by LaQuette
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I SWEAR to God I’m gonna wring his fucking neck when I catch him.”
Elijah took a quick look over to the driver’s side of the unmarked sedan where Captain Searlington focused on the road. He wasn’t supposed to be in the car with her, but after threatening bodily harm to Smyth if he didn’t get out of Elijah’s way, his captain reluctantly agreed to let him partner with her instead.
“Not if I catch him first, Cap.”
“Right hand to God, I cannot stand rich people.”
Elijah glanced at his boss through the narrowed slits of his eyes. “Wait, aren’t you married to a rich dude?”
“And your point?”
Elijah threw up his hands and shook his head. Everyone in their right mind knew the captain’s husband was off-limits. Elijah would be in enough hot water with Camden running off alone; he didn’t want to add to Captain Searlington’s bad mood by reminding her that her man and the person who was currently infuriating her were cut from the same cloth.
“Stephenson, how well do you know this man beyond the brief history the DA described to me?”
Elijah kept his eyes fastened to the road, looking for hazards as they sped through the streets with lights and sirens blazing. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
“I’ve met Camden Warren all of once. He seemed entitled and self-centered. Nothing about him screams sacrificial lamb. What’s really going on here?”
Elijah was grateful they’d made it beyond the local streets and onto the highway where there was no intersecting traffic. Trying to explain what occurred between him and Camden was too distracting for him to watch out for oncoming cars and pedestrians in the intersections as his Captain focused on the road ahead of them, and unravel the complicated ball of webbing his feelings for Camden had become.
“As my captain, I don’t think you really want to know the answer to that question. This way, you still have plausible deniability.”
She nodded, eyes still fixed on the road, and then sped down the left lane of the Hutchinson River Parkway. “In that case, I guess I don’t need the specifics. Let me offer you the same advice my captain gave me when I fell in love with someone he assigned me to protect. Tread carefully. Do your damn job and keep this shit as quiet as you can until this case is closed. Because if it gets out you two were together during the case, you’ll be the one to suffer, Elijah, not him.”
Elijah gave her a silent nod. She wasn’t wrong. Camden’s name came with clout that Elijah’s would never carry. If this shit went sideways, Elijah’s career would take the hit, not Camden’s.
“Trust me, keeping it quiet isn’t an issue at the moment, Cap. It might never be if we don’t get there in time.”
“We’ll get there.”
They exited the highway, driving until they hit Pelham Parkway West. As they neared the exchange location, Elijah could see Camden walking away from his vacated vehicle and moving toward the open clearing where another car was parked.
As Elijah caught sight of Camden’s intended path, he could see his mother walking from the opposite direction, toward Camden with an armed man pointing a gun in their general direction.
Before Captain Searlington could bring the car to a complete stop, Elijah was jumping out of the vehicle with his weapon drawn as he took cover behind his opened door.
Captain Searlington grabbed her gun and speaker mic before yelling, “NYPD, everybody down on the ground now!”
Elijah’s mother turned toward him, but couldn’t seem to move. Just beyond her, the gunman turned his aim to Elijah. Camden must have seen her predicament too, because he jumped, pulling Elijah’s mother to the ground just as the gunman lined up his shot. As the man opened fire, Elijah and Captain Searlington pulled their triggers too.
He didn’t care about policy. This fucker fired a weapon near his mother. There was no coming back from that. He aimed for the kill shot. Captain Searlington must have too, because the end result was two bullets in the head, two in center mass, and several more piercing the car behind the gunman.
While the assailant’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, Elijah took aim at the driver in the car.
The driver tried to speed off but was surrounded by several police cars converging from several directions. As other officers came to their aid, securing the scene, Elijah ran directly for the spot next to a large lamppost where Camden and his mother lay in a ball of bodies and limbs.
“Mama, Cam!” Elijah pulled their bodies apart with the help of Captain Searlington. His mother’s face was covered with ashen, dried tear stains. Her eyes blinked open as she heard Elijah’s voice. “Mama, it’s okay. Everything’s all right. We got you.”
Elijah glanced down at Camden, waiting to see the crystal blue of his eyes shining back at him. Instead, he found Camden’s eyes still closed. His jaw was hanging open, and his limbs were limp. “Camden, come on, wake up.”
Elijah ran his fingers through Camden’s hair, trying to coax him to awaken. He stopped when sticky dampness began to cover his fingers. Cold fear spread through him as frank red blood covered his digits.
“Oh God, no.” His words pulled Captain Searlington’s attention to Elijah. When understanding registered on her face, she reached over, placing two fingers against Camden’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“Was he hit with a stray, or did he just hit his head on the ground?”
“There’s too much blood.” Cold fear spread through him as he tried to assess Camden’s injury. Bullets pierced different areas of the body in different ways. Depending on caliber, trajectory, and the position of the target, they could look as meaningless as a scratch or as menacing as a gaping hole. All Elijah saw was lots of blood. That alone wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t tell.”
After a few seconds, she pulled her radio from her hip and spoke into it quickly. “This is Captain Heart Searlington of the seven-four. I need a bus for a possible GSW to the head. Victim is a white male, thirty-four, currently unconscious on the scene. Breathing is shallow, heartbeat is thready. Get me that damn bus here now!”
ELIJAH sat in the cold, sterile room, the stench of industrial-strength germicide burning his nasal passage and the back of his throat. He’d like to blame his irritated red eyes on the chemical too, but he knew the swollen rims of his eyes were due to one thing, tears of worry falling faster than he could wipe them away.
Camden hadn’t been shot.
Those three words coming from the emergency room attending had loosened the vise around Elijah’s heart. For a brief moment relief spread through Elijah as he sent up a grateful prayer of thanks for that extraordinary news. But by the next breath, the doctor had explained the bleeding wound had come from blunt force trauma. Camden had hit his head against a sharp rock on the ground. The force he’d used to drag Elijah’s mother down to safety during the shooting turned a simple fall into a significant injury.
Camden hadn’t opened his eyes in the five hours since they’d arrived at the hospital. He’d been through the emergency room, to imaging studies, and now he rested quietly inside the small room in the surgical intensive care unit. But after being transported to so many places, Camden remained infuriatingly still.
Thank God for Elijah’s badge. He’d never been happier to have the access that his shiny new lieutenant’s badge afforded him. The medical staff didn’t think twice about violating HIPPA laws whenever they glimpsed that metal emblem of authority hanging around Elijah’s neck. His badge also allowed him to follow Camden wherever they moved him with no one looking twice at Elijah.
Once again the job had saved his life. If Elijah had to sit in a waiting room begging for information about a man he had no legal connection to, he would’ve been in chains for trying to choke someone out by now.
“You can’t do this to me, Cam,” Elijah leaned down to whisper into Camden’s sleeping ear. “You gotta wake up and say something slick that makes me want to curse you out.” Elijah wrapped a careful hand around Camde
n’s and squeezed. “I can’t take watching you like this. You gotta come back to me, baby. I just found you again. I can’t lose you now.”
Elijah waited a beat to see if there was any response under Camden’s closed eyes, but there was none. His lack of mobility cut through Elijah like a sharp wind, leaving him cold and hollow inside.
Elijah could feel a fresh batch of tears welling up behind his eyes. He wouldn’t have bothered trying to keep them in check if he hadn’t heard the familiar voices of his boss and her right-hand lieutenant, Bryan Smyth, coming toward the door.
Captain Searlington stepped inside the hospital room first, with Smyth stepping behind her. “Stephenson?”
Elijah wiped his eyes on his T-shirt before he lifted his head to answer her.
“’Sup, Captain?”
“How’s Warren doing?”
The uncomfortable fullness of his chest made it difficult for Elijah to breathe. “He banged his head hard when he pushed my mother out of the way.” Thinking about the uncertainty of Camden’s prognosis ate at Elijah’s soul. Elijah was supposed to protect Camden. Instead, Camden sacrificed himself to protect Elijah’s mother. It was a debt Elijah could never repay. “The docs say his head CT looks good. No permanent damage. They don’t know why Camden is still unconscious. They think it may have something to do with his head taking a hit when his car exploded.”
The more he thought about what led to Camden being almost lifeless in that bed, the more his chest hurt. He needed to focus on something else for the time being. “We get anything on the driver?”
Captain Searlington gave a knowing glance to Lieutenant Smyth and returned her gaze to Elijah’s. “The driver confessed to everything. He’s made a deal with the prosecution. He’s got enough info to link all of this back to the Path. They’re done. All of their leaders are being picked up as we speak. Edwards’ bail has been revoked now that we have him back in custody.”
That news should’ve made Elijah happy. The case was closed. They did their jobs, and the bad guys were going away for a long time. But when he glanced down at Camden’s still form, the only thing he could do was hurt.
“How did they find us?”
Smyth stepped closer to the foot of the bed as he opened a folder and laid it on the nearby bedside table. “Gerald Maxwell. Janitor at our precinct for the last five years. Apparently, he joined the Path about a year before when he fell on hard times. They gave him a place to stay and somehow got him the janitorial position at the precinct.”
Elijah let his head hang back as he pressed his fingers against his temple. “That bastard saw me walking through the hallway with Camden from your office. How did he find us, though? The house isn’t listed under my name. I didn’t see a tail, and I took the roundabout way home. What the fuck did I miss?”
Captain Searlington moved closer to him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. It was odd; Captain Searlington had never been the touchy-feely sort. But there, in her gentle touch, in the softness of her eyes, Elijah sensed understanding and compassion.
“You missed nothing, Stephenson. Your job was to sit on Warren, and you did that. From what we can gather, their plan was to take Warren out when you attempted to move him to court. The fact that Camden never left the house is what kept him alive. They only grabbed Evelyn because she spotted them looking suspicious in their vehicle at the end of the block. They were afraid she’d call the cops. Once they had her, they had to use her.” Elijah sent up two silent prayers. The first was for having a garage that attached to his home by a door. If they’d had to walk outside, Camden could’ve been killed. The second was for his mother’s safe return. “They were determined, Elijah. No matter how many of us stood in their way, they would’ve kept coming.”
“She’s right, Stephenson,” Smyth replied. “Maxwell saw you when you came into the precinct and saw you bring your car around into the underground parking lot. When you came back inside for ADA Warren, he placed a tracer under the tire well on your car while pretending to pick up trash in the parking lot.”
Elijah slumped further into the chair at Camden’s bedside. Each bit of news should’ve brought him joy. He’d killed one shooter and his fellow officers apprehended the second. The perp turned witness would now give evidence to help convict the big fish in the Path, and if all things went well, Elijah would probably end up getting a commendation for this. But as he looked at the still body of a man who’d been so full of life while lying in Elijah’s arms earlier in the day, the only emotions Elijah could manage were anger, fear, and pain.
“Smyth, would you mind giving us the room for a moment?” Smyth must have agreed because Elijah heard the door slide closed as Smyth exited. “Can we talk for a minute, E?”
Elijah kept his eyes focused on Camden, shrugging briefly before answering her. “Depends on who wants to talk. My captain or my friend?”
His respect for her as his boss notwithstanding, Elijah would not waste a second of his time with Camden discussing policy and procedure. Not when Camden needed him.
It wasn’t until he heard her answer, “Heart Searlington, your friend,” that he spared her a glance in her direction. “E, this is much more than him being your protectee, isn’t it? What happened at your house?”
What indeed? In a handful of days, Elijah had gone from pretending he couldn’t care less about Camden to losing his heart.
Elijah shook his head as their days in captivity replayed on a wide-screen in his head. The longing, the laughter, the loving had all consumed Elijah, making him forget to protect himself from Camden and every tempting detail about the man. Yeah, Elijah hadn’t lost his heart; he’d willingly given it away.
“You fell in love, didn’t you?”
Without hesitation, Elijah nodded his head, communicating the truth, even though he didn’t dare speak the words. Those specific words were for Camden. If he couldn’t say them to him, he wouldn’t share them with anyone else either.
“Take it from someone who fucked around and fell in love with a principal in her case too, you’d better make sure this shit is worth it. Be sure you want to run the distance with it because it could cost you your job.”
“Have you ever regretted your decision to choose love over the job, Heart?”
She let out a long breath and pulled up a chair next to Elijah’s. “The only regret I have is that I didn’t do it sooner. Kenneth has and always will be my everything. Is Camden your everything?”
Elijah let the single tear sliding down his cheek speak for him. It must’ve been enough, because she nodded and said, “I thought so,” as she handed him a facial tissue from the box on the bedside table.
“I got your back, E. Just be careful. This guy’s father is the fucking chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. If this shit goes south, we’re both up shit creek.”
Elijah cleared his throat before trying to use his vocal cords. His boss’s warning didn’t go unheard. This situation was bound to get messy for several reasons. His job, Camden’s position as the second-in-command at the prosecutor’s office, this case, and most probably because of who Camden’s father was. In Elijah’s mind, it didn’t matter how messy things became. Camden was worth it all.
“Speaking of, when will His Honor and his wife arrive?”
“Tomorrow, after he’s done with an important case he has to render a decision on in Albany.” Heart stood, walking toward the glass door, looking over her shoulder as her hand touched the door handle. “Make use of the time you have. I hear Daddy Dearest is a real piece of work.”
Elijah grabbed Camden’s limp hand in his, dropping a ghost of a kiss on the back.
“He might be a piece of work, but so am I. I’m not leaving until Camden tells me to.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
CAMDEN’S head hurt. He tried to pull himself from the thick haze his mind seemed to be drowning in, but the light bleeding through the murky water of his thoughts appeared too far away for him to reach.
Comforting
warmth cupped his cheek, giving him an anchor to grab on to in the vast nothingness of wherever the hell he was right now.
“That’s it, baby. Open those pretty blue eyes for me. I’ve been waiting a long time to see them.”
Camden’s eyes squeezed tighter against the pain in his head. Was that Elijah’s voice, or was Camden conjuring the soul he wanted most by his side at this moment?
The warm hand on his cheek coaxed Camden through what seemed like eternal night, through slivers of light that led him closer and closer to the inviting sound of Elijah’s voice.
“’Lijah?”
“So, we’re at the nickname stage of this relationship, huh? I mean, most people call me E for short, but I could get used to that.”
Camden wanted to laugh, but the throbbing in his head made him think twice about doing something so reckless. He cleared his throat instead and coughed when the dryness tickled it.
Before he could ask, there was a straw at his lips. He leaned his head forward and took several short pulls. Relief flooded him when cool water restored moisture to his mouth, tongue, and throat.
“How long have I been asleep? Why’s my head hurt so bad?”
“You arrived in the hospital yesterday. As for the pain in your noggin, that’s a long story. Let me get someone in here to tend to your headache.”
Camden remained still until Elijah returned with a physician’s assistant in tow. The PA introduced herself and then examined him. Shining a godawful penlight in Camden’s eyes that mimicked a hot laser slicing through flesh. Once the PA finished poking and prodding Camden and made certain he was oriented to person, place, and time, she scribbled in his chart and promised Camden the nurse would be in to administer pain medication.
A few moments later and the blessing that is pharmaceutical intervention came in the form of two tiny acetaminophen capsules. “How long have I been out?” Camden spared a quick glance at Elijah. In the low lighting of the hospital room, Camden could hardly make out Elijah’s features. It didn’t matter, though. He’d memorized the lines and angles of Elijah’s unique face years ago.