Cause and Effect

by Brooke Edwards

  “You idiot!” A male voice is shouting in one of the apartments, drifting out through a door at the end of the fork. “I fucking told you not to give that piece of shit a gun, and look? This is why!”

  “He was gonna go to the cops!” another voice yells back. “What the fuck did you want me to do, let him go?”

  “I didn’t want you to fucking kill him in the middle of the day without a goddamn silencer on your gun!” The first voice sounds familiar enough that Daniel starts taking light, silent steps toward the door. He can smell the gasoline from here, stronger than the hints they’d caught on the lower floors.

  “We’d know if the cops were here,” the second voice scoffs. “They gotta announce it when they come in, and you’d hear the sirens a mile away in traffic.”

  A vicious flood of satisfaction curls Daniel’s lips up, and he flashes the go sign at Cohen behind his back and kicks the door in, shouting “NYPD!” as it hits the wall with a resounding bang. “Drop your weapons!”

  “Shoot!” the first voice yells, and the muzzle of one of the men’s guns flashes, illuminating Jake Bartlett’s face for a split second before flames rise between them, and a wall of heat forces Daniel back into the hallway, bellowing for backup.

  The boathouse looks much the same as it had when they’d left it a couple of hours beforehand. Derek’s entire body is vibrating with the force of the ringing in his ears and the throbbing in his chest. His mouth tastes of blood, the inside of his cheek oozing against his gum. He thinks more than sees that James is pale, and can only just make out the red smear against his side, but he can barely see a few feet in front of him clearly so he’s not exactly confident in that. Derek can’t hear the click of Coy reloading the rifle, but he can see him doing it. “Now, you see that?” Coy points the rifle toward the very back of the boathouse, between two of the bigger boats. “That’s going to explode when I press this button, unless I disarm it. So, let’s talk about what happens when and how we leave here.”

  James makes a guttural, furious sound and Derek turns to face him. He can’t quite make out his features, the fuzzy vision getting worse from all the sharp head movements, but his mind can fill the details in. He hopes that James is watching when he mouths “move back” and “I love you”, but turns his face back to Coy before the stinging in his eyes can turn into real tears.

  Derek blinks until his eyes clear and takes a couple of steps closer to Coy, lifting his hands at his side and not bothering to hide the wince when it jars his ribs. “Okay,” he says. “We can talk, Coy.”

  “Bartlett and an unknown accomplice shot their way out,” Cohen reports. His sleeve is singed and there’s ash smeared down the side of his face. “Montana and Rollins are down, and Higgs is a bit crispy, but they should be okay. Didn’t hit anything vital. One of the gang members is dead and another is critical, but no sign of Bartlett and the fourth man. They must have slipped through when the fire department went in.”

  “Of all the fucking—” Daniel slams his hands against the wall, panting with fury. “We had him dead to rights.”

  “And then he set the building on fire,” Roger says from the mouth of the alley, striding toward them. “While he was still in it. Could never have predicted that, Callahan. Everyone you came with is alive, and that’s better than it could have gone so stop the moping and get on with shit. There are statements to be taken and paperwork to be done.”

  Daniel blinks after him and then coughs, turning to the side to spit away the taste of smoke. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve, grimacing at the ashy streaks all over.

  “Man’s got a point,” Cohen says, arching back until something pops. He makes a pleased sound. “God, a shower is gonna be good.”

  “Come on,” Daniel mutters, heading the way Roger had gone. The rage has settled into a steadily burning fire, there but manageable. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Kay has barely said a dozen words in the couple of hours they’ve been gone, and Peter is more terrified than ever that Daniel had walked out of the station into certain death and lied to his face about it.

  “They’re going to be fine,” he says, mostly to himself, and spins around in the spare desk chair again. “They’re going to be fine—”

  “Bambi,” she says without looking away from her computer screen. “If you don’t stop spinning, I am going to handcuff you to the arm of my chair and just dare you to try.”

  “You don’t have handcuffs,” Peter says after a moment, trying to gauge if she’s serious or just bantering.

  She turns her head just a little, one eyebrow arched and lips quirked up at the corner. “Rethink that, and then get back to me.” She returns to staring at the computer, tapping her nails against the keyboard and then typing something else. “Don’t have handcuffs? Who do you think I am?”

  He’s relieved beyond words when Daniel and Cohen come through the front doors. Sure, he’d have liked them less singed and less grumpy overall, but Daniel is warm and solid beneath his hands when Peter wraps himself around him. He smells like sweat and gasoline and fire, but there’s no copper-iron blood, and Peter gets to fuss over the both of them in the break room, far away from Kay.

  Until Daniel stands up, apparently only willing to tolerate so much fussing. He presses a brief kiss to Peter’s cheek and then manhandles him back into the bullpen. “Martine is gonna take you back to mine and stay with you until I can come home, okay?” he says.

  Peter thinks about arguing but Daniel’s eyes are shadowed and exhausted, empty of any victory, so he bites it back and just nods. He presses a longer kiss to Daniel’s mouth, hand tight around the back of his neck, and pulls away slowly. “Okay,” he says.

  Daniel’s grateful smile is worth it.

  James is biting the inside of his cheeks as he watches Coy’s free hand frame Derek’s face, the other one holding Derek’s left hand gently. The rifle is laying along the bow of a rowboat just behind them.

  “You keep hurting yourself,” Coy says quietly, brushing his thumb along one of the faded scars from the shattered windscreen. “You just need to stop fighting, Derek, and accept that you’re meant to be mine. I won’t let anything hurt you when you do.”

  The corners of Derek’s mouth lift in a soft smile, and James’s breath catches, uncertainty and anxiety warring for control, but then his lip curls back and his teeth are bared in a blood-spotted and feral grin. James suddenly understands what he meant and throws himself toward them with a scream that dies in his throat just as the charges give one final-sounding beep. The world explodes around him.

  Roger looks pale when he glances up as Daniel enters the office, slumping down in one of the seats. Daniel’s insides sink. “Murphy,” he says, gripping the edge of the desk. “What happened?”

  “Fairhall found them,” Roger says quietly. His eyes are focused on a point somewhere over Daniel’s shoulder. “He’s dead, but that was one of the sheriffs up there. They’re airlifting them to Albany Med.”

  “What happened?” Daniel repeats. “What happened to them?”

  “Fairhall blew up a boathouse from the sounds of it,” Roger says, blinking and getting up. “They don’t know yet, he said Moore was unconscious, and James—he wasn’t making much sense but he was awake. I don’t know any more than that.”

  He pats Daniel on the shoulder as he passes, heading for the door.

  Daniel is still holding on to the desk, trying to breathe slowly and calmly against the rising tide of panic. Even the fact that Coy Fairhall is dead can’t be celebrated because Jake Bartlett slipped through his fingers, and James and Derek are in a hospital two and a half hours away in God knows what state because Daniel told them it would be safer to leave the city. Fairhall still found them, and they’re never going to know how if they don’t already.

  Cohen bursts through the door a minute later, breathing heavily. “Murphy just told me,” he says. “Jesus—are you leaving?”

  Daniel looks up at him, blinking against the dry, filmy sensatio
n in his eyes. “Leaving?” he asks. “What?”

  “To Albany?” Cohen frowns. “To see James and Derek?”

  “Why—I can’t leave,” Daniel says, swallowing back a lump in his throat. “Were you not there when Jake Bartlett shot two officers and then disappeared?”

  “You need to go to Albany,” Cohen insists. “Just—just go, okay? Someone’s got to be there, figure out what the hell went wrong and make sure they’re okay, right? I’ve got it here.”

  “Bartlett is still out there.” Daniel releases the edge of the desk and flexes his aching hands. “He’s still out there and he’s not going to stop gunning just because we need him to. I can’t just leave.”

  Cohen leans forward and grabs Daniel’s wrists, squeezing until he stops flexing. “You can. You have to at least go and see what happened, okay?”

  “We know what happened,” Daniel says, staring down at where Cohen’s fingers are wrapped around his wrists. “Coy had them, and he blew up a boathouse, and now they’re in the hospital and he’s dead.”

  “If you don’t come, I’m going on my own.” Peter’s voice is cheerful with a manic edge. “I’ve never been further north than the city, and even if I had, I’d still go just to make sure you came with me like some rabid guard dog. James and Derek need you more than you need to go after Bartlett.”

  Daniel jerks his head up, and Cohen lets go of his wrists. “What are you—why are you here?” he demands. “I told Martine to take you home.” Cohen backs up a few steps, just enough for Daniel to slide past and cross the distance between he and Peter.

  “Martine and I were bringing you all back some food and Kay was at the front desk in the middle of a breakdown,” Peter says, stepping forward until he’s plastered against Daniel’s front. “I was already planning on telling you to steal a car so we could leave right away, and now I’m doubling down because who even cares about Bartlett?”

  “Pete—”

  Peter covers Daniel’s mouth with a hand, his breath fanning over Daniel’s ear as he hugs him tighter with his other arm and then replaces his hand with his mouth. The kiss is brief and barely there, gone before Daniel can respond.

  “Nope!” Peter says, loud and abrupt and yanking on Daniel’s hand as he tows him toward the door. “Let’s go, right now.”

  Casus Fortuitus #4

  What happens next?

  Find out in Casus Fortuitus #4 Over and Again!

  A sneak peek begins on the next page:

  Chapter 1

  Brock Hart has been around the block more than once. A couple of decades in the courtroom gives a different perspective on the world, he’s found. Not to paint them all with the same brush, but most of the lawyers he knows tend to operate on a grayer morality scale than the wider population. Some cling to the law as this lofty ideal, something you don’t have to go outside of to seek justice. Others have seen one too many failures where the law hasn’t done the job it was supposed to. Brock’s seen a lot of those failures over the years.

  Not to say that he doesn’t love the law—it’s been his weapon for most of his life, and for a long time, he’s used it to serve justice to those most deserving of it. He’d become an Assistant United States Attorney a few weeks before he turned thirty, and his fiftieth birthday is looming ever closer. It would be easy to get lost in looking at the empty apartment he spends less than a third of his life in as a failure too, if not for the fact there are thousands of scumbags in prison because of it. It’s a job that requires dedication and sacrifice to do properly. In Brock’s experience, anyway. Two lawyers isn’t a pairing that works, and people in most other professions don’t generally tolerate more than a couple of missed birthdays or anniversaries before cutting and running. Brock’s seen the crash and burn of both.

  Being alone is easier. He has connections and friends, by the loosest definition. There are people he’d call if he was in trouble who aren’t his family. That’s enough for him, and also the reason he finds himself packing up his hotel room in the middle of the night to head back to New York. Derek Moore had wormed his way under Brock’s guard a few years back. Whip-smart and with a better grasp of reality than most of the starry-eyed graduates Brock’s mentored over the years, Brock had pulled some strings to get him in a position he probably wouldn’t have qualified for without a few more years of experience. Brock had taken the lead on prosecuting Coy Fairhall for his own satisfaction as much as for the sake of duty. The human trafficking case he’d been dealing with had been waiting when he returned, and had only been wrapped up a couple of days ago. There was a distant memory of hearing about Fairhall’s escape but it obviously hadn’t sunk all the way in, because the email from Marian Andrews catches him entirely off guard. Snippets jump out as he glances over it, but the last paragraph leaves him with a hollow, cold feeling in his chest.

  We’ve lost Moore for the foreseeable future at least, from what I’ve heard. How do you feel about setting up here for a while?

  Marian

  Brock’s willingness to pick up and move has always made him a valuable asset to the Department of Justice. Even if Marian hadn’t reached out, Brock expects that the offer would have come through an official channel in the next few days anyway. He’d helped clean up the aftermath the first time around and sure as hell planned to make sure the loose ends got tied up properly this time too. He might not have many friends, but Derek Moore is one of them. If there’s any justice to be had with Fairhall dead, Brock’s going to make sure they get it.

  None of the training or simulations at the Academy really prepared Cohen Bailey for what being a police officer was actually going to be like. There were long stretches of dull things, traffic infractions and noise complaints and petty theft, but Cohen hadn’t even been sworn-in for a month before he and his partner had responded to what turned out to be a murder. Four years later, the last of them in the heart of New York City, and it’s a pleasant change of pace when a month goes by without responding to something that would have given him nightmares once upon a time. Still, he knows he’s got a long way to go before he becomes as jaded as some of the officers he works with. Part of him wants to hold on to whatever is left of the teenager who’d decided at his sophomore year career day that he wanted to become a police officer to save people. It gets smaller and smaller with every case, every time all they end up being able to do is pick up the pieces left behind.

  It doesn’t leave Cohen much time to mull over the fact that the extent of his personal life was a quickly ignited crush on his captain. One that pretty much burned out when the man lied to his face to slip away and confront a psychotic killer who’d been stalking the city—most notably James’s prosecutor boyfriend—for weeks with dead animals and then dead criminals. Most things don’t withstand a reality check like that, and it was a relief when it went away, honestly. It had been kind of obvious, to everyone except James evidently, and his relationship with his fellow officers improved afterward.

  That was the most important thing at this point, that the people he’s grown to care about through all the time on the streets together are safe. Coy Fairhall’s escape and second rampage through the city had brought them all closer together, especially with the proof of how fragile life is. Cohen’s just happy they all survived it this time around too, with the bonus of a few more friends to lean on. That’s his priority right now. He’s still young, after all. Plenty of time to find someone to come home to after a hard case.

  Cohen has spent the last two days waiting for anything more than Daniel’s sparse text messages. He spent the whole afternoon that they’d left for Albany compulsively checking his cell while trying to coordinate a group of stressed, worried cops into a unit that could catch up to Jake Bartlett the second he showed his face. Roger Murphy had stayed in James’s office for most of the afternoon. The next day had been even worse, and now it’s day three and he’s running on maybe six hours of sleep over that entire time, if he rounds up. He’s still glaring at his cell, silent and damning
on his desk, when someone’s fingers close around his wrist and yank. Kay’s eyes are wide and on the bloodshot side, but her makeup is perfect and the smile on her face terrifying. He doesn’t resist as she pulls him to his feet and hauls him toward one of the conference rooms, just lets her push him down into one of the chairs and shut the door.

  “They’re not going to be back for a while,” she says, boosting herself up to sit on the table. Her heels barely brush the ground. “Sam called me this morning. James is going to need some physical therapy, they don’t know how much. Broke his leg in a couple of places and tore something in his hip. Not crippling, from what Sam said, but bad enough that he’ll end up behind his desk permanently.”

  Cohen nods sharply. His heart hurts for James, knowing how long he’d been on the force and how much it meant to him, but being alive is more important. He can appreciate that. “Derek?” he asks, and Kay’s eyes drop away from his.

  “They said that his concussion from coming out of the cab was probably worse than he let on. A second, bigger one within a couple of weeks rattled him good.” She smooths out the fabric of her pants and then looks back up at him. “He’s conscious and remembers who they all are so they think it’s probably not major. He doesn’t remember much about being up there, or what happened. Just hard to figure out how much, and how serious, any damage is while he’s still on painkillers.”

  “Probably best that they stay where they can get the best help and care,” Cohen says after a moment of silence. The thought of James not returning for an indeterminate period of time makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end, but he sits up straighter to hide the shiver. “What about Callahan?”