Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story

by Ariadne Beckett

  John reached out and stroked Nick’s hand. Who knew, when he’d stood outside the gates of Sing Sing to pick up his ankleted felon, that he’d also be one of the best men he’d ever known?

  “What’s the selfish answer?”

  It took Nick a little longer to get up the courage to answer that one. “I don’t think I’ve ever -- felt this cared about. I’d never have met agent Kasdan or Gary Wills. And none of this would’ve happened -- between us.”

  John caught himself smiling broadly, unbidden. He’d finally figured Nick Aster out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Listening In

  JOHN

  Warden Welch shook his head and looked at John with exactly one eyebrow elevated. “Well, I finally understand how you and Aster get along so well. You share a genetic inability to follow even the most rudimentary of rules,” he said dryly.

  “I want this man out of my prison,” said John's least favorite CO in a voice that was almost a snarl. “He’s a fucking liability and he thinks he owns the place.”

  "You don't own it either," said the other CO, a keenly intelligent looking young man who held himself as though he was the other guard's superior.

  There were two nurses in the office too, both of whom had treated Nick’s reaction to the new antibiotic. One of them stepped forward. “Warden -- Langley was invaluable. He’s cool-headed and practical, and thanks to his being there we were able to treat Aster fast, without scaring or hurting him. Given my ....issues, and Aster’s, Langley was pretty essential.”

  The other nurse agreed. “He’s a damn good assistant, and he’s not squeamish. Aster -- that’s serious, no-fucking-around brutality he’s recovering from, and it happened in a jail. Because Langley sat and held him, we didn’t have to put him in restraints to protect him from another seizure, and he didn’t have to go through it alone or with someone he was afraid of.”

  John realized he was staring at the two nurses. He hadn’t been terribly nice to them. They actually seemed to care about Nick’s welfare, and were going to bat for him. It was the corrections staff he needed to win over.

  He faced his main detractors. “Guys - I know I don’t belong in your uniform. But you both know what Aster’s been through. He’s a good man who'd go down fighting for any of you. He’s saved my life, my agent’s lives, and helped us recover kidnapped civilians. I don’t know the rules of this place and I don’t pretend to. But an FBI asset who’s also my partner and best friend was just tortured, and I don’t care about a lot right now besides seeing him get better.”

  The lead officer’s intelligent face softened for the first time. “Are you here because you think we’re gonna hurt him?”

  John shook his head, and pointed at the monitor on Welch's desk, which was frozen on a frame from the CCTV system. It showed him beside the bed, holding an acutely miserable Nick. “That’s why I’m here. My partner’s in the hospital.”

  “Okay,” said Welch. “I was gonna throw you out on your ass. But if my medical staff wants you around, and you can make peace with my COs, you can stay.”

  John made eye contact with the lead CO. “I’m out of place, I know. I’m emotionally involved and that makes me a pain in your ass. But this guy is worth fighting for.”

  The CO shrugged, looked down at the floor, and nodded. “We didn’t know you didn’t have any training. All of a sudden, here was this CO looking like a total dumb-ass, trying to boss us around, breaking all the rules, and then -- bonus round! -- he’s an FBI agent and can have you arrested and thinks you’re out to hurt an abuse victim ....”

  “I’m sorry,” said John. “I should’ve introduced myself, and talked to you guys. That was arrogant of me.”

  The lead stuck out his hand with a genuine look of acceptance on his face. “Truce.” The other CO wasn’t happy about it, but shook John’s hand.

  CHAD STARR

  Assistant Chief Chad Starr glanced around the park, shaking off a tickle of unease. Light was falling rapidly, bringing a chilling breeze to the air. There was nobody watching. He sat near a splashing fountain, just in case someone was aiming some sort of listening device. It’d been years since he’d been forced to do this sort of low-level cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

  Tara Vineil sat down beside him. She was a thirty-eight-year-old NYPD Captain who’d spent her career at Riker’s Island, and knew how to take the gloves off when fighting criminals. It was another world, one that do-gooding civilians didn’t understand and never would. You didn’t conquer an outlaw by bringing a rule book to the table and asking politely.

  “If I needed to arrange for a Sing Sing inmate to stop breathing, how would I do it?” asked Starr.

  She didn’t beat around the bush either. “You’ve got a Aster problem.”

  “Well, who else?” grumbled Starr. “The little shit’s manipulating the media. I know it. He got LeBlanc fired, and he’s gonna come after all of us.”

  Vineil looked dubious. “It was that damn blogger.”

  “He’s behind it,” insisted Starr. “And if we don’t do something, he’ll take us all down. They’re hiding him in Sing Sing, and I need to know how to eliminate him.”

  Vineil shrugged. Whatever. “If he were in Riker’s, it’d be easy. Forget him in a cell and don’t give him water, give him medication that isn’t, tape a plastic bag over his head -- plenty of things don’t leave marks.”

  “It’d still show in an autopsy,” said Starr.

  “We have our own Medical Examiner, one with a rich wife and fidelity issues. He’ll put whatever we want on the death certs,” said Vineil.

  Starr scanned the surrounding lawns, trees, bushes, and nearby cars again. Clear. “I’m already in hot water for issuing that warrant. No way I’m getting him into Riker’s, the lawyers are going for an injunction against the NYPD even arresting or holding him for any reason.”

  “Well ....” Vineil frowned. “I’ll get in touch with some contacts of mine. I don’t know anyone within Sing Sing myself, but I’m sure I can find someone who does.”

  Starr stood. “Thanks. Could be all our careers on the line here. Fucking liberal brass ass-kissers are bending over with their pants down for the feds.”

  Tara Vineil looked at him with practiced coldness. “Killing a prison inmate’s the easiest thing in the world to get away with.”

  JOHN

  Mari greeted him at the door of their hotel room with a look of desperate anxiety that took far too little time to degenerate into uncontrollable giggling.

  “What?” asked John, wishing he didn’t sound so confused and plaintive. He’d spent a very long, emotionally wrenching day in a concrete box, and was frankly longing for sympathetic noises and maybe an offer to draw him a bubble bath.

  It looked like Mari had been planning something of that sort, too. What she was wearing was small, and black, and thin, with lace and far too many straps.

  Mari pointed at him, tried to speak, and snorted with laughter instead. “Is that supposed to be the ‘sexy prison guard’ Halloween costume? You look like a mall security guard who barely escaped the polyester factory with his life.”

  “I think they’re on a budget,” he said defensively.

  Mari tried to tamp down her mirth, but not quite hard enough for John’s taste. “You look -- you look hilarious. I’m sorry, hon. The whole dignified FBI shoulder-holster look is sexy as hell on you. This ....not so much.”

  John snatched at the one thread of hope in sight. “The shoulder holster’s sexy?”

  “Can you count the number of times I’ve jumped you wearing it?”

  John’s cheeks warmed up a bit. “It’d take a long time. But I wouldn’t complain about trying to remember ....”

  She tugged him sideways. “Are you seriously carrying pepper spray and a nightstick?”

  “It’s an expandable baton.” John didn’t know how that sounded any more dignified, but ....

  “So it is a Halloween costume. You’re going dressed as the specter of Nick
’s nightmares.”

  “I’m mean that way.”

  Mari didn’t laugh, and she sat heavily on the bed. “How is he?”

  “Had a brutal reaction to an antibiotic they switched him to to save money. He’s -- talkative, and thoughtful, and we had some deep conversations. I really pissed him off though, by asking him to get off the criminal career path. He thought I was trying to coerce him while he was vulnerable. Sometimes I just don’t get that guy.”

  Drunken laughter broke out in the room next door, and the bed slammed against the wall to a soundtrack of frenetic giggling. “That tickles!” protested a shrill voice.

  Mari didn’t smile. “Talk, sweetie,” said John, sitting in a tan barely-stuffed vinyl chair facing the bed.

  “I was there the night you brought Nick back after his escape attempt, and it ....really, truly rattled me.”

  “I -- noticed,” said John. “I’m still not sure entirely why.”

  “I got to see the dark side of John and Nick,” said Mari. “I went in when he was sitting on the bed wet, and he would barely talk. But what I got out of him was scared to his core, so scared he wouldn’t move from the spot you put him. He was afraid of being arrested by the NYPD and tortured to death, and of you taking him back to Sing Sing on escape charges, and being put in solitary confinement, and he was afraid because you were mad at him.”

  More giggling from next door was followed by a guttural groan, and John bit the inside of his lip, trying not to laugh. Mari looked so serious.

  She drew in a deep breath. “I asked if he was afraid you would hurt him physically, and -- if he’d said yes, I would’ve packed my bags and gone out of town on the spot. He almost teared up when he said no, and he looked at the door you were standing at with so much love that --” Mari had to take a moment to stuff her emotion into the background where she wanted it.

  She was aided by a plaintive complaint from the other side of the wall. “It won’t come off.”

  “Neither will these,” replied a sultry female voice. Mari’s turn to bite the inside of her lip.

  “The thing is -- you want him to give up this huge part of who he is and how he survives. You’re saying trust me, obey me, sacrifice this. But I think ....you’re going to have to sacrifice something just as hard if you want him to take that step.”

  “What?” John’s voice was drowned out by a flurry of rhythmic creaking five feet away. “What?” he repeated more loudly.

  “I know Nick is hard to control --”

  “OH, GOD! There! There!”

  “-- and that the worst thing for him would be letting him run wild and go back to prison. But -- I think you have to drop the bloodhound FBI agent part of you that’s almost dying to chase him again and catch him at some crime. You have to stop holding ‘I’ll throw you back in prison without remorse’ over his head.”

  “Sweetie -- I agree with what you’re saying, but he knows the last thing I want to see is him back in prison,” said John over the thunking of the bedframe against the neighboring wall.

  “But you still hold it over his head like a whip. Screw up and I’ll lock you in a cage and you’ll lose the closest thing to a family you’ve seen in your adult life.”

  “I do not,” protested John. “I’m an FBI agent. I’m his handler. Of course that’s a very real part of what could happen here. But I’ve spent years teaching him not to flinch when I threaten him with prison and arrest, trying to get him to understand there’s no way I’m using that power with malice or anything but deep regret.”

  A lustful moan distracted them for a second. “You’re so -- fucking -- hot.”

  Slam.

  Creak.

  Creak.

  Slam.

  CRACK! Something broke, and the giggling started again.

  “Oh, my God! We broke the bed.”

  This time, John and Mari shared a small smile. It was impossible not to. John shifted to hide the fact that listening to their neighbors and looking at Mari’s skimpy black outfit was getting him a little aroused.

  “You would’ve taken him to prison that night, except for a photo and a stuffed cat. It’s absolutely a valid fear and something you would do very easily. I’m saying you have to give up that predatory FBI criminal-hunting, disciplinarian side of you when it comes to Nick. You have to not be an FBI agent, and you have to give that part of you up if you want Nick to have the trust and the faith in you to give up just as big a part of who he is.”

  The creaking and banging next door built to a climax and faded off.

  “Maybe,” admitted John. “I’ve come to see he’s still a little bit afraid of me, and that feels just awful.” John realized he was no longer the least bit turned on.

  “Hon -- he’s a little bit afraid of you because you want him to be. You think you have to be able to send him cowering into a corner with his tail between his legs in order to have an edge over him, and I’m saying you’re going to be fighting that unbreakable spirit of his as long as you do.”

  “I can’t find the key,” came a distressed voice from next door.

  Laughter.

  John remembered Nick’s uninhibited, drugged plea in the hospital not to abandon him if he was put in a cage. It was part of the reason he was refusing to be separated from Nick at Sing Sing, and one reason he’d offered no resistance to Mari’s coming to Ossining simply to be nearby.

  He remembered watching the tape of Nick going through intake at Sing Sing, and wanting to yell at the men grabbing the handcuffs and pushing him around and pinning him on the floor.

  “Just ask!” he’d wanted to scream. “He’ll do anything you want if you just goddamn ask.”

  “C’mon, stop screwing around. These things hurt,” said a plaintive male voice next door.

  “I can’t find the key!” She sounded frantic now. “What do we do?”

  “Hon --" Mari raised her voice to be heard clearly. "You’ll hug him and support him and be this wonderful friend at his side, then you’ll leave him terrified, freezing, in pain on that bed while you go play with his life and his liberty without involving him. How is he supposed to be anything but sad and scared? You’re yelling at him and jerking him around and trying to handcuff him and you’re the one person that can protect him.”

  John closed his eyes and tried to concentrate through the frantic muffled conversation next door about how to break handcuffs and whether the police should be called.

  “You’re right,” he said finally.

  He opened his eyes, and Mari was looking at him in clear relief. And love. “I care, sweetie. I swear to God. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt that man.”

  Mari gulped, blinked rapidly, then stood and kissed him.

  The woman was crying next door. “We can’t call the cops. My dad’s on the force.”

  John and Mari’s eyes met, and they started giggling. “Go take mercy on those poor idiots,” said Mari.

  John gave her a sly grin. “Only if you come with me. I’m not facing a potentially naked neighbor without you.”

  Mari flushed, and grinned. “Come on.”

  John knocked on the door. Dead silence. “I’m an FBI agent. I have a handcuff key.”

  Footsteps approached the door with caution, then it was flung open. She wasn’t quite naked, although her sexy policewoman costume came close. She stared at his polyester prison guard outfit, glanced at Mari’s black strappy number, and took a step back. “I thought you said you were an FBI agent.”

  “I am,” said John, handing her the key.

  Mari winked broadly, and the woman’s eyes lit up. “Oh. I see. Good prison guard costume.”

  Mari and John looked at each other, trying desperately to choke back laughter.

  When they made it back to their room, Mari stuck her tongue out at him, which John took as an invitation to a kiss. She pulled the top button of his polyester uniform open.

  “I think you’d look much better in nothing than this.”

  “Your w
ish is my command,” said John, flashing her a gleeful grin. In their rush to the undersized hotel bathroom shower, shedding clothing as they went, John’s phone was left forgotten on the floor.

  DAN FISHER

  Failing to reach John, Fisher turned his sedan toward the highway and headed for Sing Sing in the thickening darkness. How many months of his life, he wondered, had he spent in prisons, driving to prisons, flying to prisons?

  He’d joined the FBI with idealistic little sparkles of justice and American freedom and saving lives in his eyes. Instead, it seemed he ended up spending most of his time in places where people were confined against their will.