NO OTHER WAY (Harry Hunter Mystery Book 3)

by Willow Rose

  The only person I shared these things with was my neighbor, Jean. She was a nurse and had helped us out from the beginning once Camille got sick. She used to be best friends with Camille, but now she was so much more than that. She was family, and to me, she was even more than that. I had realized I was falling for her, and that maybe I had been in love with her for a long time. But as Camille woke up, I had to distance myself from her, so I wouldn’t hurt her. Still, she was the only one I trusted enough to share my thoughts with, even though I tried not to.

  When did life get so complicated?

  I wiped the tears off my cheeks and looked briefly at my dad, who worshipped with his hands in the air, eyes closed, and sang his dear heart out. My dad was my rock, and without him, I wouldn’t have been able to go through all this. He helped me when in need, and as a former pastor, he was always ready with an uplifting and faith-building word for me when I struggled, which was a lot these days.

  The music stopped, and the pastor took the stage.

  “Give it up for our worship team,” he said. “Aren’t they amazing?”

  People clapped. Josie had sat back down and was on her phone once again. I decided not to say anything. The last thing I wanted was for her to hate going to church as she got older. I had to pick my battles with her at this age; my dad had taught me that. It was easier said than done, but I was trying to live by it.

  “Please, be seated,” the pastor said, and we did.

  Chapter 2

  The pastor started his sermon about the prodigal son who returned, and how the father’s love for him made him run toward him and how our father’s love for us was the same.

  Big enough to forgive all we have ever done.

  I enjoyed the sermon and tried hard to listen while the pastor spoke, but someone sitting in front of me kept talking loudly. It was a young boy and a man whom I assumed was his father. I couldn’t see their faces, but they were obviously quarreling, and their voices were growing louder.

  “I knew you’d say that. Why can’t you just tell me the truth for once,” the boy said, hissing at his father.

  “Keep it down,” the man said.

  A woman sitting next to them hushed them, and they went quiet for a few minutes until it started all over again. I was suddenly very pleased with my own daughter’s behavior. We never yelled at each other that way. It’s like they say; there’s always someone who has it worse than you, right?

  “What do you mean you can’t trust me?” the man said, turning his head, looking at his son.

  The boy scoffed loudly. “Don’t give me that. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

  The man shook his head and looked away. “I’m not having this discussion here. Not now.”

  That made the boy rise to his feet. “Yes, you are. I need to know, Dad. I deserve to know the truth. NOW! You’ve been lying to me all of my life! It ends here. Do you hear me? It ends HERE!”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  By yelling, the boy had attracted the attention of everyone in the church, even Pastor Johnson, who had stopped his preaching. He was looking down at them, a surprised look in his eyes, a look that seemed mostly concerned. He was only displaying what the rest of us were feeling—concerned and uncomfortable. Like spectators to a show we weren’t invited to. This was clearly a discussion that wasn’t meant to be had in church. It was the kind of thing that should stay behind closed doors.

  “Sit down, son,” the dad said, speaking through gritted teeth. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “No,” the boy said, on the verge of tears now. “I am done doing what you tell me. I am done with you.”

  And with those words, he reached inside his hoodie and pulled out a gun. He held it between both hands, and it was shaking as he placed it against his father’s head.

  If he didn’t before, then he most certainly had the church’s attention now. A wave of panic rushed through the crowd, and someone yelled:

  “Gun! He’s got a gun!”

  I felt Josie’s hand on my arm as she raised her head.

  “Dad?”

  “Get down,” I told her, and she ducked behind the pew, arms above her head.

  The boy with the gun was shaking violently as he sobbed and pressed it against his father’s temple. The father had raised his hands above his head and was tilting his head, trying to get away from the gun while whimpering lightly, his terrified eyes lingering on his son at the other end of the gun.

  “Please, Nick.”

  “Don’t do this,” I said to the boy, approaching him. He didn’t look at me. He stared down at his dad, his lips quivering.

  “Stay out of this,” he suddenly said to me. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Then, let’s talk,” I said. “Tell me all about it. But don’t ruin your life by doing this. If you pull that trigger, there’s no going back. Your dad will die, you’ll go to jail, and you’ll have to live with the fact that you’ve killed someone for the rest of your life. And believe me; that’s not something you’d wish for yourself.”

  “Yeah?” the boy said as he sniffled. “And just how do you know? You ever killed anyone?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” I said.

  That made him turn his head and look at me.

  “Really?”

  I nodded, then pulled out my Miami PD badge. “One of the downsides to the job. It doesn’t matter how bad these people are; it still haunts you for the rest of your life. Now, God will forgive you, but you’ll never be able to forgive yourself. You’ll always keep wondering if there wasn’t some other way, always wish that you had done something different. It doesn’t matter if the guy you killed is a murderer himself or even someone who has hurt children. They’ll still visit you in your nightmares. The question is still there; couldn’t it have ended differently? Did he have to die?”

  The boy stared down at his father while the church was slowly being cleared out around us. People were running for their lives, storming out of the emergency exits, some were crying, others screaming. Nick didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t there to perform a mass shooting. His focus was solely on his dad.

  “Nick,” I said. “It might give you ten seconds of relief to shoot him because of whatever he has done to you, but it’s not worth it. Trust me.”

  The boy glared down at his dad, the gun still shaking in his hands. I was sweating heavily, my heart pounding in my chest.

  “Just give me the gun, Nick. Just hand it to me.”

  I could tell he was contemplating it; he was considering doing as I told him, at least for a few seconds. He lifted his head and looked at me, our eyes locking. I saw nothing but deep despair in them. The gun was lowered slightly, and he leaned over like he was about to do as I told him when there was movement from the other side. I turned to look as a local police officer entered. I had seen him outside the building when entering. Like all other churches in the area, they had a police officer guarding the entrance when we came and left, and sometimes they even had a car on the street and officers directing traffic outside.

  “Drop the gun!” he yelled, holding his gun pointed at Nick. Seeing this, my heart dropped.

  “Please,” I said, lifting my badge. “He was about to hand it over to me.”

  But Nick was confused now. I reached out my hand and said to him. “Nick, just give me the gun. Please, before this officer finds it necessary to shoot.”

  Nick stared at me, then at the officer. The gun was no longer at his father’s temple, so the dad saw a chance to get away. He sprang forward, leaping for the end of the row. Seeing this, Nick gasped, then panicked. He turned around and fired a shot at him. This prompted the officer to fire as well, and a second later, I stood with Nick in my arms as I grabbed him when he fell, blood gushing out on my white, newly-ironed church shirt.

  Chapter 3

  It had been a pretty quiet day so far at the ER. Jean was working the morning shift and had just helped a little girl who had f
allen off her bike. She had gotten a cast on her arm, and now Jean was handing her a lollipop for her braveness. That’s when they got the message.

  They were bringing in two victims of a gunfight.

  After that, there was not a quiet moment. As soon as they were rushed in, Jean didn’t sit down for the rest of her shift.

  The young teenage boy was in the worst shape. His father, who had also been shot, had suffered a gunshot wound to his upper arm and was brought into surgery right away, where they managed to remove the bullet and patch him up. The bullet hadn’t fractured any bones or hit any organs.

  The young boy was a completely different story. He had suffered a gunshot to his chest, and they fought for his life in there for hours and hours. They had asked Jean to assist. It broke Jean’s heart to see such a young man going through something like this at his age. He had his entire life ahead of him.

  At least he was supposed to.

  He had lost a lot of blood, and they brought in bag after bag of O-negative, while the doctors shook their heads, unsure how this was going to end. Dr. Harris, who Jean often worked with, had that look in his eyes that she didn’t care much for, the one that told her he was close to giving up hope.

  “We’re losing him, Doctor,” she told him as his blood pressure suddenly dropped rapidly. “Doctor?”

  The sound of the heartrate flatlining was possibly the worst in the world, and as she heard it, Jean’s heart knocked against her ribcage. She pulled out the defibrillator, and the doctor resuscitated the boy’s heart. The heart rate came back up, but only to flatline again. They did the same things all over again, and the same thing happened. The third time, they succeeded in keeping his heart pumping, and Jean breathed again for the first time in minutes.

  She knew she wasn’t supposed to get emotionally invested in patients, but it was hard not to, especially when it involved those whose lives you had fought for. She wanted this boy to live so badly; she almost cried when his heartrate flatlined again a few minutes later.

  “Not today,” Doctor Harris said and used the defibrillator once again. “We’re not losing you today.”

  The boy’s body jolted as the electric shock went through him, and Jean turned to look at the monitor, praying for a heartbeat.

  Come on; come on.

  A second later, one came. And this time, it continued. Sweat sprang from her forehead as the doctors continued their work and were finally able to patch the boy up before he was taken to the ICU.

  At the end of the day, she stood by his door, peeking inside and watching him. She then grabbed her purse and left the hospital, tears streaming across her cheeks. Not because she was sad, but because she loved her job so much. She loved being a part of saving lives. But at the same time, she hated how much bad stuff she had to witness every day. She hated that she lived in a world where young boys and their fathers got shot.

  As she drove down her street, she saw a shadow on the porch of her neighboring house, and she breathed heavily. She parked the car and got out, then spotted Harry sitting on his swing.

  Chapter 4

  “Hey there, neighbor.”

  She wasn’t supposed to since they were trying to stay away from one another, but something compelled her to walk up the stairs, up onto the porch where he was sitting. And as she saw his face, she realized why.

  He had been crying.

  “Are you okay? Harry?”

  He shook his head, then bit his lip and leaned back in the swing. She sat down next to him, grabbing his hands between hers. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he didn’t look at her.

  “Oh, Harry. What’s going on? What’s happening? Is it Josie?”

  He shook his head, then sniffled. He leaned his head against her shoulder. It was odd when a man as big as Harry, who was six-foot-eight and weighed around two hundred and thirty-something pounds, leaned against a small woman like Jean. It had to be an odd sight.

  “Is it Camille? Is something wrong with Camille?”

  He lifted his head and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just…”

  She smiled. ‘Tell me, Harry. What happened?”

  “There was this kid. In church. He was fighting with his father in the row in front of us. He then pulled out a gun. He wanted to shoot his dad but ended up getting shot himself. I was so close to helping him. He was so close to handing me the gun, and then…well, it all went wrong.”

  “I think I know who you’re talking about,” she said. “He was brought into the ER, and so was his dad.”

  “I am afraid to ask, but…”

  Jean squeezed his hands. It killed her to sit there with him this close and not be able to kiss him ever again.

  “He is alive, Harry. It was a close call, but he is still alive. The doctors say he has a good chance of recovery.”

  “Oh, God, that makes me so relieved to hear,” he said. He chuckled, grabbed her face between his hands, leaned over, and placed a kiss on Jean’s lips.

  It took them both by surprise and, startled, they both pulled away. Jean rose to her feet and walked a few steps toward the stairs, her heart pounding in her chest.

  What the heck?

  “I’m…” Harry said. “I’m sorry, Jean. I was just so happy. I didn’t think.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t do that, Harry. You can’t just kiss me and then regret it. It’s not fair to me.”

  He got up. “And I don’t want to. The fact is, I don’t regret it at all. I want to be able to kiss you every day, Jean. I think I…”

  “Don’t you dare. Don’t even think about going there,” she said, raising her hand to stop him.

  “But why not?” Harry lowered his voice. “I want to do the right thing, but the fact is, I’m not sure I love Camille anymore.”

  Jean shook her head. “I don’t want to hear anymore, Harry.”

  “I could divorce her,” he said.

  “No!” Jean said. “Don’t you even say that. Camille is not herself. She might get better with treatment, and then what? You’re a family, remember? What about Josie?”

  That made Harry stop, and she knew he hadn’t thought any of it through. He was acting on impulse, and that wasn’t good enough for Jean. She loved him, she truly did, and she’d give anything to be with him. But she couldn’t be the one to break up a family, especially not when she loved his daughter and wife so dearly. She couldn’t be that person. Plus, she knew Harry would never leave Camille when she was at her most vulnerable. It was never going to happen. It simply wasn’t in his nature.

  He stared at Jean, and she shook her head.

  “I’ll forget this even happened. I need to go to bed now. Go and be with your family. Goodnight, Harry.”

  Chapter 5

  I watched her walk down the stairs and toward her own house, cursing myself. I had blown it, hadn’t I? We were doing so well, and now I had ruined everything. Why did I have to kiss her?

  I had acted on impulse, and I hadn’t thought about it. It was an accident, except it wasn’t. Because accidents weren’t something you usually really wanted to happen, were they? I wanted this to happen; I longed to kiss her so terribly.

  The thing was, I felt more and more detached from Camille lately, especially since I felt like I hadn’t even known her back before she overdosed. When I met her, she was a drug addict, and I helped her get clean, and we fell in love. But she had never told me much about herself. I barely knew anything about her childhood or her life before she met me. I had never met any members of her family or even friends. Her excuse was that they all lived in the Caribbean, in the Dominican Republic, and the only friends she had here in Miami were related to her drug abuse, so she didn’t want anything to do with them. But I knew she went to FIT at one point; there had to be at least someone decent that she knew from back then, right?

  I walked back inside and went into her room, where she was lying, staring at the ceiling. Josie was sitting in there, holding her mother’s hand in hers.

  “Are you okay?�
�� I asked. “With everything that happened today. Must have been scary.”

  She sighed and nodded. “It was pretty scary. Mostly when the shots were fired. I thought they’d hit you.”

  I smiled. “So, you were worried about your old man, huh?”

  She nodded. “I’m always worried about you.”

  I nodded pensively. Josie wasn’t fond of the fact that I was a detective. She was terrified I’d get shot one day, and she’d lose me too. I couldn’t blame her.

  “I don’t feel like she’s getting any better,” Josie said and looked at her mom. “Are you sure they know what they’re doing at that rehabilitation center?”

  “I’m pretty sure, yes. But I’ve recently heard of a different type of treatment that I am willing to try. They’ve had some pretty interesting results with cases like your mother’s.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “A nurse at the rehabilitation center told me about it and gave me a number. I’ll call them tomorrow and see what they might be able to do for all of us.”

  “That sounds awesome, Dad.” She looked at her mother, who was drifting in and out of sleep now.

  Josie whispered, “I really miss her, you know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  We stared at Camille in silence, each of us thinking about her when she had been herself…back when we had been a real family. I could hardly remember those days or what our relationship was like. Had I loved her? I knew I had. I just couldn’t really find those emotions again. I kept wondering who wanted to kill her and why. Was it the people behind the trafficking ring? And did they still want her dead? There was so much I didn’t understand, and maybe it was wrong of me, but it made me resent her. I couldn’t help being angry with her for somehow putting Josie and me in this situation, for breaking our daughter’s heart like this. If she had been involved with the wrong crowd and kept it a secret from me, I didn’t know if I would be able to stay married to her.