Page 74 of Fool Me Twice
“Interesting,” Hart said, voice cynical as he tried to keep his cool and figure a smart way out of this. “Because as far as we all know here, there is no curse placed upon Cane that we have found. He’s currently being detained for whatever perceived crimes the commoner police department thinks he’s guilty of. Your only job here is our involvement with the fight. And yet you tabled that for later. So I’m curious, Cyrus.”
Hart held his gaze without blinking, the two of them locked in a standoff with everyone else watching. Hart knew he’d hit a nerve because Cyrus looked tense…but then he smiled.
“How about I ask you the same?” Cyrus threw back. “One could say that your interest in Cane seems to exceed professional courtesy. Do you want to get into the particulars of that?”
Hart froze, mind spinning.
What did Cyrus know? What did he suspect? He’d interrupted them in the office that day, and Hart would be stupid to think Cyrus, a detective, wouldn’t have noticed something.
“I feel like we’re getting off track,” Fix tried to defuse the situation with a calm voice.
“No, I think this is exactly the track we need to be on,” Cyrus said, never taking his eyes off Hart.
“Cane is a client,” Hart said through gritted teeth. It wasn’t a lie. “I was doing my job.” An omission of the truth.
“Look.” Cyrus visibly forced himself to relax, seemingly letting Hart off the hook. He unclenched his fists and released the tight grip of his jaw. “The simple fact is Cane and his business have been a long-standing stain on the Slatehollow police department. We know it’s shady. Everyone knows it’s shady.”
“And yet you have zero proof of it,” Hart said, unable to keep from fighting for Cane even though everything was against him.
Cyrus glowered. “I have a stab victim who says differently.”
“And no definitive curse to tie it to. So what does it have to do with you, specifically? You’re not in the commoner department. So it is, quite literally, none of your business,” Hart said, trying his best to work around semantics.
“The safety of Slatehollow is my business,” Cyrus argued, voice rising in volume. “Just like it is yours. So if you’re curious about me, I’m curious about you not giving a shit about seeing an asshole like that go down.”
“Language,” Hart bristled, releasing the hold he had on the armrests and leaning forward. “And yes, my job is the safety of Slatehollow. And you’re actively preventing me from doing it by making me sit here for hours.”
“There is a solution to that,” Cyrus said. “You tell me what I need to know, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Hart wanted to argue. He wanted to argue it and fight it until he was blue in the face. He was so frustrated and on edge. He needed a release, but it wouldn’t be found with Cyrus. He just didn’t know the right way to fight this. He didn’t know how to push the buttons that needed to be pushed.
Nobody but Cane did.
“Fine,” Hart said, feeling the others around him release relieved breaths as he stood down and relented.
“Good.” Cyrus pulled out a pen and a sheet of paper from his file. “Start from the top. Even if it’s stuff I already know. I want all of it.”
Hart took a few deep breaths, tapping into the professional inside of him, going back to the clinical, pragmatic him who knew how to relay information without getting too tangled in needless conversations.
He needed that Hart to take over.
“A few weeks ago, Cane got in touch with Ash about a possible curse placed on his warehouse or someone in it,” Hart began recounting.
“Why Ash?” Cyrus asked.
“Because his name is first alphabetically and his phone number is listed first,” Hart said.
He hated Ash’s secret hobby, but he wasn’t about to let PUMA know he was engaging in it on the regular.
“Is that your story?” Cyrus asked dryly.
“If you don’t like it, you are more than free to leave and corroborate with Cane himself,” Hart said, steepling his fingers underneath his chin and looking at Cyrus challengingly.
Cyrus stared for a few more seconds but eventually waved a hand at Hart to continue. Hart had no idea what he was thinking. He could guess he wasn’t totally buying all of what Hart was trying to sell, but Hart couldn’t do anything else. He was never going to sell Ash out.
So Hart went back to the story. He kept it to pure, honest facts, even if some things were omitted. He never said a single lie. There wasn’t a single hole in his story. Nothing that would clash with the statement he’d given after the stabbing.
Cyrus was taking notes diligently, asking appropriate questions where he saw fit, the frown on his forehead getting more and more severe.