by James Hunt
Sam remained stoic. “No one is speaking up for him.”
“So you decided to go on a one-woman crusade?” Chief asked.
Sam finally looked him in the eye, both of their gazes intense, both of them unwilling to back down. “I defended my fiancé. I don’t think that’s breaking any rules—”
“It does when you’re identified on television as Marshal Samantha Cohen!” The Chief slammed his fist on the desk, rattling the computer monitors and knocking a pen off the side, where it landed lifelessly in the dirtied carpet.
Once the computers stopped shaking, Connor exhaled and then sat on the edge of his desk, pressing his palms against his thighs, and bowed his head. He shut his eyes, wincing like he had a headache.
“Sir, I didn’t—”
The chief waved his hand and then stood, stumbling back behind his desk, where he collapsed in his chair. “It’s fine, Cohen.” He exhaled, all of that anger dissolving with that rattled breath. “I’m afraid I’m just regurgitating what the Secretary shoved down my throat.”
“Shit always rolls downhill, sir,” Sam said.
Chief chuckled. “It tends to do that.” He leaned forward, the chair squeaking, and thumped his forearms onto the desk. “Did you come back too soon, Sam? Because if you need more time—”
“I don’t need more time, sir,” Sam replied, and then broke off her gaze and glanced down at her palms. “I’ve already burned enough holes in my walls from staring at them. I just need to keep busy.” She felt the tears coming, but she pushed them back. She’d spilled enough of them over the past three months. “I just need to work.”
“Then I need you to stay out of the limelight,” Chief said, then pointed toward the television screen. “So, no more interviews on camera or off. Deal?”
Sam nodded.
“I’m going to need a verbal confirmation on that, Marshal.”
“Yes, sir.” Sam cleared her throat. “Anything else, sir?”
The chief remained still and quiet for a moment, staring at Sam’s eyes. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried about what’s going to happen if I decide to let you go back to your desk. I’m worried about what might happen if I let you keep your badge and gun.”
Sam nodded, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the chief started to ask these kinds of questions. “I’m never going to have closure on this until they’re both found. But I’m not delusional. I know what happens if Chase is caught. I know that it will only get worse. But it’s just… It’s the unknown, sir. It’s starting to wear on me, I guess. But I can still do this job.” She cleared her throat. “I need to do this job.”
Again, Sam waited for the chief’s decision, the final judgement of a man that she had tested to the very limits of his professional courtesy. But in those hard eyes, she saw understanding.
Connor raised his hand from the desk and extended his index finger from the rest of his fist. “One more, Marshal. One more whiff of trouble and it’s over. I’m not going to risk my reputation on you, no matter how good of a record you’ve had in the past. Do you understand?”
Sam nodded quickly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” She spun around quickly.
“And Marshal?”
Sam paused at the door, looking back. “Yes, sir?”
“When, not if.”
Sam frowned. “I don’t—”
“You said if Grant gets caught,” Connor answered. “But it’s when he is caught. You should know that better than anyone.” He returned to his paperwork. “Dismissed.”
Sam returned to her desk, that anger bubbling up again. The same blind rage that she’d experienced when she’d been on that news program with those reporters. But unlike before, she was able to push it back down, because she forced herself to remember that the chief was right.
It was only a matter of time before Grant was caught. There was just too many eyes looking for him, and there were only so many places for Grant to hide. He might be able to drag it out for a little while longer, but she knew that he was heading for an inevitable ending.
With her mind swimming with all of the potential outcomes of her fiancé’s predicament, she didn’t notice her desk neighbor, Don Kentz, slide over in his chair.
Kentz planted his elbow on his armrest with his fist nestled under his chin like Auguste Rodin’s famous statue, though his words were far less profound than the sculpture’s work. “Fired?”
“Not yet.” Sam focused on the documents on her desk, but when Kentz lingered, she raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Kentz shrugged. “Nothing. Just wondering how much longer you’re going to hold out for this guy.”
“I’m not having this conversation,” Sam said.
But Kentz wouldn’t let it go, lingering in her personal space, which had already been intruded on by the press more times than she cared to count. “I know that there is more to the story than what the media has reported on, and I know that he is not the evil entity depicted in all of those stories, but he is guilty of murder. That is plain and simple, and that’s something you must accept. Because when he gets caught, it’s not like you two are going to be together. It’s over, Sam. The sooner you realize that the—”
Sam snatched Kentz’s wrist, flipping it backward painfully and twisting hard to the left, causing Kentz’s entire body to seize up. “And the sooner you stop talking, the sooner I’ll let you out of this hold and you can get back to your desk to play solitaire while the rest of us do our jobs.” She leaned her mouth closer to Kentz’s ear. “Well?”
“Yeah,” Kentz answered. “Yeah, I’ll shut up.”
Sam flung his wrist away, and then shoved his chair back to his desk. From her peripheral, she watched him nurse the wrist she’d grabbed and ignored the fact that he muttered ‘fucking bitch’ under his breath.
But after a few more minutes stewing, she knew that if she sat behind that desk any longer, she might pump a few rounds into Kentz’s chest, so she stood and headed outside.
For the first time since she’d moved to Seattle, Sam was thankful for the cold air. It helped cool her thoughts and her itchy trigger finger, distracting her mind to focus on anything else other than Grant and the chaos that had been her life ever since he’d pulled that trigger. And while Sam understood why he did it, she couldn’t help but hate Grant.
Once outside, Sam walked around to the backside of the Marshal building where most of the smokers took their breaks, but it had been too cold lately for the frequent smokers to be out. Aside from her apartment, it was one of the only places she could be alone.
Ever since Grant’s departure into the criminal world, she had been greeted with a mixture of curses and condolences.
But no one really knew Grant the way she did. They didn’t know about the demons that had kept him up at night for so long. They hadn’t sat and convinced him to finally let go of a past that was crippling his future. They hadn’t watched him slowly release his cold hard grip on the gun that he’d held to ward off all of the evil he believed still threatened him.
None of them had sat in the kitchen and watched Grant play his guitar, amazed at how deftly he worked his fingers up and down the neck, quietly serenading Sam as she fell a little more in love with him each and every day.
But the sense of duty to protect others had always been Grant’s Achilles heel. And Dennis Pullman had used that to turn their world upside down.
Unable to feel her face anymore, Sam started to head toward the front of the building but skidded to a stop when her phone buzzed.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me,” Sam said, puffing air through her nostrils like a dragon.
“We need to talk,” Hickem said.
Sam scoffed. “I already told you that I’m not going to help you. And if this is about the—”
“I think he’s coming back to Seattle.”
Sam paused, butterflies exploding within her stomach.
“Sam, he might initiate contact with you, and if he does, I need you to
tell me,” Hickem said. “He’s hurt.”
Sam frowned, unable to conceal her worry. “Hurt? What happened?”
“Look, why don’t we schedule a meeting—”
Sam ended the call, clutching the phone in her exposed hand. She hadn’t brought her gloves to work with her, and the cold weather was making her knuckles chapped and red.
It was possible that Hickem was pulling her leg. But something about the way Hickem sounded made her think that he was telling the truth.
Still, if Grant really was hurt, and if he really was returning to Seattle, Sam knew that he wouldn’t come to see her. It was his way of protecting her, making sure she couldn’t be guilty by association. The less she knew about him, the less the authorities could use against her.
But there was one person that Grant would contact. And Sam bet that was Hickem’s next call.
7
Traffic had been lighter than she expected, and Mocks arrived at the hospital early. She found a spot near the front and checked her phone to let Rick know that she was outside. She would have gone inside to meet him but decided to keep the car warm. And he liked the extra steps that he had to take out into the parking lot. He was a physical therapy overachiever.
While Mocks’s shoulder was nearly back to normal, Rick still had a long road ahead of him.
Mocks leaned back and shut her eyes, the seat vibrating from the car’s engine. She tried to sleep, but it was useless. She’d been restless at home, at the store, at night when she went to bed, there was never a break.
And despite all of the bad shit that Mocks had gone through, she had stumbled into a good life. She had a husband, a son, and was respected in her job.
Or at least she was.
All of that changed when her ex-partner was forced to put a gun against a detective’s head and pulled the trigger. But Grant didn’t have a choice. It was the death of a cop, or the death of Mocks’s husband and child. And she whispered a silent thanks every night that Grant had done it.
The windows fogged over from her breath, and Mocks flipped on the defroster just as Rick stepped out of the sliding doors of the hospital’s E.R. exit. She saw him spy the car, and he moved as fast as he could on his crutches, quick streams of breath jettisoning from his mouth from the exertion.
The passenger door opened, and for a moment, the cold exterior of the world encroached the warm bubble of the car.
“How’d it go?” Mocks asked
Rick grunted, getting his legs inside, beads of sweat on his forehead from the effort. He was still in considerable pain, and the past few weeks he’d made the bold, and in her opinion stupid, decision to cut off his pain meds. “Better.” He swung the door shut, then sniffled and wiped his nose. “Made it five consecutive minutes twice on the walkway without aid before I had to stop.” He shrugged, reaching for the seatbelt as he strapped himself in. “So that’s something, I guess.”
Once the seatbelt was in place and he was situated, Rick leaned back against the headrest. He looked over to Mocks and smiled.
“Hey,” Rick said.
Mocks leaned over the center console and kissed him. His lips were cold and chapped, but his heart was still beating. And that was all that mattered. “Hey.”
Rick glanced into the backseat and saw the car seat empty. “No Chase?”
Mocks shifted into reverse and then carefully backed out of the spot, mindful of any wild drivers that might be speeding toward the emergency room’s drop-off circle. “He was having fun with your sister, so I didn’t interrupt.”
“He’s going to throw a fit once she finally goes back home,” Rick said. “Definitely not looking forward to that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
But while Mocks was thankful for Diane’s help at the house, her departure meant things would be returning to normal.
It meant that Rick would be done with physical therapy and could return to work. It meant that Mocks could return from her leave of absence from the department. It meant that they could resume their Saturday morning breakfast rituals with Chase.
But none of it would be really over until Grant and Dennis were caught. And while she didn’t give two shits about what happened to Dennis Pullman, she cared a great deal about what happened to Chase Grant.
The man who had saved her life, her husband’s life, and the life of their child who carried his namesake. The man who was their son’s godfather. A man who was more blood to her than any family she’d ever known.
Traffic was a little heavier on the return trip, and an accident on the bridge added twenty minutes, but it wasn’t until Mocks turned onto the street within their neighborhood and saw the splashes of red on the driveway and garage that she became angry.
“Shit.” Mocks murmured under her breath and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. The car jerked from the gutter in the road as she pulled into their driveway, and the motion caused Rick to stir awake. She put the car in park, staring at the hastily written message on their garage door in dripping red paint.
Rick wiped the sleep from his eyes, and then struck the dash with his palm after he read the message. “Goddammit!” He grew animated in his seat. “Don’t they know we didn’t do anything wrong? I mean what the fuck is wrong with people who—” He grimaced and clutched his hip. “Shit.”
Mocks leaned over and grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t get too excited.”
Rick nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
“Go inside. Chase will cheer you up. I’ll take care of the paint. It looks like it’s still drying, so it should be easier to get off than the other ones.”
Rick grumbled and then slid out of the car, using his crutches to steady him, still staring at the message on their garage door.
Mocks waited until Rick was inside the house before she got out of the car. The message was different, but the tone was the same as all the others.
You should be locked up too, bitch!
It was the twelfth edition they’d received. Most of the time it was teenagers with too much time on their hands. She stepped around the side of the house and grabbed the hose, yanking it back toward the front of the house, when she saw a truck pull up behind her sedan.
The headlights illuminated the red paint, and when the lights shut off and the engine died, Sam stepped out of the truck, pocketing her hands as she stared at the message, disgusted.
When it looked like the garage might be set ablaze by Sam’s fiery expression, Mocks emerged from around the side of the house, lifting the hose in her left hand. “I don’t suppose this was your handiwork?”
Sam shook her head. “Too grammatically correct for me.”
Mocks yanked more of the hose around to the front, giving herself more slack, and Sam stepped in to help.
“Hickem called me today,” Sam said, straightening out the hose. “He said that Grant was coming back to Seattle.” She squeezed the handle of the nozzle, and water splashed against the hate-filled message.
The water that trickled past Mocks’s shoes was blood red. “He said that?”
Sam nodded.
Mocks reached for Sam’s arm, and she stopped spraying. “Has he—”
“No.” Sam cleared her throat and released the hose. “And I don’t think he will contact me.”
Mocks let go of Sam’s hand. “Classic Grant.”
“Has he reached out to you?”
Mocks tilted her head to the side. “Sam, you know I’d tell you if he had.”
Sam arched her eyebrows. “Even if he told you not to?”
Mocks had tried to hide the truth on her face, but Sam was as experienced with dealing with liars as she was.
Sam dropped the hose and sat on the hood of her car. She rounded her shoulders forward, tired and drained. She was a far cry from the tall, proud woman that Mocks had grown to love as much as she loved Grant.
Mocks joined her sister on the hood.
Sam’s mouth trembled and her red eyes threatened tears. “The marshal in me knows that he’s doing all of t
his to try and protect me. To keep me out of the spotlight, but then there’s the other part of me, the part that doesn’t wear a badge, and that person is just fucking furious.”
Mocks placed her hand on Sam’s knee. “I know.”
“And I would probably do the same thing.” Sam forced a smile and then shrugged. “Christ, Mocks, I’d do anything to get him back. I’d turn in the badge, the gun, I’d walk away from it all and just go on the run with him.”
Mocks turned toward Sam, swinging her left leg farther up onto the hood so she could face her straight on. She grabbed Sam’s hand, squeezing it hard, hoping that Sam could feed off of what strength she could give. “It might not feel like you’re doing something, but you are. I saw you on the news. I’m glad you gave that bitch what she had coming.”
Sam managed a half smile. “You and my boss have differing opinions on the news piece.”
“Well, he has the wrong opinion.” Mocks let go of Sam’s hand, and then fiddled with her own fingers, casting her gaze at the driveway. “I’m sorry I haven’t been with you on the front lines with that. I should have tried to do more to help you.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Sam said, gesturing to the garage door. “You already have a target painted on your back. Associating with me would just make it worse. And even if you wanted to do something, I wouldn’t let you. I’d just pick you up and put you in a box so you couldn’t get out. I’m bigger than you, don’t forget.”
Mocks laughed. “I’m surrounded by goddamn Amazons. The only thing that you’re missing is the lasso of truth and those wrist bands.”
The laughter became contagious and Sam chuckled, the pair leaning into one another, and Sam placed her arm around Mocks’s shoulder and squeezed her close.
The moment was interrupted by Mocks’s phone, and she pulled it out, flashing the screen to Sam so she could see who was calling. It was Hickem.
8
The last few sections of the main stage were being set up. Duane carried some of the metal poles needed to finish, and then heaved them off his shoulders, sending them crashing down to the pavement, where they erupted in a metallic chorus that surprised every worker within earshot.