did, I don’t know. But they’re threatening me with a lot of crap, and I . . .” A pause over the phone, in which I saw another scout ant. I killed this one too. I hadn’t told him about the debt. “I feel like I have to do this.”
    â€œHow stupid a rule?” Swartz asked.
    I poked at the crumbs. Of all the things for him to pick out of that . . . “Some privacy thing. It’s a matter of interpretation. They’ve tightened up standards a lot since I left, and I don’t think all in a good way.” I thought about telling him about the mind-fight, about Green outmuscling me—it disturbed me