Hades by Candice Fox Read Free Book Online

Bursting into houses. Getting free drinks and pretending I could have any chick I wanted. I wanted to stay out all night drinking with the other street cops and relishing the secret language of the force. Louise wanted someone to care for her. I wasn’t that guy. I was much too into myself then.
    She had a stillborn, a girl, at 2 AM on a Tuesday in November. I wasn’t there. Not being there when that happened was the thing that finally ruined us.
    We fought for months, daring each other to be the one to throw in the towel. She used to hurl things at me, lunge at me, claw at my face. The neighbors heard the screaming and got involved once or twice. I hit her one night, mainly to get her off me, and it was the last time I ever saw her. I was charged and pleaded guilty and was barely allowed to keep my job.
    I was thinking about the baby as I sat at the bar staring into my drink. I glanced at the mirror behind the counter and spotted Eden sitting by the window, watching the traffic, an old Lebanese woman selling roses between the outdoor settings. I was about to leave when I accidentally slid my hand into the small red wallet sitting on the counter beside me.
    The wallet was square and flat, the size and shape of a man’s, only it was made from what looked to be dark red eel skin. I’d seen wallets like that in Chinatown and Oxford Street, surrounded by rabbit-foot key rings, flashing phone covers and coke pipes. I knew instinctively that it was Eden’s. I sat stock still and stared at it, aware of the heat spreading out through my limbs, the thumping of my heart in my temples. Watching her in the mirrors, I slid the wallet across and opened it. Her homicide squad ID was at the front behind a clear plastic window.
    There are two ways you get to know the heart and soul of a woman. You sleep with her or you rifle through her things. Both actions carry the acute risk of winding up with a stiletto heel in the side of your neck. I didn’t care. Eric had pissed me off. I wanted something to arm myself with, something that might draw me into his and Eden’s elite circle.
    Gun club membership. University library card. Business card for a kickboxing club. Discount card for Genie’s Nails.
    There was a small piece of paper tucked behind Eden’s ID, separate from the others. I noticed it because of its age. It was yellow and frayed, like it had been handled for years. I slipped the paper out carefully, listening to it crackle as I pressed it open.
    Six names. Four had been crossed off. Two were left untouched at the bottom of the list, written in blue ink by a shaky hand.
    Jake DeLaney .
    Benjamin Annous.
    I read over the names a couple of times. Then I pulled a photograph out of the same pocket. The picture was of an old man, the ex-thug type, with heavy shoulders and a boxy head. Like an ageing Rottweiler. He was leaning back in a wooden chair and holding his hand up, cringing playfully in front of the camera, holding a short glass.
    I knew this man from somewhere. I knew the way he held his gnarled hand up, shied from the cameras, quiet and yet threatening. He struck me as someone who might have appeared in a newspaper, leaving a courthouse or two. Infamous. He had that infamous look to him.
    One of the owls nudged my shoulder as she ordered a drink from the bar. I slipped the photograph and the piece of paper back into the wallet and left it on the counter. Eric met my eyes for a moment, smiling, as I pushed through the exit.

Hades let the girl out of the room at night when the trucks had stopped rolling over the horizon of trash and the sorting center workers had left through the gates. He went down on the first morning and discreetly took some clothes that he thought might fit the children, stuffing them into a garbage bag and hauling it up the hill. He also found a fluffy black toy dog that he thought the girl might like.
    She was waiting for him when he opened the secret door, standing there with her eyes raised to his