Nigel’s eyes met his from across the room as they simultaneously reached to shut down their computers. “You think it’s a good one?”
Nico rose and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair, tossing it over his arm as he reached for the rest of his accoutrements. “Got a feeling about this one.” He slid his holstered pistol on his belt, resolutely ignoring the look his partner gave him.
“So the psychic stuff’s contagious, huh?” The blond man smirked and picked up his cell from the desk. “I’ll go tell the Lt that we’re leaving for that.”
He was already halfway out the door, in no mood to discuss— even obliquely— his relationship with Nahia, his mind already on a game plan for this possible hostage situation. “We’re taking my car, it’s faster.” He didn’t even wait for a reply.
Nahia made it to work on time, but only just. The coffeemaker did a brilliant imitation of an IED, detonating as soon as she walked into the kitchen, spraying water and grounds on every available surface. Her next hour was spent cleaning up debris, taking a shower, and running to work, even though it was less than a mile away. She despised being late, anywhere and everywhere.
Mags was already behind the counter, sipping her morning Darjeeling in her antique china cup, leafing through a magazine. Today she was in a black tank top with purple sequins showing off her Celtic cuff armband tat and her spiky red hair was at its full glory. “Hey girl, you okay?” She knew it was unlike her friend to run late to her own shop.
She nodded and tossed her purse into the cubbyhole beneath the counter, her laptop case next to the register, and pulled up the stool next to where her friend stood. Her hair was braided and still damp from the shower, and her black retro Sex Pistols shirt clung to her like a second skin. It was the best she could do for a morning like hers. “Yeah, coffeemaker disaster, but recovered and good to go now. Thank you again for covering on Saturday.”
The sassy little redhead didn’t even look up when she scoffed. “Whatever. I’m just happy you’re out trying to get a life. It’s about damn time.”
Nahia scowled at her slurry that was masquerading as a triple shot latte. “I had a life before Nico.”
Mags nodded but looked unconvinced. “Yeah, but did it have color? You needed life in your life. You have that now. I can see it all around you.”
“And my aura is a banned book as far as you’re concerned.” She stuck her tongue out at her friend, who laughed at her and continued her reading. “So I don’t think we’ll be going back to the house.”
This time Mags did look up, crossing her arms and turning toward her with a look of concern. “You talked to Nico?”
Nahia nodded and pulled out her laptop, firing it up as she tossed her sludge into the trash, digging in the fridge for a bottle of pineapple mango V8, thinking it would be better for her in general. “I did. It’s just too dangerous to go back for more, even though I really want to explore the garage and the apartment over it.”
“And what do you expect to find there?”
She dug through her bag to find her ear buds so she could listen to the audio from the recordings without disturbing the tranquility of the store. “I don’t know, but I feel drawn there. Pulled in that direction. I understand the reasoning, though.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
She grimaced, but didn’t look over at her friend, choosing to sip her coffee. “Hell no, but I can’t see going back there and having Old Man McManus drop the ceiling on us, either. There’s no joy in having my friends or myself killed for the sake of a hobby.”
“That’s fair.” Mags turned back to her magazine which turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a real estate listing, and said nothing else. It was just as well, really, because she wasn’t in the mood to discuss it further. Damn, she hated giving up, even when she was eight years old and trying to make the baseball team with coke-bottle lenses and the depth perception of a mole. She failed, but she failed mightily, going down swinging every single time.
Tending to the customers around reviewing the footage took the better part of the day. Mags came and went, taking her appointments and then returning to peruse the apartment and house listings to pass the time in between. It was a peaceful day, if a little wistful, since she was looking at pictures and video of a place to which she couldn’t return. She sighed and focused on spending the evening with Nico at his place for a change, and continued sifting through the evidence.
The camera in the kitchen had yielded nothing, so she switched to the camera she’d set up at the mouth of the upstairs hallway. Nahia figured this would be the most promising. She listened to them all talking, partly watching, partly remembering the giddy excitement tinged with dread. The heavy feeling in her chest that had her stopping halfway down was accompanied on the camera by a heavy mist around her, reminding her that it was a good choice to go with the infrared down the windowless corridor. She paused and zoomed, trying to discern anything she could about the mist, but in the end just let the recording play while she watched.
“Holy shit!” The girls had both jumped back from their respective diversions, looking at each other startled. Nahia had a hand over her mouth as she looked to Mags who had a hand at her throat and was pointing to her magazine.
“You first.” Nahia gestured to her friend, who looked like she’d seen two ghosts manning the drive thru entrance to the mouth of Hell.
Her fingers tangling in her necklaces, seeking out the medicine pouch she kept close to her chest, she shook her head. “Oh no, honey, I insist. You go first.”
Watching her friend’s reactions out of the corner of her eye, Nahia cued up the spot on the video and hit play. They both watched as the mist that had been around her coalesced into a shape, a human shape, right before they vanished behind the door of the bedroom. Then they watched the shape dematerialize through the door. It was plain as day, and damn impressive. Easily the best footage she’d ever obtained.
Mags shook her head, her eyes never leaving the laptop screen. “I… don’t even know what to do with that. It’s impressive, and scary. Really, really scary.”
“I know,” she said as she nodded. “I haven’t even gotten to the audio yet. God, Magdalena, I really don’t want to give up on that place.” As much as she understood Nico’s position on this, the siren call was only getting more difficult to ignore, especially in the face of evidence like this.
Mags hooked her hands in her back pockets and rocked back on her heels as she turned to her with a pained expression. “About that…” she stepped lightly over to the magazine she’d been flipping through and held up the centerfold. “I… don’t know if that’s going to be an option.”
The concurrent surges of joy and terror that surged through her were dizzying as she looked at what appeared to be an artist’s rendering of the house and the plan to turn it into an event space for weddings and parties. The information and implications were no good, no good at all. “Oh dear.”
As much as Nico and Nigel liked to tease and torment each other, when it came to this aspect of their jobs, they were perfectly in sync. Negotiating with mental/emotional subjects was equal parts art, science, and skill, and it made the situation infinitely easier when he had a partner who could anticipate, and vice versa.
Instead of taking Nahia back to his place and cooking for her, as he’d planned, he became embroiled in a hostage situation involving a cop, his ex, and his current girlfriend. He was sure there was a movie title in there somewhere, but he lacked the extra brain cells to devote to figuring it out. He and Nigel had interviewed the major players, including Sean, a narcotics cop who had been a classmate of his at the academy, the hostage taker’s father, who owned the building and the business and struck him as an overfed, overprivileged ass, and a few of the older employees who’d known the HT for most of her life.
Once they’d initiated contact with the woman with the gun, Nico did what he always did, attempted to build a rapport to keep the situation calm while
they worked on a way to free the hostage. It didn’t take long for them; since she was the only woman in the state of Indiana he’d met who’d heard of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that connected Staten Island to Brooklyn. They knew some of the same people, even, and he felt he was making progress.
Sean looked like he’d spent the day in an intimate embrace with a meat grinder, but that wasn’t unexpected. The love of his life was trapped in a warehouse with an armed and unstable woman who blamed her for her love life’s disintegration. He’d be a mess, too, honestly.
And the wall of ice between him and his former father-in-law was impressive. Neither man would even look at the other as the negotiations dragged on. At least they adhered to his rule of silence, though it looked like it was a challenge for Sean. Every few minutes he wrote a message on the notepads they’d been provided and slid it across the table. While he completely related to the urgency and the desire for a speedy resolution, it just wasn’t the kind of thing that could be rushed without taking unacceptable risks to the safety of the hostage.
He and Nigel sensed the impending breakdown of communication before it actually arrived, furiously trading notes of planning and anticipation as he spoke to the HT. She had completely depersonalized her hostage, refusing to use her name or acknowledge that poor woman had any humanity at all, and HT’s sole demand was completely unreasonable. He wouldn’t send Sean in there any sooner than he’d send his mother in, and she was in New York.
When he passed the note to Nigel for him to run it to the SWAT supervisor, he felt like he was admitting defeat. The HT refused to see reason, and the longer they talked, the more he realized she intended to harm the hostage and the talking was merely a formality. Sean’s look of fearful helplessness ate at him, but there was nothing more he could do for his friend but be there to support him during the outcome.
SWAT blew the doors open, taking the HT down as she fired on the hostage, wounding her. Sean bolted from the communication trailer as soon as they heard the flashbangs go off, and Nico had watched him cradle his lover, this little slip of a woman with a riot of jet black curls not unlike his younger sister Jules, on the floor of the loading dock. When she reached up for him, the tight ball of stress in his chest released considerably.
God, the after-action report for this one was going to suck. A lot. And he still had to get back to the office to start on it, so there was no way he’d be able to make dinner with Nahia tonight. He reached into his pocket to turn his phone back on to call her, only to be greeted with a barrage of chirping of texts and voicemails, all from varying members of the Ianucci clan. That couldn’t be good at all.
Nahia looked at her decorative silver watch for the third time in as many minutes before taking it off and putting it in her pocket. She looked around the store, grabbing a feather duster to tackle the glass encased displays. They didn’t really need it, but she needed the distraction from the realization that Nico wasn’t coming.
She didn’t know why, and she tried not to be hurt, and she’d mostly succeeded, but still, a tiny part of her felt a twinge of disappointment. Neither he, nor her fallback position Nigel, was answering their phones, so she figured they caught a case and she would see them when they were done. Well, one of them in particular, at least she hoped so.
There was much to discuss, over whatever he planned to make for dinner. She’d even planned to keep her clothes on for most of it! Snorting at her train of thought, and the puzzling need to lie to herself, she continued dusting until each cabinet was clean. The phone still hadn’t rung, and she wasn’t waiting around.
On her way home, she stopped by the Elbow Room and picked up a flat ironed steak sandwich with extra horseradish and onion rings to go. At least if she was alone, she didn’t have to worry about having scary breath.
Nahia had more than enough scary things in her life to deal with right now, anyway. In addition to the amazing video they’d captured, her recorder and Nigel’s both managed to document the experience in the room. There were things she hadn’t heard at the time, or maybe had just been too freaked out to process. Things McManus said, phrases that made no sense in context. She wanted Nico’s take on them, as well as to discuss the potential final return trip to the house.
As much as she didn’t want to cause friction with him by going back to the house, it was too dangerous to let random people wander unaware into the house. Nothing riled a ghost up like messing with their environment, and refurbishing a house definitely qualified.
She dropped her take out on the coffee table and toed off her shoes, flopping onto the couch with a huff. Half a sandwich in one hand, remote in the other, Nahia flipped through the channels on her TV, finally settling on the original ‘Jaws’, because watching a big sentient fish attack hapless beachgoers never failed to make her smile. Her lips twitched at the idea, wondering what Nico and his psychology background would say about that.
Realizing horseradish without a drink was a bad idea, she went to the kitchen for a glass of honey whiskey with a splash of lemonade for color over ice. Nothing like a getting a good brood on alone, in her apartment, on a Monday. Not so much that Tuesday would be an issue, but enough to make Monday suck a little less.
She was on her way to dump her stuff in the trash when a noise at the door stopped her. It was almost a knock, followed by a heavy sliding sound. Her gaze fell to the knife block on the counter before deciding she’d look first and fillet later. One look through the peephole had her throwing back the locks and flinging open the door.
It was Nico on her doorstep, face haggard, suit disheveled, jacket crumpled in his hand, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. He had one arm braced against the door jamb, like standing up straight was no longer possible. He looked in her eyes, took a deep, quivering breath, and said, “Nahia, she’s gone,” right before collapsing into her arms.
He’d been too late. The hostage situation had run well into the evening and the phone calls and texts had started around 5:00. Her concussion was actually more severe than they’d realized initially, and eventually, she’d succumbed to complications from a clot. Nico tried to find solace in knowing she hadn’t suffered, but it was cold comfort for a man who couldn’t come when she’d needed him most.
After the first voicemail he’d gone straight to the hospital, hearing the news in the chapel from Peter, who’d been surprisingly calm for a man who’d just lost his mother. Nico wasn’t nearly so self-possessed, collapsing into a pew in mute despair. Every kindness she’d done him, every meal prepared, every piece of advice she’d given him ran through his mind all at once like the loudest opera ever, with the requisite all-death ending.
The noise only got louder as he called his mom and then his Nonna. Inconsolable would have been the polite word, completely undone was more accurate. Wailing, gnashing of teeth, and flight plans. They would be here tomorrow. It was too much at once.
He’d had to leave, to get away from the antiseptic smell and the carefully apologetic doctors. As sadness and rage warred within him, he knew he couldn’t go back to work, couldn’t even process trying to write a report today, but neither could he go home. The thought of being alone right now, there was not enough liquor on the planet to accommodate such a fate. At wit’s end, he could think of nowhere else to go.
Nahia took him into her arms without question, her strength and compassion a much needed balm to his completely disarrayed emotions. She said nothing as she led him to her couch and sat him down, lowering the volume and pulling him close to hold him with his head on her shoulder and her arms around him. It took a little doing, but she arranged them on the couch with her head on the pillow at one end and him sprawled out on top of her with his head under her chin, her arms solid and consoling as she held him, a buoy for him to cling to in a turbulent sea. The end of Jaws on the TV made him smile weakly, Mrs. I’s favorite movie, and they lay on the couch in murmuring quiet occasionally punctuated by a John William’s score.
“You’re surprisingly comfy.” He smiled
against the soft skin of her chest as the movie ended. She smelled like honey and lemons, and her fingernails running over his scalp and down between his shoulder blades seemed to draw the stress out of him one stroke at a time, leaving peace in their wake.
Her chest shook with silent laughter and she leaned up to kiss the top of his head like he’d done so many times to her. “What are friends for?” She plucked her chunky glass tumbler from the table and took a sip above him before pressing the glass into his hands. “I think you might need this more than I do.”
“Thanks.” He leaned up slightly, taking a sip and immediately regretting it. “I had no idea you liked antifreeze,” he rasped, his throat suddenly raw from the potent potable.
Nahia blinked slowly at him and took her glass back, throwing the rest back in one long swallow before leaning over to put it back on the table. “What? I was at home, wasn’t driving. Figured I could drink what I want.”
He sat up, only to lean on his knees and hold his head in his hands. Though neither her words nor tone implied any kind of upset, he felt like he should apologize. “I didn’t call.”
She sighed deeply and dropped her head back onto the couch. “I know.”
When she didn’t say anything else, he added, “I had a situation.” He didn’t like talking about being a negotiator, because it gave people all kinds of misconceptions about him. It wasn’t something he hid, exactly, just didn’t discuss.
Nahia raised her head, her expression curious, but otherwise impassive. “I didn’t ask.”
Dead and Disorderly (Behind the Blue Line Series Book 2) Page 12