Page 63 of Tiny's Testament
“No.” Her voice cracks, fierce and small at once. “Tiny… I don’t… I don’t know if I can watch you risk yourself like that every time something happens.”
I sit on the edge of her bed. “The alternative was letting you die.”
“I’m not asking you to choose.” But she is, and we both know it.
“I just need you alive,” I murmur.
She closes her eyes. “I’m not fragile.”
“I know that.”
“But I’m not invincible.” Her eyes open. Sharp. Honest. “I don’t want to be the reason you get killed.”
“You won’t be.”
Her voice softens, barely audible. “I almost lost you.”
I want to touch her. Pull her in, but her fingers twist the blanket instead. I stand slowly, afraid the movement will make her pull back more than she already has. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” I tell her.
She nods without looking up.
I leave her room with a weight in my chest I can’t shake. The hallway smells like liquor and loss. By the time I step outside, the early light spills over the ruins of the garage.
The garage is a skeleton of heat-warped beams and blackened rebar. What didn’t burn melted. What didn’t melt cracked. The smell is a bruise you breathe.
EMTs and Fire/Rescue have been here all night, trying to put out the blaze. Once they got it under control, the Fire Marshall deemed it a total loss and said it was under investigation. We don’t need an investigation to know how this started and why.
Red and I pick our way through the wreckage. His tablet glows blue against the soot on his face.
“Accelerant along the west wall,” he says, voice rasped down to wire. “Cut feed on the gas. Sparked remote. See these bubbled ripples? Det cord impressions.”
“Clean work,” I mutter.
“Professional work,” he corrects, tapping a char line. “Not some pissed-off kid with a match.”
I crouch near the twisted lift, brush ash from the concrete with my knuckles, and it ghosts my skin like guilt. We find the V of scorch that points to the start, the old storage cabinet where I kept extra hoses. Empty now, the metal is peeled like a can.
I should’ve seen it. Should’ve checked after the tag.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Red asks, gently.
“That I missed a tripwire I should’ve felt in my bones.” My jaw tightens. “Say it.”
He doesn’t. Red’s smarter than that. He angles the tablet so the diagnostic overlays flicker like X-rays of a corpse. “They wanted the whole structure. The fire load ensured a roof collapse. But whoever did this wanted witnesses. With a full blaze in the middle of the night, they weren’t just destroying, they were announcing.”
“Lattimer,” I say.
“Hounds as the sound system,” Red adds, eyes flat.
A slow tread clicks behind us. Capone stops at the threshold, smoke curling around him like a cape he didn’t ask for. He looks at the bones of our life and doesn’t blink. “Talk to me.”
Red runs it down without drama. Cut line. Accelerant. Remote ignition. Planned timing. I watch the muscle jump in Capone’s jaw twice, otherwise, he’s granite. He turns to me. “You smell it before it blew?”
“Too late.” I hold his stare. “That’s on me.”
He shakes his head once. “The bullet belongs to the shooter, not the shield. But hear me. Whatever’s following you, Tiny, is inside now.” His voice goes quieter, which is worse. “I won’t lose men to your ghosts. If they come through my gate, we bury them under it. Clear?”
“Clear,” I say, and mean it even as the noose of it tightens.
