BooksBarbecue
Back Slow Burn
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Incident One
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Incident Two
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Incident Three
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Incident Four
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. Chapter Thirty-two
  39. Chapter Thirty-three
  40. Incident Five
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Chapter Forty-four
  52. Acknowledgments
  53. Special Thanks
  54. About the Author

“So what really happened?” she asked. Robby’s eyes flashed to her, then away, searching alleys and doorways for surprises. She kept her hands in her coat pockets; for the first time Velvet wondered if she was carrying. She had that paranoid look.

“When?”

“When you found the guy who burned up. What happened?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, god, don’t lie. You’re a pissy liar. What’d you do, go inside?”

Silence. Robby hunched her shoulders and stared down the street. Velvet avoided a spray of broken glass on the sidewalk and did a jig to catch up.

“Yeah,” Robby said. “I went in.”

“And?”

Robby’s jaw had tightened. The soft brown eyes had a hard glittering look to them.

“He was still alive,” she said. “I heard his breath bubbling. He was bleeding from his mouth and nose, bubbling blood.”

“Jesus.” Velvet watched her face. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” Robby said. She kicked a sharp-edged piece of metal out of Velvet’s way; it shot off into the darkness and whined off a curb. “I took his money and I left. I left him to die.”

A car passed them, stirring papers like batwings in the gutter, and left behind an echo of laughter like wind chimes. Velvet wrapped her satin coat closer and looked down at her feet, white as marble in the cold.

“Burt could have been alive,” she said. The truth felt like a chunk of broken glass in her throat. “I didn’t check. I ran out on him.”

At the next intersection, a yellow DART bus farted black smoke as it passed. Velvet shifted from one numb foot to the other. She stared straight ahead, aware that Robby was looking at her, not wanting to look back.

“You think they knew we left them to die?” Velvet asked at last. Even though Robby was a shitty liar, she wanted her to lie. Robby didn’t.

“Yes,” Robby said. “Yes, they knew.”

Chapter Thirteen

Martin

Martin Grady hurried down a concrete-floored hallway toward what was politely referred to as his office. Unlike his colleagues from the more Northern states, he’d ended up with a coat closet down here in what he’d heard somebody refer to as the engine room of the Titanic. Which made him, he supposed, the stupid schmuck going down with the ship.

It was two in the morning, and deserted office buildings got his goat, always had. He’d signed in upstairs with the crisp-pressed Marine guard, but supposing he got eaten by the Phantom of the Bureaucracy, would they notice? Not unless it involved cleaning up.