chapter twelve
Regulus slams open the door to their apartment, his head thundering. His fingers itch.
“Barty?” He calls, in the empty foyer. “This better be damn good.”
He hears the faint buzz of the TV in the other room. A crunching sound. His chest burns with something like repulsion. If Barty made him leave just because they were short on snacks…
Regulus finds Barty sitting on the couch, a bag of cashews in his hand, eyes fixed on the television. Barty doesn’t notice his silent steps. Regulus stands behind the couch and rests his hands on Barty’s throat, not applying pressure, not yet. Just laying there. A warning.
Regulus taps his fingers against Barty’s neck. “Do you mean to tell me I came home early to watch Jeopardy with you?”
To his credit, Barty doesn’t flinch. “Hello, sunshine. There are these things called hugs, you know. It’s how normal people show affection.”
“You hate hugging.”
“True, but it doesn’t mean I’m not open to it.” Barty wags his eyebrows. “I’m open to a lot of things.”
Regulus squeezes, once, then lets him go. He collapses on the couch and watches the screen. Someone has just lost a lot of money. Shame. “I was busy.”
“With your boy toy?”
Regulus has the wild urge to kick his bag of cashews across the room. “With the detective. He was telling me about his thrilling case.”
“Oh?” Barty shoves some cashews in his mouth. Crunch. “And how stupid is he? Is he close?”
“He’s thinking vigilantism.”
“Ah. You’re confusing him, dear Reg. I had an important question: does he count as a bad influence if he’s a cop?”
“I need him to be lead away,” Regulus muses. “It can’t be too easy. He may be delightfully stupid, but I don’t want to take chances.” He doesn’t, anyway. He thinks back to the dead man on the couch, the precision of the knife on his throat. The music from the record player echoes in his ears. Abruptly, he turns to Barty. “You texted. What happened?”
Barty pauses the TV. He stands from the couch, stretching. He’s wearing jeans and a shirt that says NOT FLIRTING, JUST HOT AND TALKING. His hair is artfully mussed and his sneakers are clean. He gives Regulus a sly smile. “I was out to lunch today.”
“Oh? With whom?”
“An investor.”
Regulus seethes. “Avery.”
“Avery says hello. He’s been growing a bit of a beard, actually, and it’s dreadful.”
“And?”
“And he says you’ve been going a bit… well, he didn’t say willy-nilly, but that’s my word for it.”
Regulus rolls his eyes. “I’ve been just as I’ve always been. Perfect.” Flawless killing should be listed on his resume, for how many damn times he’d done it. He can still see the blood dribbling on the floor. The hollow look in the man’s eyes.
“It’s drifting from Avery’s main focus.”
“Fuck Avery’s main focus.”
“Attitude,” Barty says hotly. “Is this how you talk to your boy toy? If so, you’ll need to apologize.”
“What else did Avery say?” Regulus asks, steering the conversation away from James before he thinks to hard about the opportunity he’d had to leave. God. He misses the sight of James’s face, relaxed, soft. How would he look with a gun? Sharpening one of Regulus’s knives?
“Just that you need to get your shit together. Go to a different country. Get back on track.”
“Avery doesn’t tell me where to go.”
“He kind of does.” Barty pops a cashew in his mouth. “Unless you want your funds to dry up, I say you cross a border and kill somebody.”
Regulus closes his eyes and sinks into the couch. Unfortunately, there are cons to being dead. Being broke is one of them. He smooths the lines of his face. He imagines the face of his next victim, the comforting weight of a knife in his hand.
“I’ll go tomorrow,” he says. “Fancy a trip to Mexico?”
James stabs a dumpling with his fork. “I still think we should pursue a different angle.”
“Instead of vigilantism?” Lily puts her feet up on the desk, sipping her Diet Coke thoughtfully. Her eyes are narrowed on the board. “I don’t know. I think we need to fixate on the signature. The name.”
“It doesn’t have to be a name,” Remus says. “It could be a place. A message.”
James stares at the RAB written in on the carpet. The handwriting is, for lack of a better word, beautiful. Calligraphic. James traces the letters on the photo with his finger. What is he missing?
At this moment, Sirius comes back from his ice cream run, setting the bowl on the center table. He passes out spoons, his hair windswept, looking a tad harried. “Where are we at?”
“The signature,” Lily says. She digs into the ice cream with fervor, some getting on the tip of her nose. “Any ideas, Sirius?”
“Maybe that’s just his name. Rab.”
“Hell of a name,” says Remus.
“Perhaps that’s what got him into killing. People made fun of his name.”
“He’s too meticulous,” James says. He squints at it, his brain buzzing, teasing a slip of information he needs. What does he need? “He wouldn’t do that. Everything is about perfection. He’s flawless. He needs us to see that he’s flawless. He needs us to worship him.”
He turns to find the rest of his team staring at him. Sirius has a spoon of ice cream halfway to his mouth. James plops right back down to his chair, defeated. His head thunders. RAB, where are you?
Sleep doesn’t find James for hours. He lays in bed, staring at the ceiling, watching lights come in through the thin film of his blinds. His head still kills. With a groan, he twists to face his clock. Two AM. Lovely. James swings his legs over his bed and sets off to the kitchen in search of Advil. Anything to quiet the throbbing in his head.
He opens the cupboards. Bare. Fuck. James leans against the counter, struggling to remember who had it last. With a start, he remembers a bleary Sirius taking the pills to his room last week. James peeks in; it’s empty, which means Sirius and Remus are asleep in Remus’s room. James pokes around. Luckily for him, being a detective allows him to poke around silently, barely causing a disturbance at all. A good thing, too. He does not want to be on the other side of a pissed off Sirius.
He opens a drawer and huzzah! At last, victory is his. James pops two pills in his mouth, swallowing harshly, blinking in the near darkness. It’s when he stumbles to the door that his foot catches on something on the floor. A note. James picks it up, squinting in the moonlight.
Hello from France!
James snorts in the dark. It’s a postcard from Sirius’s vacation in France a few years ago, with a photo of him smiling toothily in front of the Eiffel Tower. James almost sets it down without thought. Almost. His eyes catch on the words written in elegant script.
Sirius is a chronic cursive writer. “A habit ingrained from childhood,” he says, whenever it’s brought up. His handwriting has always been gorgeous. That’s why he always wrote their holiday cards, notes, tags on gifts…
Then why do his letters look so damn familiar?
It hits him like a bolt of lightning. James drops the note in shock, holding the door for balance. His breath catches in his throat, his heart a stuttering mess in his ribs. Behind his eyes, RAB’s signature flashes in blood.
Their handwriting is identical.
James doesn’t think. He runs.