by L. A. Witt
I tried to push the inevitable thoughts out of my mind, but the longer I stood out here, the less I could avoid them.
What if this happens to Darren?
I wiped a bruised hand over my unshaven face. Fuck. It was a possibility. He’d said he was going to get tested for the gene, but there hadn’t been time. Ironically, we’d been too tied up with a serial killer to find out if another killer was waiting in the wings to take him down.
I wasn’t a religious man, but I prayed like hell that when he got the test, it would come back negative.
It occurred to me that Darren’s recent memory loss had been better. Under this much stress, a certain amount of forgetfulness was to be expected, but he’d unnerved me with alarming gaps in his memory. Now that I thought about it, though, those gaps had been less frequent and less worrisome in the last couple of days, despite the stress coming down on him even harder. He’d also been relying less heavily on the Percocet.
Shit. Was it a side effect? They’d had him on some muscle relaxers too, and he’d stopped taking those altogether . . . what, a week ago? And I was pretty sure those did have “short-term memory issues” as a side effect. Combined with the Percocet and the stress, no wonder Darren’s mind had been fragmented. I still wanted him to get tested, but I grabbed on to that glimmer of hope and refused to let it go.
Well over an hour after we’d arrived, the facility’s door opened.
One look at Darren, and my heart sank.
His face was slack, eyes distant and haunted. His gait was nearly a shuffle, not the sure stride I was used to. He almost walked right past me.
“Darren?”
He jumped at the sound of his name, and turned to me as I stood. I couldn’t tell if he was on the brink of collapsing or crying. Maybe both.
I put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he seemed almost brittle enough to snap under my touch. There was no point in asking how it went. I didn’t need the details to know it had been worse than he’d anticipated. And asking if he was all right would be stupid.
The best I could do was, “You need a minute before we go?”
Slowly, as if he were completely shell-shocked, he nodded. I led him over to the bench where I’d been sitting, and guided him down.
He sat the same way he had on my bed while talking to his stepdad earlier. Knees apart, elbows pressed into his thighs, head bowed. I kept my hand between his shoulders, not sure what to say, or if I should say anything at all.
It was Darren who finally spoke. Sitting up slowly, looking out at something in the distance, he whispered, “He didn’t know who I was.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “He . . .” The cracks weren’t just showing now, they were growing, spider-webbing like a rock chip in a windshield. He clenched his jaw and tightened his lips, but it was the tears in his eyes that really gave him away. “He didn’t . . .”
“Come here,” I said, and wrapped my arms around him.
And, just like that, he shattered.
I held him against my chest and stroked his hair, trying to keep my own composure from faltering. Watching him break down like this was horrible, but I couldn’t let it show. He didn’t need that right now.
As he slowly started to collect himself, he pulled away and rubbed a hand over his face. “God, I am so sorry. This—”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I . . .” He pushed out a breath. Then he turned to me, eyes wide and wet, forehead creased. “You know this could be you someday, right?”
My throat constricted.
He brushed a tear from his cheek with a shaky hand. “If you don’t want to sign up for this, I’ll understand. I’m—”
“Darren, don’t.” I kept my voice firm, but tried not to sound like an ass. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s easy to say now.” He laughed bitterly and stared at the ground at our feet. “Melissa said the same thing. And she’s—”
“She’s not me.”
Darren didn’t seem convinced. And, in his shoes, maybe I wouldn’t have been either. He knew exactly what it meant to watch someone slowly dying of such a horrific disease. He knew exactly how hard it was to keep coming back, and he’d seen how quickly “in sickness and in health” could evaporate when the rubber met the road.
I took a breath and put a hand over his on his leg. “Remember back in the beginning when the chief put us together? I fought him tooth and nail. Said I didn’t need a partner, and I sure as shit didn’t want one. And now . . . I can’t even imagine working without you anymore. I can’t imagine living without you.”
Darren stared at me, disbelief etched all over his wet face.
“I know what I’m talking about because I almost lost you once already.” I squeezed his hand. “Whatever happens, I’m not going anywhere.”
He swallowed. “But what if I forget who you are?”
“Darren . . .” I brought his hand up to my lips. “Even if you do, I won’t forget who you are.”
Dropping his gaze, he wiped his eyes. “That’s easy to say now.”
“Darren.” I tipped up his chin. “I’m not going to lie—it’s hell watching you go through this, and it’s worse knowing it could be me someday. But the way you keep going back in there and seeing him even though it’s killing you . . . you’d better believe I’d do the same thing for you. Without thinking twice.”
He looked at me this time, eyelashes wet and eyes red. “But I don’t want you to feel like this. I sure as shit don’t want to be the reason you do.”
“Nobody wants to feel like that, but if that disease happens to you, don’t doubt for a second I’ll be there.”
He searched my eyes. “But why? I’m Asher’s family. I—”
“Because I love you.”
Darren’s lips parted, and he blinked. “You . . . really?”
“Of course.” I touched his face, his cheek damp and hot under my palm. “It wasn’t obvious?”
“I . . .” He laughed softly, and wasn’t that a relief to hear? “I guess I didn’t . . .”
“Darren.” I drew him in and kissed him softly. “You came with me to fuck up the asshole who’s threatening my ex and my daughter. If I didn’t love you before last night, I sure as shit do now.”
This time, he really laughed, and leaned against me. “Only you could find something romantic to take away from beating the shit out of a loan shark together.”
“Hey, I mean it.” I smoothed his hair. “You put yourself in danger and your badge on the line to help me protect my family. What should I take away from that?”
He lifted his head, and I was more than a little relieved that some of his usual mischievous twinkle had returned. “That you’ve been a terrible influence and brought me over to the Dark Side?”
I laughed. “Well, someone had to do it.”
“Uh-huh.” He sat up, cradled the back of my neck, and kissed me softly, and when our eyes met again, his expression had turned serious. “Thank you, by the way. I don’t know how I’d have made it this far through any of this without you.”
I just smiled and kissed him again. I didn’t care that he hadn’t said it back. Darren was in a state of emotional turmoil I didn’t even want to imagine, and I’d have been a dick to get pissed if he couldn’t definitively say he loved me too.
That wasn’t why I’d said it anyway. I’d just wanted—needed—him to know.
We stayed on the bench for a few minutes, letting him decompress. Before long, though, he started getting twitchy.
“Okay.” He nodded toward the building. “I really need to get away from this place.”
I guided him to his feet. “Why don’t you take the day off, and I’ll—”
“No.” Darren wiped his eyes and put on a stoic face. “I need to keep working. Otherwise I’ll just sit at home and drive myself insane.”
I watched him for a moment, wondering how hard to push. But I knew him. And, hell, in his shoes, I’d be throwing myself into my work too.
; So I nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
In the car, as I headed for the freeway, he asked, “Should we stop and get something to eat first?”
“You feel like eating?”
He released a long breath. “I do, actually.”
“Okay. Just tell me where to stop. We can—” My chirping phone interrupted me. I took it from my pocket and handed it to Darren. “Could you get that for me? It’s Paula.”
“Sure.” He put it to his ear. “Hey, Paula, what’s—”
The abruptness of his pause made my spine stiffen. The frantic, rapid-fire speech on the other end turned my blood to ice. Paula didn’t panic. Ever. She got pissed, but she didn’t freak out.
“Wait, wait,” Darren said. “Say that again?”
Whatever she’d said, she repeated it, slower and more calmly.
And Darren’s icy words almost sent me careening off the shoulder:
“What the fuck do you mean, they let him out on bail?”
I wasn’t entirely clear how we’d gone from zero to demanding a meeting with a judge at the justice center in the space of fifteen minutes, but there was no getting around the fact that things had gotten fucked up, and we needed to know why. Andreas drove like a madman, blowing through the traffic without a second thought. It wasn’t the sort of behavior that the brass encouraged, but every second was precious now. Brian was our ace in the hole, the only person who could keep Jim from killing again thanks to the necessity of maintaining his cover. Without him . . . well, I didn’t want to think about what could happen next. There were too many variables in play. Thank God Jim was being watched right now.
Paula met us at the courthouse. “Five minutes is the best I could get you. Room one seventeen, down the hall. Judge Frank Ramirez.”
“What has he said to you about why he granted bail?” Andreas asked.
Paula grimaced. “He’s not talking to me anymore, actually. I’ve . . . kind of been held in contempt of court.”
“By nine in the morning?”
“What can I say? I work fast. Sorry.” She was wearing a fresh suit, but looked like she’d been up all night. Not for the first time, I wondered if Paula had any sort of home life at all. “The DA told him very clearly that we needed Brian in jail for now, but he set bail anyway.”
“At what?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
I whistled. That was a lot of money, even if a bondsman only put down ten percent of it. I couldn’t imagine that Brian himself had been able to get it together in time, and he didn’t have any family. “Who paid it?”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“He’s going to tell us,” Andreas said. It sounded a little too Terminator for my comfort, but time was already wasting.
“One seventeen,” Paula repeated. “Come and find me when you’ve got something. I’m going to be in this damn building all day.”
“We will.” We headed down the hall to Judge Ramirez’s office. It was tiny, not too surprising given how many employees were shoehorned into the justice center, and Judge Ramirez took up most of it. He was a bulky man, intimidatingly large in his black robes. He saw us and waved us inside.
“Shut the door behind you.” I did, but before either of us could speak, he took the floor. “I want to get this said up front: I don’t care if you like it or not, but I don’t go putting petty criminals in jail without setting bail. It sets a dangerous precedent in any judge’s record, and I’m up for reelection in the fall.”
“So what, this satisfied your sense of moral outrage or your love of a big paycheck?” Andreas demanded.
Judge Ramirez pointed his index finger at us. “Watch yourself, Detective Ruffner. I already tossed your buddy out on her butt today, and I’m perfectly willing to do the same to you.”
“Who paid the bond?” I interjected. “Can we at least know that much?”
“Certainly.” Judge Ramirez folded his hands over his ample stomach. “If you can present the relevant evidence for your query and get an attorney to subpoena the bondsman.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done.” Andreas’s anger was barely contained, his voice deeper than it should have been as he fought to keep from yelling. I’d heard it enough times to know that tone by now. “Brian McIntosh needed to be held for his own protection. Didn’t the DA make that clear to you?”
Judge Ramirez raised one eyebrow. “Mr. Rose gave me nothing but hints and insinuations, no hard evidence to suggest that Mr. McIntosh was anything other than an unwitting pawn in a police investigation that you seem to be too high and mighty to divulge any information about. Given your history of noncooperation, it seemed clear that—”
“‘Non-cooperation’? Is that what you call it when someone else takes the time to clean the slate here at the justice center and put away the dirty judges and lawyers and cops that you were too, what, absorbed in your fucking lunch to notice operating all around you?”
Judge Ramirez’s face twisted with anger, disgust—it didn’t matter. It wasn’t an expression that boded well for us. “You have ten seconds to remove yourself from my sight before I hold you in contempt.”
“We’re leaving.” I grabbed Andreas’s arm and tugged him toward the door. He came without too much pressure; he knew as well as I did that anything Ramirez did to us now would only slow us down, when what we needed more than anything was speed. “We’ll be sure to let you know about the next body that crops up, Your Honor.”
As soon as we were safely in the hall, I checked to see if Andreas was ready to spit nails. To my surprise, he looked fairly calm. “Politics,” he said when he noticed my surprise. “He gave Brian bail because he wants to seem reasonable for the upcoming election. He’s a fucking idiot, but I get why.”
“Do you think Jim bailed him out?”
“Probably. He might have used a surrogate, but in the end, the money’s coming from Jim. He needs Brian to be free if he’s going to set him up.”
“But Jim’s got a tail.” I said it like a mantra, the only thing keeping me going right now. “He’s being watched, and he’s smart enough to know it, so he’s not going to try anything yet.”
“‘Yet’ being the operative word.” Andreas sighed and looked around the lobby. “We need surveillance. Maybe we can figure out where Brian’s headed or who he’s with.”
We found Paula again before we left, and she passed on the rest of what she knew: no, Brian wasn’t answering his cell, and he hadn’t reported to work. There was no one answering the phone at home either, but if I remembered correctly from Lu’s schedule, Monday morning was when she went out to breakfast with a few members of her bridge club. She probably wasn’t even home. Monday afternoon she had bingo, and I’d promised Brian I’d take her there. It would be a good opportunity to ask her if she’d bailed him out earlier, and if so, who she’d gotten the money from.
My head ached, my eyes were itchy, and my nose was probably red. Paula was giving me sidelong glances even as she talked to Andreas, and I knew what she was thinking: I looked like I’d just come down off a crying jag. “I’ll be right back,” I told them, and headed for the nearest bathroom.
What a fucking start to the day. Thank God we’d taken care of Lisa’s issue yesterday, because at this rate I was going to be lucky if I held it together until bingo. Asher had never not recognized me before, never, even when he was raging and furious at the world or so depressed he talked about killing himself. This morning he’d been in a raging mood, only when Vic went to calm him down, Asher had blanked on him. Vic had called me, and I’d been so sure I could help, so damn cocky walking in there like I had all the answers, like I could handle the situation.
He’d looked at me like I was a complete stranger. Shouted at me, flung one of his shoes at my head. Vic had been as surprised as me. In the end, it had taken Mom’s arrival to jog Asher’s memory, and by then I’d been a wreck. Andreas had already been there for me while I fell apart once today. I needed to keep it together
now, and not give in to my urge to punch the mirror until it shattered.
I wet a paper towel and wiped my face down, straightened my tie and cuffs, and buttoned my suit jacket. I might be a basket case, but at least I could look professional while doing it.
Andreas walked in a few seconds later. I caught his gaze in the reflection and held it. He looked . . . well, pissed off, for sure. But he had it under control. I could at least aspire that high. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I was determined to be so, and determination counted for a hell of a lot when you were running on empty. I could cry for Asher when this case was over and Jim was behind bars.
Or dead. Dead would be nice, but I’d accept behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.
“Good.” He squeezed my shoulder, then nodded toward the door. “C’mon, we’ve got surveillance footage to hunt down.”
“Mm, foot patrol. Fun.”
“It could be worse.” He gestured toward Paula, who was sitting on a hard wooden bench outside one of the courtrooms, alternating between staring at her phone and gutting down a cup of coffee that was very obviously not her precious Starbucks. “We could be stuck here all day.”
“Point taken.”
It took forever to find a glimpse of Brian leaving the courthouse, and what we did find wasn’t very prepossessing. He passed a convenience store one block east on foot, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, expression troubled as he shambled along. At least we knew Lu hadn’t come to get him herself, not that a woman with glasses as thick as hers should ever be driving a car, but she could have used a service to take her to meet him. She hadn’t.
That was it. No more angles, no more appearances, nothing, not for a block in any direction. By the time we stopped for lunch, I had a headache the size of a car and Andreas looked like he wanted to drag Judge Ramirez out of his office and bitch-slap him in front of God and country. We stopped at a diner far enough away from the justice center that we probably wouldn’t be fucked with—the glares we’d gotten in the lobby had been monumental, people going out of their way to either avoid us or to make the sort of eye contact that emphasized I don’t like you. As if we were under any illusions at this point.