by Camy Tang
It took him a moment to understand that her comment implied he was protecting her and Charity because he cared about them. He coughed lightly. Not going to go there. “You’re close to him?” That seemed a neutral enough question.
“You probably already know that my entire extended family is close, but Tito and I got a lot closer after Mark died. It was as if he wanted to watch out for me since Mark couldn’t anymore. All of us have drawn closer because of his death. Everyone’s always checking in on my parents now, more often than they did before.”
“Didn’t they rally around your mom when she had her cancer diagnosis? I remember...” His words caught, but he recovered quickly. “I remember Mark told me about it.”
“You’re right, they did. But they really bonded together after the funeral.”
“How’s your mom doing these days?” Guilt twinged in his stomach that he hadn’t asked her about her mom before. He had been with Mark when his partner had gotten the phone call about the cancer. He’d never seen Mark look so sick.
“She’s great. It’s in remission. She’s living life more adventurously than she used to.”
He could understand why.
Arissa continued, “I wish we had the money so that she could do the things on her bucket list.”
He remembered the tiny apartment and what Arissa had revealed about herself and Mark giving up their apartments to live with their parents. “You’ve still got medical bills to pay?”
She nodded. “And the grocery store isn’t doing very well these days. If we didn’t have Mark’s pension...” She glanced at him, then swallowed.
He focused on the semi in front of them, then checked his mirrors to pass it. Because of him, they’d almost lost that income. But he couldn’t have lied about what he’d seen. And at the time, his anger and bitterness had gouged a hole in his spirit, and he’d wanted someone to pay for that bullet in his leg.
Did he still blame Mark? He wasn’t sure anymore. Not after seeing how Mark and Arissa had been trying to help her family. Was that why Mark had become a mole, to help pay medical bills? “It must have been hard, living with your parents and Mark.”
“It was cramped, but it wasn’t too hard. I got to spend more time with my family than I had in years.”
He knew it wasn’t just her job as an international flight attendant that had kept her from spending time with her family. Mark had spoken freely about his concern for Arissa. Before her mom’s cancer, she had been irresponsible, staying out late and hanging with a wild crowd. Mark had been worried about her.
But then their mom got sick, and Arissa had changed. And it wasn’t just Mark telling him. Nathan had seen it, too. She’d gone from a carefree party girl to a worried daughter. Whenever he’d seen her, she’d had a shadow behind her eyes where before had only been a carefree light. It was as if she’d matured in a single day.
And Nathan had fallen head over heels for her.
He’d been attracted to her before, despite her fondness for raves and dancing, despite her lack of Christian faith. But this new Arissa, closer to her brother, more concerned and responsible for her mother—she’d been even harder for him to resist. He’d wanted to gather her close and shelter her from all the troubles in her life. He’d wanted to help her through them.
Which was why when she’d visited him at the hospital, he’d said such cutting things and ruthlessly sent her away. She was the one woman he wanted, and yet he couldn’t have her. It wasn’t just because her brother had betrayed him—Mark’s mistakes weren’t her fault. It was because at the time Nathan hadn’t known if he’d ever walk again and he refused to burden a woman with something like that. So he’d lashed out at her.
And now, with time and distance, he could see how hurtful he’d been to someone who was going through her own grieving. “I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse.
She blinked at him. “For what?”
“That day you visited me in the hospital.”
Her entire face turned to marble—cold, still and carefully neutral.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he continued. “I’m sorry for lashing out at you.”
“I understand.” A flash of cynicism cracked the smoothness of her face. “Your leg was shattered. Of course you didn’t want to see me, the sister of your dead partner who you blamed for your injury.” While her words should have been gentle, they were bitter.
They drove in silence for a while. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know why he’d thought apologizing would suddenly make everything better.
Then she spoke in a low voice. “Nathan, for so long I thought I’d be angry at you for reporting what you’d seen to Internal Affairs, for continuing to believe Mark was a mole.”
Very nicely, she didn’t say, Despite the lack of evidence. Even though he believed what he’d seen at the chop shop, the fact that Arissa doubted him stung deeply.
“I didn’t want to ask for your help,” she continued. “I knew you’d want nothing more to do with us. But as soon as I heard Mark’s name, I also knew you were the only one who could help me, and I had to come to you.” She turned to him, her eyes a mix of sadness, hardness and tiredness. “And now it’s starting to look like Mark was doing something suspicious, so how can I be angry at you for reporting what you’d seen when you might have been right?” Her mouth firmed. “But it doesn’t make me any less angry that you stayed away from us. Did you think we were involved in Mark’s business, too?”
“No, of course not.” But a nagging part of him admitted that he’d suspected it. He’d been so betrayed, he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with the Tiong family. That, and he’d wanted to avoid Arissa with her soulful eyes and scent of rain and roses.
He swallowed. “I was—” Broken. “—in pain. I didn’t want to see anyone. And then when I was on the road to recovery, so much time had passed, and your brother was gone...”
Arissa tucked her feet up under her as she sat on the seat, her cheek against the chair back at she looked at him. “Mark might have been a mole,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
He wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t seen Mark give that copy of the police case file to the LSL gang member.
“He wasn’t always a bad cop, was he?” Arissa asked.
“No. Arissa, he was my best friend.” And I never knew him. “He was a great cop. We were a great team.”
She didn’t respond, just stared off in the direction of his hands on the steering wheel.
Nathan said, “There was one time we cornered a drug dealer. Peppi Indigo was a coward, everyone knew it, but he was smart. He’d avoided prison because he was afraid of it. But Mark and I caught him red-handed with a trunk full of heroine.”
Dawn had been a faint blush in the sky when they’d trapped Peppi in the empty parking garage. Los Angeles hadn’t even begun to wake up yet—or the other lowlifes were just getting to bed. He and Mark had been dead tired from being up all night, and they’d gotten a little punch-drunk while staking out Peppi’s car. That was the only reason Nathan could think of why they’d done what they did.
“We caught Peppi in a drug deal. We’d been watching him and we came out a little aggressively, guns hot. I got the buyer down on the ground and Mark grabbed Peppi. But we were tired, and we’d forgotten how desperate men can do desperate things. Peppi managed to wrestle with Mark and knock away his gun. Peppi had your brother in front of him as a human shield.”
She gasped, and he winced. He was such a chump; he wasn’t supposed to alarm her.
“It wasn’t for long,” he said quickly. “Mark looked right at me and mouthed ‘Prudence.’”
“Huh?”
“Prudence was the name of a woman down in Human Resources. She wasn’t a very big woman, but for some reason every time she sat down in her chair, she’d drop do
wn hard like a dive-bomber. Mark and I commented about it between ourselves all the time.”
“What did he mean by saying her name?”
“I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had a guess. Then he put his hand up to his chest with three fingers showing. It was only a few seconds, but Peppi had started shouting at me to drop my weapon and he was waving his own piece around like a madman. Mark counted off with his fingers—three, two, one. Then Mark threw his elbow backward into Peppi’s jaw and dropped to the ground so fast that Peppi didn’t know what was going on.”
“Prudence the dive-bomber,” Arissa murmured.
“I injured Peppi and then Mark disarmed him.”
“You saved his life,” Arissa said.
“I doubt Peppi would have shot him, not a cop. Then he’d really be in trouble and Peppi was too smart and too much of a coward to do that.”
Her eyes on him were still solemn, despite his reassurance. “You’re right, you two were a good team.”
Once. Before that chop shop. Before Mark had started doing what Nathan suspected he had been doing—selling out the LAPD in order to pay for his mother’s cancer treatments.
He took the route through Oakland and then into Sonoma. As they began to see farm fields and vineyards, Nathan found that the sight eased the rock-hard muscles in his neck.
Home. He was going home.
He hadn’t felt like Sonoma was home in a long time. It had been the place of his failure, because he came back to Sonoma no longer a cop. But now after living there for three years, working with a Sonoma physical therapist, getting a job at a condominium building just outside of downtown Sonoma, the surroundings had become familiar. Calming.
The thought of going back to live in Los Angeles caused a pang of unease. No, he couldn’t do it. Not just because of the memories, not just because he couldn’t belong to the LAPD anymore, but because it wasn’t home to him.
“It’s beautiful here.” The last thin rays of sunlight through the fir trees lining the highway made dappled patterns on Arissa’s face. “I don’t know how you left here to work in L.A.”
If he hadn’t gotten shot, he would still be down south, facing the danger of the streets rather than the soothing scent of cherry trees in bloom. It was almost enough to trick him into thinking it was a good thing he’d been forced to move back home. As if it had had a purpose. As if the shoot-out at the chop shop had been part of a larger plan.
That was stupid. There was no God, no higher power controlling any of it. God had abandoned Nathan in that chop shop. End of story.
Night had just fallen as he drove outside of downtown Sonoma, turning into a driveway lined with hedges on one side and duplexes on the other.
“Where are we?” Arissa looked around at the row of small rentals, which seemed to be surrounded by fields of grapevines. “I can’t believe I hadn’t even thought to ask you. I knew we weren’t going back to your parents’ house.”
“I hadn’t thought much about it until we were in central California.” Nathan pulled in front of one of the duplexes. “When you were at a rest stop with Charity, I called Liam O’Neill.”
“Who’s he?”
“His older brother Shaun is a good friend of mine.” Nathan stopped in front of the third duplex down the line and cut the engine. “Liam just got back from a tour in Afghanistan, but not many people know he’s home again.” The only reason Nathan knew was because Shaun had mentioned it last week.
“This is his home?” Arissa took in the whitewashed wooden walls, the three steps up to a door with a ripped screen. “Won’t people be able to track where he lives?”
“No, this is just a place he’s renting.” Nathan got out of the car, and Arissa did also. “He’s left the army on medical discharge, so he’s trying to start up a new skip-tracing business.” Another reason to bring Arissa and Charity here—if things got bad, Liam could help them escape off the grid so the gang couldn’t find them. Nathan noticed the beat-up pickup truck in the carport. “He got a new car.”
Arissa eyed the car, then looked at Nathan, but didn’t say anything as she opened the back door to unbelt Charity from her safety seat.
He went around the car. “Here, let me carry her.” He stepped close to take the sleeping little girl from Arissa’s arms.
Time stopped. All he saw were Arissa’s eyes, dark and shining up at him. He smelled rain and roses mingled with cherry blossoms, freshly overturned dirt, and honeysuckle from a vine climbing near the duplex window.
The moonlight gilded her face with pearl dust. She was like a vision he expected to melt away. She should step away from him—why didn’t she? Then he realized he had trapped her against the car.
So he took advantage of that and leaned in and kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm rather than cold, and he suddenly heard the crickets in the bushes, the faint hoot of an owl, all circling them in together. He was with Arissa, he was holding Charity in his arms, and it was as if the three of them belonged together, fitted together like puzzle pieces. This was where he wanted to be, kissing Arissa and holding her child and being a part of their family.
The sagging lightbulb over the front door suddenly flickered to life, and he broke away from her. Her face was now bathed in the sickly yellow from the bulb, but she looked at him with eyes both dazed and also longing.
Yes, he felt that way, too.
He shouldn’t. This was the last woman in the world he could feel this way with. She knew too much about him. She knew who he had been, and could compare it with who he was now.
Nathan turned toward the front door just as Liam O’Neill unlocked the inner wooden door and pushed open the screen door. “Hi, Nathan.” His voice was deep and soft, so low that the crickets almost drowned him out.
“Liam, this is Arissa and Charity.”
“Come on in, quick in case someone sees you.” He swung the screen door wider.
Nathan should have thought of that before drowning in Arissa’s eyes and scent and giving in to the insane urge to kiss her.
Carrying Charity, he entered the small home, walking straight into Liam’s living room and apparently his office, since there was no furniture other than a table and chair with a laptop computer on it and a mess of wires on the floor.
“Take her into the bedroom.” Liam gestured to the door in the far wall.
Nathan entered the dark room and fumbled on the wall for the light switch. The ceiling light looked new, and the soft glow illuminated a tiny room with only a mattress on the floor. Liam had made it up with new sheets and a stack of blankets was folded up at the foot. Nathan pulled back the top sheet and laid Charity down, covering her and smoothing the dark hair out of her eyes. Her thumb was loosely in her mouth, but her jaw hung open with her lower lip tucked in, just like her father when he slept.
Suddenly, seeing Mark’s face in his daughter made Nathan miss him in a fierce rush. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then leaned down to kiss Charity’s cheek. He put a blanket over her and turned off the light, but left the door ajar.
Arissa had opened the car trunk and now set one of the boxes on the floor of Liam’s living room, followed by Liam with the other box. Nathan felt in his pocket for the car keys and pressed the button to arm the alarm, seeing the SUV headlights flicker through the large living room window, which was curtained only by some dingy sheer panels.
Nathan studied his surroundings. The kitchen was at the other end of the room, a section of linoleum that started where the scratched hardwood floors ended. There was a back door from the kitchen. Other than the bedroom door, there wasn’t much else to the duplex.
Arissa looked around also, and frowned. “Are we taking your only bedroom?”
Liam shifted his shoulder, where the angry red scars from his surgery puckered out of the skin, clearly visible because of
the sleeveless shirt he wore. “I don’t sleep much,” he said in a clipped voice. For the first time, Nathan noticed how thin his face was. His buzz cut only emphasized the tightness of the skin around his wide jaw and prominent cheekbones, but his dark blue eyes were fiercely independent.
Nathan knew how he felt. Wounded warriors, both of them. The nightmares would go away eventually—maybe he’d get a little help from counseling, like Nathan had.
But Arissa eyed him, unimpressed. “What, you’re going to sleep upright in your chair?”
Liam blinked at her. “Uh...”
“We’ll be fine with blankets out here in the living room,” Nathan interjected.
“I’ve got extra pillows in the bedroom closet,” Liam added.
Arissa frowned at the hardwood floor. “No, that’ll still be too uncomfortable. Maybe we should try to find somewhere else.”
“My duplex neighbor is out of town,” Liam said. “He asked me to keep an eye on his place. I can call him and ask if Nathan and I can sleep over there.”
“That still means one of you is on the floor with blankets, only next door instead of here.”
Liam smiled then, and Nathan caught a glimpse of the young man he’d once been, before he’d gone to war. “Mr. Brummel has a fold-out couch.”
“That’ll work.” Arissa looked at the two of them. “Are you sure it’s all right?”
“Positive.” Liam seemed to stand a little taller as he said, “With the two of us here, no one will be able to hurt you and Charity.”
Nathan realized what he’d done in calling Liam, because it was what he’d have felt in Liam’s place—he’d given him someone to protect. After losing that role because of his accident in Afghanistan, he’d needed to feel like a protector again. And Nathan knew that Liam wouldn’t allow anything to happen to Arissa or Charity.
After Liam called his neighbor to make sure it was all right for them to bunk there, he led the way outside and up the front steps of the other apartment of the duplex. Before leaving for Los Angeles this morning, Nathan had grabbed a small overnight bag at his parents’ house and he carried it with him as he followed Liam next door.