Bend, Don't Break

by Skye Callahan

  “It’s fine.” She tried to brush me off, but I’d be stupid to let her. We were both good at downplaying what was wrong. Trying to shove it to the side and ignore it rather than deal with it—rather than let someone help us deal with it. I pulled the chair next to me closer and motioned her toward it. Then, I turned mine sideways so that she could sit across the chair and lean back against me.

  “Close your eyes,” I said. Starting with her temples, I pressed small circles in her skin.

  “Can’t believe Trent just walked in today.” Her brow furrowed again as she spoke, practically undoing my work.

  “If it makes you feel better, I can tell you plenty of embarrassing stories about him.”

  “No thanks,” she made a quiet noise in her throat. “Rather not know since I’d probably never be able to look at him again.”

  Right on cue, Trent opened the door and Rose giggled softly, sitting up in her seat again and leaning her elbows on the table.

  “What did you tell her?” He asked, eyeing us both cautiously before letting the other officers in the room.

  “Nothing of interest, yet. What’d you find in the apartment?”

  “There were no radio frequencies, so I don’t think anyone heard the conversation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if news hasn’t spread yet. We did find a list of meeting times, though. The next one is tomorrow night, same bar.”

  “He said something about always knowing what’s going on,” Rose said. “Any way there’s you know—a leak?”

  “I’ve considered it,” Trent mumbled. “Much as I hate to admit it.”

  “It’d explain how they’re so far ahead of us every time,” I agreed. I hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility either—the times of questioning everyone behind me were supposed to be over. “But most of this stuff is big, there have been multiple officers working on it—practically the whole station gets updated.”

  Rose slumped against her upbent arms, and I rubbed her back. There was something else familiar about how she was acting—something more than a tension headache. “You didn’t eat this morning did you?”

  “Not a breakfast fan, it’s too early.”

  Breakfast? It was evening, and I’d been a major reason she hadn’t eaten all afternoon. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  She glanced at Trent, then back at me. “I had other stuff going on.”

  Saving her from further explanation, the door opened and Captain Richards entered. “Wilson and Hudson are checking in the evidence and looking for contact information on anyone involved. We should get started.”

  “Rose needs a snack,” I said. “A can of pop.” Not the healthiest, but it’d keep her going until I got her a proper dinner.

  Richards lifted his eyebrows and stared at me for a moment, but like hell I was going to budge and leave her in there to be questioned alone. I was going to be there for everything she had to say.

  “Pop machine has been empty for days,” he said, finally.

  “Coffee?” Rose suggested. “And yes, I realize it’s probably horrible, but better than nothing.”

  “Corell was just up there putting on a fresh pot,” Captain Richards said. “I think he lives on the stuff, but I’ll see if he’ll bring some down when it’s brewed.” He stepped back into the hallway and waved someone down, sending someone else to relay his message.

  “Now,” Richards sat in the chair across from me. His eyes were narrowed slits, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the delay or requests for food or drink for Rose. Then again, I assumed we all looked somewhat cranky these days. If it wasn’t one thing standing in the way of this investigation, it was another. “What do you have on the guy you just dragged in?”

  Rose shook her head, her movements already slowed by the effects of the headache. “Like I said, he generally kept to himself. Not the social type, but it was him who suggested that particular bar the night we went out. Charlene and I wanted to hit Diggers—it’s far less skivvy. But we figured having a guy with us would keep some of the creepers away.” She gave me a sideways glance and smirked. “It didn’t entirely work.”

  “He seemed fairly paranoid. He always talk like that?” I asked. His rants about the people he was working for stood out in particular. However, given the group’s propensity for staying under the radar and avoiding us it, unfortunately, didn’t seem like a stretched assumption.

  “We did find a stash of marijuana,” Trent said. Someone had sent the image to his phone and he slid it across the table. “It’ll be a while before we can get results from his blood test to see if he was using, but that could explain why he thinks they’re keeping such a close eye on him.”

  “I’ve never seen him use,” Rose sighed and leaned back. “I’d love to help you figure him out—especially since it seems like he set me up in the first place, but I really don’t know that much. Last I heard, he worked for a construction company. He’s not talkative and I never pushed.”

  “Did he ever make you uncomfortable?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She blew out a puff of air. “But not like he was creepy or anything, just awkward. I thought he was really shy, but he seemed better the handful of times I’d seen him when he came out here to visit Charlene over the past couple of years.”

  Detective Windsor knocked on the door and peeked in. “Guy’s lawyer’s here.”

  Then, he held up a foam cup and bag of chips. “Corell said these come here too.”

  Richards was closest to the door so he stood and took the cup and chips, setting them on the table next to Rose.

  I peeked through the blinds. “I assume I’m not invited to the interview.”

  “Go for it,” Captain Richards said, giving me a flat look. “Caution hasn’t served us fantastically in solving this case.”

  I closed the blinds and left Rose with her snack. I passed Corell in the hallway and gave him whispered instructions to keep an eye on the room. If there was a mole somewhere in the station I didn’t fully trust anyone, I only had my gut feeling to rely on.

  I opened the interrogation room door, and let Trent enter first so I could hang back, but Elijah stared in my direction, keeping his eyes low so as not to make eye contact. “Officer Carter, I presume.”

  “Nice to put a face to the person you were shooting at, huh? I guess attempted murder on a cop is a great place to start the conversation.”

  He shrank back, shaking his head violently. “No, like I told Rose, I didn’t know anyone was in the house.”

  “And the living room light magically turned off right before you pulled the trigger?” I didn’t actually mean to sound so sarcastic, but it was all I really had left.

  Trent pulled out a chair and sat down. “Now would be a good time to start explaining.”

  Elijah fidgeted, picking at his fingers, the table, the cuffs around his wrists. He kept his body stiff, and his gaze indirect. “I told Rose.”

  “Did you set her up to get abducted?”

  “No,” he yelled. “That isn’t what was supposed to happen. I—I screwed up. They took my sister—I had to get her back.”

  “So you bargained with them to keep her friend instead?” My voice rumbled in my throat. Anger sprouted like a thorny vine, twisting its way through my body and leaving every part of me burning and raw.

  “They caught me,” he squirmed around, tracing a line on the metal surface of the table and looking more pathetic with every damn excuse. “With one of their girls. Said if I didn’t do what they wanted, they’d make me pay. At first it was simple stuff, but they used it all to get more on me—they found out where my family lived. They found out what neither Charlene nor Rose know.... I’ve got a kid, in Oklahoma. The mom wants nothing to do with me, but I pay my child support.”

  “With dirty money?” Trent asked with a mocking tone.

  “Not at first. They sent me pictures of the baby. They wanted me to recruit some women for them.”

  “Who gave you the orders?” I asked.

 
“Sometimes Drisco, and sometimes a blonde guy, Alan, and sometimes a few of his friends. I haven’t seen them around in a while though. Now it’s just Drisco.”

  Alan, he’d worked security at the Retreat, and had not only been there when Rose was abducted in the first place—he’d also helped Gabe abduct her from my room and sneak her away to rape her with a few of his buddies.

  “And what does Drisco want you to do now?” Trent asked, sounding as impatient as I felt.

  “He told me to bring Rose to the bar. He said nothing bad would happen to her. I wasn’t stupid enough to question him again.”

  I nearly exploded, but instead I shoved my fists in my pockets and let Trent take it.

  “Is that what Alan told you, too?” he asked. “Did he promise you Rose wouldn’t get hurt?”

  Elijah shook his head. “I didn’t set them up. I wasn’t going to do it, so they tracked Charlene and Rose down and took them. What would you do if they threatened your family?”

  I stepped forward, placing my fists on the table. “You threatened Rose. In my world, that’s close enough. Would you like to hear what they did to her?”

  Rose would kill me if she ever found out, but I didn’t intend to ever let her anywhere near him again. “How they beat her and stripped her of everything before raping her?”

  His face paled and his eyes fluttered side to side. “I—”

  Trent sat down across from Elijah. “If you knew who took her, why didn’t you ever tell us?”

  “I wouldn’t have done you any good,” he whispered. “And what difference does it make now? He—” Elijah thrust his hands at me “—was there and you still couldn’t get her out.”

  “No,” Trent said. “But then we’d have a reason to trust you. To help you, but you gave us nothing. You just kept letting them threaten your family and helped them gain footing to become stronger and do it all the more.”

  Elijah sat back, dropping his hands into his lap.

  “Do you know a guy named Kirk or Bentley?” I asked.

  Elijah glanced at his lawyer, and she nodded, urging him on. We had him on enough, the only way we were getting anywhere is if he gave us everyone else. “Bentley, he’s Drisco’s boss.”

  “Is that all you can give us?” Trent asked pressing his palms into the table and leaning forward. “You understand that we’re not just going to open the doors and let you walk out after everything you’ve done?”

  He twisted in his seat, then leaned over the table and whispered, “What if they go after my family?”

  They had him terrified—that I could understand, but it pissed me off that he put everyone in even more danger by keeping his silence and helping the criminals who threatened them. A line had to be drawn. “When all of your buddies are sitting in jail with you, your family will be perfectly fine.”

  “Drisco was my roommate for a while before I moved in with my sister. I thought I had gotten rid of them, but then they came after me again. Said he wanted to make amends, and I was skeptical but I talked to him. He told me he had a deal set up, all he had to do was deliver one more thing and he’d be free—he asked me to help him deliver. I backed out, and the next night they took Rose and Charlene.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “They told me to choose—whoever I didn’t choose would be my reminder to never cross them again.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t have any more questions in me—and I couldn’t listen to any more of his explanations at the moment. Richards shouldn’t have ever let me in the room, because as much as I hated to admit it—I was too close. I didn’t care why he did what he did, his actions hurt Rose and he didn’t do a damn thing to rectify it. For that, I wanted him to pay. I stepped away from the table and opened the door.

  The lawyer made a sound in her throat and followed us out of the room. “Look at him,” she said. “Listen to him. Threats aren’t going to help at this point.”

  I scoffed, “Keeping him locked up where he can’t make any more threats of his own will.”

  “He needs help,” she said.

  “So do we,” I said, throwing up my arms. Then, I spotted Rose in the hallway with Corell and Captain Richards and my stomach sank.

  “We have the date and time of his next meeting,” Trent said. “Maybe we can luck out and Drisco will still show up.”

  But I wasn’t entirely paying attention to him. Outside, Rose was leaned against the wall, Corell’s hand on her arm. Then, the trio, led by Corell came toward the observation room where we were gathered.

  Trent started to speak again, then followed my gaze. “What the hell now?”

  Corell pulled open the door, and as soon as she saw me, Rose broke away.

  “She said she’s not feeling well,” Corell explained. “I really think we should get her to the hospital.”

  Her eyes were heavier than before, every movement was sluggish. She put her hands around my neck, wrapping herself around me in a hug, so she could whisper in my ear. “Someone spiked my drink.”

  How? I kissed her neck to hide my expression.

  Over Rose’s shoulder, Elijah’s lawyer gave us a flat look.

  Too many problems to solve, and too few people to trust. Someone in the damn precinct had drugged my girlfriend.

  “I’ll give you all a few minutes,” the lawyer said. Then she mumbled under her breath, “To get your shit together.”

  There were too many eyes in the room, so I took Rose outside, and back down the hallway to the other room. Even with her tucked against my side, I had to practically carry her and guide each step. She sank into one of the chairs and covered her face with her hands.

  “Who all came in here?” I asked.

  “Just who you saw.” I could barely hear her since she didn’t lift her head, and her already quieted voice was muffled by her hands.

  “Corell and Windsor are presumably the only ones who touched your drink.” Maybe my instinct had been wrong.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think it was Corell. Your captain touched it too.”

  But we’d all been in the room for that. He’d only had his back turned for a few seconds—if that. The realization that I was even considering it was just as unsettling. I knelt in front of her, holding her chin up—she was speaking so quietly that I could barely hear her otherwise.

  “Corell doesn’t fit,” she whispered. “What good would it have done to drug me in the middle of the station and bring me straight to you?”

  “Raise suspicions.”

  She bit her lip. “I know. I can’t be sure, but—” She closed her eyes, and her head lobbed to the side.

  Trent stepped inside the door. “What’s going on? I figured you wanted a minute alone, but Richards is launching the inquisition out here.”

  Why would he be so upset if he only thought she was feeling ill? Unless he knew something more.

  “We need to take you to the hospital,” I whispered, tucking her hair back.

  “It’ll wear off and I’ll be fine. Just like every other time.”

  Trent leaned over the back of her chair. “Are either of you going to answer me?”

  I didn’t—not directly. I knew he’d get the picture soon enough. “We need a blood test, Rose. Evidence.”

  She dropped her head back and it landed against Trent’s arm.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, staring wide-eyed down at her. “How the hell does someone slip her a mickey here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Have you seen Winsor?”

  “Yeah, he’s at his desk,” he looked me in the eye, glare as hard as steel. “He wouldn’t.”

  I returned his gaze with a flat look of my own. “Well, we’re down to about three options; Windsor, Corell, and the Captain. Unless there was someone else in the line of delivery Windsor failed to mention.”

  “Or someone drugged the entire pot of coffee.”

  I knew he meant it sarcastically to begin with, but the growing hardness of his face indicated that he was seriously considering
the proposition. “I’m going to run upstairs.”

  “Well, I need to get her to the hospital.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “What about Elijah?” I asked. I didn’t want to think about the uproar his lawyer was probably going to cause after everything that she saw in the observation room. We weren’t coming off as the most well prepared team—and I was sure she was going to fight for me to be pulled from the case. “The D.A. is going to want to talk to someone, and right now there are only about three people I trust.”

  Rose lifted her head and smirked. “Hey, that’s an improvement.”

  “Come on, Sugar,” I pulled her to her feet, then lifted her into my arms.

  “I’d ask for someone to go with you since you’ve both been threatened, but at this point, I don’t know who the hell to ask.” Trent threw up his arms.

  “Corell didn’t do it,” Rose said again.

  “You stop to consider maybe they’re trying to force your hand? You two together and alone on the way to the hospital. An ambulance might be safer right now.”

  I stared down at her soft face, resting against my shoulder. Backed against a wall, I had to make yet another choice that could mean life or death if Trent was right. The chances of that were too high for comfort. “Do it,” I whispered, keeping her in my arms and taking her seat.

  It wouldn’t take the ambulance more than five minutes to pick her up since the dispatch garage was only a couple of blocks away from us.

  Captain Richards burst through the door. “Are you going to explain what’s going on? The D.A. and Elijah’s lawyer are both waiting.”

  “She’s extremely sick,” I said. “Trent was just going to call an ambulance.”

  Trent nodded and stepped out. I presumed that he was also intent on checking the pot of coffee while he made the call.

  “I’ll assume you’re going with her,” Richards said, neither his voice nor his face revealing much emotion.

  I kept my head lowered unsure of what I’d feel or do if I looked up at him. I couldn’t even control my facial expression. Rational or not, my boss just earned a top spot on my suspect list. Not that everyone in the building didn’t make that list at the moment. “I am.”