scarlet city - prologue - city streets
She watches from the shadows as the police gather at the docks. Next to her, he lights a match, the flame flaring in the dark before calming as he moves it to the cigarette firmly between his lips. The wind whips through her hair and carries fractured words of the officers.
“That didn’t take long,” she muses, crossing her arms and leaning against the brick wall of the building.
He shrugs and exhales a cloud of expressive smoke. “We led them to him.” The unspoken you told us to floats on the air, dissolving as the smoke disperses in the night. The wind catches his hat and he grips the brim, tugging it more firmly onto his head. He turns, mirroring her posture, and the moonlight gleams off the hardware of his suspenders.
“Let’s hope it works,” she says, licking her lips. She impatiently taps her heel on the broken concrete, waiting for the police to do something other than gather and mull over the situation. She checks the clock tower and frowns; she’ll be fashionably late in twenty minutes, irredeemably late in thirty. It’s a fragile balance.
“It will,” he reassures her. He bends over, brushing away a scuff on his shoe.
One of the officers strips down to his undershirt and shorts and toes off his shoes. With strong strokes, he swims out to where a lumpy shadow has been bumping in the waves since they arrived. He grasps the shadow and swims back to the dock, offering up a limp, dead arm to the men standing above.
Two men haul the body out of the water, struggling to maneuver the uncooperative weight onto the waiting sheet for the coroner; another offers the swimmer his hand and a towel.
“That’s Hunt, alright,” a voice carries to where the two stand, anxious and hidden.
“Body’s been in the water too long; we’re not going to find anything,” the coroner says, standing up. She puts her hat back on her head.
Satisfied with the identification, she nods to her companion and he smiles at her. “I don’t thank you enough for what you do for me.”
He offers her his arm and she slides her hand to grasp his elbow. “Shall we?”
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