Rook nodded. He was still crouching in front of her and she watched as he reached out, landed his palm on her knee. He was connecting himself to her. She’d understood what he was feeling and he’d reached out for connection. Inwardly, she panicked. That was bad. That was dumb. But she couldn’t bring herself to shake off the heat of his hand. The warmth of him. She wanted him too badly.
“Well,” she heard herself saying. “I can be packed in just a few minutes, and I’m sure Ricky could too. That way you could drop us at home on your way to the precinct.”
She had the unexplored thought that maybe being with her and Ricky before he went and saw Gibson would be a comfort to him.
He paused. “Actually, I want to go back to the house and check things out before I go to the precinct. Which is why it makes more sense for Atlas to bring you in a couple of hours.” He hesitated, as if he was a little nervous. “Or, if you wanted, you could hang out here for the afternoon, and after I’m done with Gibson, I could come back and get you guys. I just figured you’d want to bust out of here as soon as possible.”
“You can’t bring me and Ricky home now because you’re checking things out at the house.” It wasn’t really a question she was asking, it was a necessary clarifying statement.
He eyed her, obviously very aware that the tide had shifted within her and her temper was beginning to rise. “Yes,” he said carefully.
“Rook, correct me if I’m wrong, but the NYPD has given that house the all clear. Yes? And so has the contractor you hired to fix the kitchen? Sequence and Cedric installed a new security system yesterday. Yes?”
“Yes and yes.”
“You trust them, yes?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m feeling like this is a trap somehow, but yes. I trust them.”
“But still, you need to go over there and check things out. Which means that you can’t drop me and Ricky off and someone else has to do it.”
He was bright enough not to respond to that.
“Which means,” she said, rising up from her chair and striding over to her dresser, opening up her drawers and starting to dump her stuff into her suitcase. “That once again, you are choosing duty over family.”
He sighed and dropped his head as he remained crouched in the same position. When he rose, his back was to her. “That’s really how you see it, May? The fact that I need to verify, with my own eyes, that the house is safe for you two, that’s an impeachable offense? That means I’m putting my duties over my family?”
“Yes!” She was half a second away from stomping her foot. “Rook, fine, go check out the house, but take us with you! There’s no danger at the house. Two, arguably three, different, independent sources—all of which you trust—have verified it. So, go and check it out, but take me and Ricky home at the same time!”
“I really don’t understand why this is so important to you. I can just take you home after I get back from seeing Gibson. And then I’ll have verified the safety of the house for myself and everyone will get what they want!”
Well, that did it. She tossed her handful of clothes down and marched over to him, grabbing him by the shoulder and making him turn to face her. “Not me! In that scenario, I don’t get what I want, Rook.”
“Then I’m missing something here, May. Apparently I don’t understand what the hell it is that you want!”
“That is not a surprise to me in the least,” she told him in a cutting tone that was designed to hurt.
He growled, staring at the ceiling before he took a deep breath and looked down at her. He took her by the shoulders but she twisted away. He took another step toward her and took her by the shoulders again. “Tell me what you want. In clear terms. Just freaking lay it out for me. Because we both know that I’m no good at guessing. Just tell me.”
She shoved him back from her. “I want to go home with you and Ricky!”
Tears sprang to her eyes as his face went flat with shock. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to lay her cards on the table like that. She hadn’t meant to—
“Shit!” she shouted, grabbing her hair and spinning away from him.
“Baby,” he whispered, bringing his own hands to his hair and just watching her. “Baby, of course I’ll come home—”
“No!” She held up a hand to stop him from talking. “That is not what I mean. I mean that I don’t want to have to rearrange my life based around what you think makes sense. I don’t want to wait for hours at the bunker today so that you can take us home tonight when you could just take us home right now.”
“I can’t take you home right now, I haven’t verified the safety of the house yet.”
“But the house is safe!” she shouted. “The NYPD and your own team have verified the safety of the house! It’s safe! But you and your whacked-out sense of responsibility have to handle everything by yourself! You can’t trust anyone to take care of the things you love. You can’t even trust me!” She took a step toward him, her eyes burning. “Rook. Me and Ricky can go home. We can go home right now. Gibson is in custody. The house is fixed up and safe. And you know what? The last time someone broke in to the house? Guess who handled it? Me! Not you. Me! So, there is no need for this over-vigilance of yours. I won’t make room for it in my life. I refuse to fall second to your sense of duty again. I won’t do it. I want to go home with you and Ricky right now. Or you can go play Superman by yourself and Atlas can bring your family home. You can’t have both. You can’t be Superman and Javi all at once. You have to choose.”
He stared at her and she was shocked to see his hand shaking as he slowly lifted it to drag down his face. She’d hit her target, that was for sure.
The righteousness of arguing well and effectively and precisely coursed through her veins. She could have lifted a car if she’d had to. But that feeling faded as she watched the color leaching out of his face.
She’d meant to win the argument. She hadn’t meant to wreck him.
“You can’t make me choose, May. And you can’t change who I am.”
He turned on his heal and strode to the door.
She watched in blank disbelief as he put his hand on the door knob. She couldn’t believe he was leaving like this. She couldn’t believe the choice he was making.
“Call Atlas. Make whatever arrangements you want,” he said in a low voice that was simply wrecked with emotion.
And then he was gone.
***
Rook got an overwhelming sense of deja vu as he stood outside the room where Gibson was in custody. Adrenaline had started its march through his veins, he was forcing his mind into an unnatural calm. And most of all, he was forcing May out of his thoughts.
It was the exact same routine he used to have when he was overseas and he’d have to leave the base for some operation or another. When he was headed into dangerous situations, he had to zip her away into a tender part of his heart that he didn’t let see the light of day while he did whatever dirty work he had to do.
And as he stared at the door that led to Gibson, he automatically put himself through the same routine. May’s words, her passionate argument, the hurt and disappointment in her eyes, all of it was shoved down within him until he was as calm as a glassy sea.
He pushed open the door and stepped into the custody room.
Cyril was handcuffed to a desk in the center of the room, his forehead resting on the wood and his back sawing up and down with his breaths.
He didn’t look up at Rook’s footsteps, which told Rook just how far gone the guy was. No trained soldier was comfortable handcuffed to a desk with his back turned while and unknown person entered the room.
“Cyril,” Rook said, his hands in his pockets, standing a healthy distance away.
The man’s head came up off the desk in two, slightly woozy swoops. When his eyes landed on Rook, it wasn’t hard to tell that he was coming down from something. He looked confused and angry and exhausted.
But he didn’t look as bad as Rook had been
expecting. Cyril’s hair was short and obviously recently cut. He looked a little thin, but not like he’d been skipping a lot of meals. His teeth were white and cared for. He looked older than his years, but not by much.
Relief swamped Rook. He’d been expecting to meet his friend as a strung out junkie, hanging onto life by a thread.
“Rook,” Cyril said in a completely unfamiliar voice.
Rook frowned. His voice was shredded, like he’d dragged it over a cheese grater.
Rook took a few steps forward but he was suddenly hit with how uncomfortable he felt. He’d come here because he’d needed to see him with his own eyes. But now that he was here, he had no idea at all what to say. He’d expected Cyril to be wild, crazy, vitriolic. But instead the man just sat quietly behind the desk. Looking for all the world like he had no idea why the hell Rook was there.
“Why the hell are you here?” Cyril asked in that scratched out voice.
Rook cleared the rest of the space between them and sat in the chair across the desk from Cyril. He said the only thing he could, even there the real answer to the question was impossibly complicated. “Because you tried to kill my family, Cyril.”
There was no reaction from the man. His face was blank. Later, Rook would realize that Gibson had admitted to arson and the break-in, but was most likely wary of giving away any more information about his motives in the middle of a police station.
“The cop told me you and May are divorced now.”
Rook grunted, adrenaline simmering in his veins. “You’re saying you didn’t realize that I didn’t live at that address anymore when you set the fire.”
Cyril shrugged. “I’m just saying I didn’t know you were divorced.”
Rook’s eyebrows rose. “Would that have changed anything? If you knew?”
Gibson cracked then, scoffing and turning his tired face away from Rook. “You really don’t get it, man.”
“What don’t I get?” He felt his synthetic calm start to burn away.
Cyril cut him with a stare.
“What don’t I get, Cyril?” Rook repeated, his temper rising. He felt, for a moment, as if he were channeling May. He never let his anger get the best of him, not the way that she did. But he couldn’t handle sitting across the desk from Gibson in such a civilized manner. An image of Ricky, sitting so scared in the closet in her bedroom flashed across Rook’s mind and he no longer had civility left for Gibson. “You think I don’t understand what you’re going through at all?”
“Fuck you,” Gibson spat. “No, you don’t understand what this has been like.” He pointed down at his legs and Rook could only assume he was gesturing toward his prosthesis.
For a moment, Rook felt like shit. Guilt swamped him. Gibson had gotten the shit end of the stick and there was no question that his last few years had been significantly harder than Rook’s.
But then something amazing happened. He heard May’s voice in his head. Actually, Rook heard May scoff in his head. He knew, without a doubt, that if she were here right now, she’d be rolling her eyes in dismissal at Gibson’s line of thought. She’d be up in arms that Gibson was accusing Rook of having gotten off easy. Because it hadn’t been easy. His body had been wrecked, he’d almost died. He’d had debilitating PTSD that required constant vigilance and care and attention. His marriage had fallen apart. Even now, he still battled guilt on top of everything else.
He’d let guilt twist his view of the world for way too long. Even now, his guilt was softening him toward Gibson. Maybe he could understand the guy without empathizing. Because this man was acting as if Rook’s life had been a cakewalk. He was acting like Rook deserved to have his house burned down. With his wife and child inside.
And that was the thing that finally did it. That had Rook fully channeling May.
“I didn’t come here to compare pain, Gibson. Because ultimately, you’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a limb. I don’t know what you’ve been through. Just like you don’t know what I’ve been through. But I sure fucking know what it’s like to get blown to hell by an IED. To have a day’s worth of surgery and years of recovery. I know what it’s like to get home from war and feel like a fish in the fucking desert. I know what it’s like to think your life is over. To love a woman you have no idea how to connect with anymore. To have her divorce you because you’re not who she thought you were. I know what it’s like to have an explosion wake you up from sleep every night for six years. I know what years of therapy are like. I know all that. That IED took a hell of a lot from me too, you know. I know how fucking angry you are, Gibson. But more than that, I know how guilty you feel. For surviving the blast. When so many others didn’t. I know what that guilt feels like. You think I don’t fight it with everything I have? Every goddamn day? You don’t see me trying to murder the families of the other guys who survived. That’s a choice you made. And maybe you’re off your rocker. But there are services. There’re free services. There’s no excuse to be this far gone. I would have helped you. I would have gone to fucking therapy with you. I would have opened my doors to you. I would have done anything to help you. Just like I did everything to help myself. To pick myself back up. It’s done. It’s over. And moving on is something you do every day, over and over.”
Gibson’s lips were curling back from his teeth as rage infected his features. Rook was breathing hard and thrilled to his core to hear himself saying these words, to realize that he meant them. But he could also see that nothing he was saying was making any difference to Gibson. It was like speaking in a different language. This wasn’t something that could be talked out between them.
Because it wasn’t something that actually existed. This was Cyril’s problem. In his brain. In his heart. His pain was in the driver’s seat. It was calling every shot. It had changed who Cyril Gibson was, on a fundamental level.
It was clear to Rook that the man he used to know was gone. Twisted beyond recognition. And maybe, maybe therapy and care and recovery could bring him back. But that wasn’t a hope that Rook could cling to right now. He had other things to spend his time wishing for.
This wasn’t a misunderstanding that Rook could clear up. This was a messy reality that was a goddamn shame.
He couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t change it.
All he could do was move forward. Move on. Keep going. Keep living.
“Did it help?” Rook eventually asked, staring into Gibson’s rageful face. “Trying to kill me. My family. Did it make you feel better?”
Gibson’s face went carefully blank again. “You deserve anything that’s coming to you, Rook. I know what you did. I know what you did the day of the blast. You took everything from me. Everything. And you got away. You think because your wife left you, you understand pain? You think—”
Gibson cut off a wiped a hand down his face.
“You can’t trick me into thinking you’re right,” Gibson continued. “Nothing you ever do or say will be right. I know what you did.”
The words confused Rook but he knew better than to put any real stock in them. Fatigue was taking Gibson again. He’d started to sag in his chair.
Rook knew crazy when he saw it. And as sad as it was, as clear as it was that the system had failed Cyril, he wasn’t Rook’s to fix.
He left the room unsettled and unbelievably sad. But he also left the room certain. Certain there was somewhere he had to be.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
May stood in her kitchen with yellow rubber gloves pulled up to her elbows and scowled at her sparkling kitchen sink.
Ricky was asleep upstairs, having come home and packed like a tornado for her first day of camp tomorrow. May had avoided this half of their townhouse all she could and now it was time to make her peace with her kitchen.
She’d gone into the bathroom and gotten the rubber gloves and cleaning supplies, intending to scrub every single speck of contractor’s dust that was sure to be shrouding her kitchen. She was not the world’s greatest cook… at all.
So, she wasn’t going to chef her way back into comfort in her kitchen. She figured she’d have to clean her way back into comfort in her kitchen. She needed to put her mark on it. Reclaim it. She needed her last memory there not to be of the man who she’d fought with. Who’d kicked her and tried to burn her house down. With her daughter inside.
But when she’d finally strode into her kitchen, she’d been dismayed to see that every single surface sparkled. It was immaculately clean. Even all of her dishes had been put back in the right spaces. And the sink was upgraded. It had a removable faucet and two deep basins. And her counters were redone. They were black marble and gorgeous. And the window above the sink was no longer a plain old double hung. Nope. It was a gorgeous stained glass masterpiece that apparently Rook had had commissioned. Another detail from her dream house.
“How the fuck could he have known that?” she whispered to herself, knowing full well that she’d never even mentioned her desire to have a stained glass window out loud before.
There was absolutely nothing for her to do in her kitchen except for admire it.
Her doorbell rang and May jumped about fifteen feet in the air, her heart pounding a mile a minute. She turned on her heel and strode to the front door, peering out her new and improved peephole.
She sighed and leaned her forehead against the wood. It was Rook.
It was ten pm and he was on her porch.
Did she have the energy for this?
She grappled with the locks and pulled the door open six inches, poking her face out. The alarm began to beep behind her. That did not improve her mood.
“Yes?” she asked.
“You’re still mad,” he guessed, his face lined with fatigue. He looked exhausted and sad.
Something twisted in her gut. He looked like he needed her right then.
“Bingo.” She couldn’t afford to care if he needed her or not. The point was that she didn’t need him anymore. The end.
Rook Security Complete Series Page 119