“What?” Val leaned closer.
Tires screeched outside. “NYPD!” someone yelled. “Show me your hands!”
“Oh, crap.” Tetra grimaced as footsteps rang through the warehouse. “We’re standing in a warehouse full of dead bodies.”
“I think we’d better put our hands up,” Val suggested.
She shook her shield into its armband and raised the dagger in her thumb and forefinger as two wide-eyed officers burst into the office, clinging to their handguns for dear life.
“Show me your hands!” one screamed pointlessly.
“Drop the knife!” another yelled.
“Knife?” Val scoffed. “Excuse me, sir, this clearly has two edges. It’s a dagger.”
“Drop it!” the female cop bellowed.
Val delicately laid the dagger on the nearest table and placed her hands behind her back. The female cop holstered her weapon and cuffed Val, then Tetra, while the male cop talked into his radio.
“Shit.” The male cop edged nearer. “That’s…that’s Freddie Petersen.”
The female cop leaned over the body. “I barely recognized him.”
“Wasn’t that Giorgio Jones at the door?” The male cop stared at Val. “Who are you people?”
“Two kick-ass girls who did your jobs for you, that’s who,” Tetra announced.
Val stomped on her toe.
“Hey!” Tetra squealed.
“My name is Valerie Stonehold, Officer, and I’m acting as a bodyguard for Blair Abercrombie and Yuka Marniq of the Anvil Brewery. Organized crime joined forces with BrewCorp and its CEO Anthony Warner to destroy the brewery and hurt my clients,” Val explained calmly.
“I know about the case.” The female cop’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t prove your allegations.”
“She can now.” Tetra nodded at the ledger she’d set on a cheap desk nearby.
The cops exchanged glances.
“We’re here in response to a 911 call.” The male cop shrugged. “We’re legally allowed to search the premises.”
The female cop opened the ledger and gasped.
“What?” the male cop asked.
She slowly unclipped her radio and lifted it to her mouth. “Control, requesting a supervisor on our scene in Brownsville. We’ve…we’ve found something unexpected.”
Val and Tetra waited in the back of the cruiser. No one would tell them anything. The warehouse crawled with police, from uniformed officers running yellow tape around the scene to forensics specialists to swaggering detectives who cast cool glances at the cruiser. An officer stood guard at the cruiser’s hood, his gaze darting from the corpse of Mr. Molotov to Val and Tetra. A puzzled coroner crouched beside the dead gangster, frowning.
“I’m bored,” Tetra complained.
Val rolled her neck on her shoulders. “I’m sore.” She shifted her weight, then winced as her bandaged wrist touched the handcuffs. “Oops. Almost broke the cuffs.”
“Not to humble-brag or anything,” Tetra teased. “How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”
“Not long.” Val shrugged. “Or we might end up imprisoned for murder. You never know.”
“We didn’t murder anyone,” Tetra protested. “They attacked us.”
“True.” Val grinned. “The main thing is, those guys won’t bother Blair and Yuka anymore.”
“Neither will Anthony Warner after they read that ledger,” Tetra added. “I’d say he won’t ever bother anyone again.”
Val tried to stretch her shoulders. She leaned back. The cruiser’s seat was surprisingly comfortable if one ignored the diamond mesh blocking every exit.
“You did good work tonight, Val,” Tetra murmured. “Those violent people must have hurt plenty of humans in this city.”
Val smiled. “No, Tetra. We did good work tonight.”
Tetra flashed her a wide grin.
A knock on the window made Val jump, and the cuffs’ thin chain groaned threateningly. Officer Harris opened the door, his mustache twitching as he grinned at her.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he greeted her.
“Who’s that?” Tetra demanded.
