The Ex File (Behind the Blue Line Series Book 1)

by Craig, Alexis D.

  * * *

  The quiet was unnerving, the bed uncomfortable, and what in all fuck was up her nose? Ellie reached for the nasal canula with her right hand, only to ignite a symphony of pain from her shoulder to her chest and down her arm. The pain left her breathless, but she knew better than to cough, or breathe too deeply, though why she didn’t really recall.

  Her left hand was bound somehow, and she opened her eyes a little and found Sean, his fingers twined with hers, with his eyes closed and his mouth opened as he slept in the chair next to her. At the end of the bed, in opposite corners of the room were Josh and Dane, both sleeping soundly as well.

  “What… happened?” She tried to poll the whole room, but her throat was on fire and felt like it had gone five rounds with a belt sander. She needed water and an explanation, not necessarily in that order.

  Ellie squeezed Sean’s hand with hers, though she felt weak and still so tired. When he turned his head toward her, his eyes half open, she tried again. “What happened?” Her words felt thick and fuzzy, but she could at least string them together with one breath, which was an improvement.

  Sean remained still for a moment and then blinked and shook his head. “El?” he asked the question softly, almost like he didn’t want to fully commit to it if he were simply dreaming, running a hand through his hair and turning her way. When he met her eyes, her dark, clearly stoned eyes, he practically jumped out of his chair. “El!”

  At his exclamation, the other two occupants of the room stirred. Dane, in a tight navy blue IAFF shirt and khakis, and Josh in his requisite pale blue polo and jeans. They were all talking at once, and Sean was covering her face in kisses, and she found she was way too high on the pain meds to follow any of it coherently.

  The nurse came in, a saucy little redhead in Betty Boop scrubs, checked her vitals, and got her a glass of water, for which Ellie was eternally grateful. She left with a warning to the whole room to keep it down and—to her especially—to not push herself physically.

  Ellie waited until Dane shut the door and sat back down. “So is someone going to tell me what happened? I’m real close to asking for more pain meds, and I have yet to hear a good reason why.” She was gratified to hear that her voice got better with the water, but it was still not up to par.

  She looked to Josh, who looked to Sean, who looked to Dane, who had the sense to cross his arms and say, “I am so not involved.”

  After playing musical dirty looks, Ellie wiggled until she was sitting up more in the bed. “Fine. We’ll start with an easier one.” She looked hard at Josh before returning her attention to Sean. “What happened to your face? Faces, whatever.”

  Another looked passed between Josh and Sean, a kind of mental conversation that had Dane rolling his eyes. It finally ended when Josh shrugged and Sean nodded. Ellie looked at him expectantly.

  Sean’s cheeks flushed as he ran his fingers through his hair then rolled his head around his shoulders. “See… what had happened was—”

  “Oh, it’s like that?” ‘What had happened was…’ was a kind of department-wide code for ‘I did something spectacularly stupid that seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.’ At his hangdog expression, she began to laugh. Laughing was quite possibly the worst idea ever, as each giggle was a new tidal wave of pain. As she calmed herself, the bed dipped behind her as Sean rubbed her back and Josh held her hand.

  Before Dane could make good on his threat to get the nurse, she held up a hand and resituated herself in the bed. Groping on the table next to her, she came up with a box of tissues and dabbed her eyes. “Damn. That was unexpected.”

  “You’re okay now?” Dane was standing with his hand on the doorknob, ready to go at the first sign of distress.

  She smiled at Josh’s boyfriend, grateful to have him in her life now as an extension of Josh. “I’m fine.”

  The big guy nodded and let go of the handle, only to be hit by the door opening. “What the hell, man?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder while looking marginally affronted.

  “Good, you’re awake. I was hoping to get a chance to speak to you.”

  Pia’s father closed the door behind him and crept a little further into the room, seemingly buoyed by the stunned silence of the group.

  Sean recovered himself first and stood up, positioning himself between Arturo and Ellie. “Get the hell out of here. You are not welcome.”

  Chapter 15

  The moment after Sean spoke, the room erupted. Dane was on his feet with Josh beside him, all crowding Arturo out of the room as Ellie’s monitors began beeping frantically and the nurse shoved past them to rush into the room. “Hallway,” she commanded sternly without looking away from Ellie. “All of you.”

  Josh and Dane hustled Art down the corridor to the ICU waiting room with Sean on their heels. It was thankfully empty due to the early hour and the overwhelming police presence downstairs. Sean shut the door and locked it behind him.

  Sean raked his hair out of his face in irritation. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he growled.

  Arturo reached up toward his neck, and smoothed his hand down his shirt when he seemed to remember he’d discarded his tie several hours prior in the comm van. “I just wanted to see—”

  “What? You wanted to see what? Your daughter’s handiwork? Finish the job?” He advanced on the smaller man with each question until he was almost nose to nose with him.

  Arturo blinked, but didn’t retreat, eyes wide and chin up, but quivering. He practically reeked of terror, and Sean wondered if he should check his shoes to make sure he wasn’t standing in a puddle of piss. “I wanted to see if she was okay.” His voice was soft, tremulous.

  Sean’s hands were clenched at his sides at just the sight of this man. Even hearing his voice was galling. “And you care because?”

  Art’s chin dropped to his chest on a sigh that heaved through his whole person. Looking around the room, he took a chair by a window with the blinds drawn against the darkness outside. “I didn’t know she was capable… I never knew she was… I just can’t believe…” he started a couple more sentences, but all ended with him trailing off and staring into the night. “I’m sorry. I just want her to know how sorry I am.”

  The apology only made it worse. “Really?” Sean started toward the chair and Josh’s hand shot out, keeping him in place.

  “You can say it from here, chief. I’m pretty sure no one will be happy if you get tossed out of this hospital.” Josh’s face told him that not only would he not let Sean get any closer to Arturo, but that if he wanted to, he was going through him.

  Sean pulled up short, the anger making his eyes burn. “Now you’re sorry? What about when I got shot and you sent my best friend away because Pia didn’t like her? Did you care then? What about when she ran off with her high school lover and left me? What about then?” The words tasted like fire on his tongue as he spat them out, hoping to wound the older man as badly as he was hurting now.

  Arturo nodded haltingly, shuddering with every question like it was a body blow. “I just want to do something for her, to try and make this up to her somehow.” The old man was almost pleading.

  Sean hooked his hands in his back pockets to keep from wrapping them around his throat. “How do you propose to make up for your fucking daughter almost killing her? What can you possibly do to make that right?” He had to consciously modulate his tone, because inside his head, the words were roaring.

  The older man was quiet for a minute, staring at the night, his expensive shoes, anything but the three other men in the room. He picked at his cufflinks as he said, “I want to take care of her. Take care of this.” He waved his hand around the room to emphasize the point.

  At the mention of money, Sean’s temper spiked. “You think you can just buy her forgiveness? What the—”

  “Sean, a word?” Dane was holding open the door to the waiting room and gesturing that Sean should follow him into the corridor.

  Torn between the request and co
ntinuing his rant, he held up a finger. Finally, he glared at Dane but acquiesced. “Please excuse me, Art. Apparently I’m needed elsewhere. Back in a minute. Don’t go anyway. You don’t want me to have to come find you to finish this conversation.”

  He stormed past Dane into the hallway and waited with his arms crossed as the other man said a brief word to Josh in the room and then shut the door. “Okay, I need you to take a moment and think about this logically.”

  “I’m not being logical?” When his tone garnered the attention of a passing nurse, he reminded himself to settle down.

  “Nor rational, clearly, but I don’t blame you. But I need you to stop and listen to me. El, she was on lunch break. She was headed out of the office, so this isn’t workman’s comp, see? Even with her insurance, the bill may get ugly depending on the recovery. Let him assuage his guilt. Nothing else. Take the money, and let this be.”

  Sean shook his head in disbelief. “Just like that? Let it go.”

  Dane nodded, and then shuffled closer to Sean to move out of the way of a nurse pushing a cart. “She’s going to need you. All of us really, but you especially. And she doesn’t need to be focusing on how she’s gonna pay the bills while she recovers, in both body and mind. Don’t let this linger for her, or worse, take more from her than it already has. She doesn’t deserve that, and neither do you.”

  Sean shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and paced in the small alcove across the hall from Ellie’s room. Every once in a while he stopped and stared into the room, annoyed that all he could see was the foot of the bed and a bland greenish curtain. He heard what Dane was saying, but his rage was doing all the thinking for him, which was damn little at the moment.

  A hand on his arm stopped his progression, and he gave Dane a look that told him to remove the hand if he wanted to keep it. Dane nodded, but didn’t move out of his way. “He lost a child today. His only child, and she was killed trying to kill someone else. He’s having just as hard a day as you are, if not more so, honestly. Let him pay, and let this go.”

  Scrubbing one hand down his face while the other massaged the tension in the back of his neck, Sean tried to find a way to poke holes in Dane’s logic. So far he’d come up dry. As much as it pained him to admit it, he had to agree with his point of view. “All right.”

  Dane nodded and chucked him on the shoulder. “Go back in there and make it happen.”

  Sean ran both hands through his hair as he collected himself, and then returned to the room. Arturo hadn’t moved, and actually looked more afraid than when they’d dragged him in there in the first place. “Here’s the deal. Pay her bill, make it go away. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen and make yourself feel better. However, you will stay away from her. You won’t visit her, you won’t call, any of it. I mean that. Pay the bill, and go away, and we can be square.” He was damn proud that his voice didn’t shake with the rage he still felt.

  Arturo studied his hands for a long time before standing up and walking to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob and turned to the trio. “I’ll make it right. I really am sorry. So, so sorry.”

  “Me too, Art. I’m sorry it came to this.”

  The door clicked quietly shut and Sean sank into the nearest chair with a groan. This day. This fucking endless day. He sighed and looked to Josh and Dane, who looked as fried as he was. “Go home. Get some rest.”

  Josh looked ready to throw down in the waiting room. “I am not leaving her. You have lost your damn mind.”

  Sean snorted a chuckle at Josh’s instant ire, so close to his own. “I’ll be here. Just get a couple hours. Get some food. I’ll be here the whole time. She will not be alone.”

  Dane put a hand on Josh’s shoulder that Josh immediately covered with his own, drawing a look of affection and quiet words exchanged between them. Finally Josh nodded. “Okay,” he said, turning to Sean who was trying to get out of the surprisingly comfortable chair but failing from exhaustion, “we’ll go. We’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  Finally on his feet, Sean shuffled toward the door. “Believe me. I’ll still be here.”

  * * *

  The nurse in the flashy scrubs was named Janine. A saucy little woman with spiky red hair and a slight Chicago accent, she kind of reminded Ellie of Janine Melnitz from Ghostbusters. She’d checked her vitals, installed a PCA which was a machine that would dispense her pain meds, and helped Ellie calm down after her unexpected visitor. She even showed her how to work the remote for the TV and gave her a hairbrush. When Josh and Dane came in to kiss her goodbye, she was watching a rerun of NCIS and indulging in her Gibbs-fixation.

  Her lieutenant and commander had come in to visit briefly, which had been great, and a couple more of the street officers she saw regularly. It felt good to have her family around, even if they were work family and the visits were short.

  Once everyone left, she found it odd to be alone in the too-hot room. She supposed if they wanted to keep someone healthy, having them sweat to death was not a good idea, but she wasn’t the one in charge. When she sneezed, it jostled her shoulder, which only made the stars dance at the edge of her vision. She thought about pushing the button for her pain meds, but she opted to hold off until Sean came back. Acquiring a gunshot wound was not the kind of conversation that could be had under the influence, she was pretty sure.

  When Pia’s father had come in, it was like a snow globe exploded in her head, fragments of memories cascading everywhere like mental shards of glass. Pia in her car with the gun. Sean that morning by her car. The door exploding behind her and all the noise that made her jump to the side at the last possible second before Pia fired. Sean running to her afterward. It was all a jumbled mess in her head, and there were gaps. Lots of gaps. She honestly didn’t know if she wanted to remember it all.

  The door opened and she felt herself tensing up, relaxing only when she saw it was Sean, back from wherever they’d taken Pia’s father. A part of her was concerned for the older man’s safety, but only a small part.

  Sean dragged one of the other chairs over to the side of the bed and used them to fashion a makeshift bed next to her. He twined his fingers with hers and kissed the back of her hand as he settled down and got comfy. “You okay now?”

  Ellie nodded. “She told me I need to keep my stress level down.” To that end, Janine had lowered the lights and brought her another pillow for her shoulder.

  “So that means no hot monkey sex on the hospital bed, huh?” Sean looked so genuinely disappointed, she couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Only a little, because any more and she’d definitely need the pain meds.

  “That fantasy is right out, I’m afraid. Maybe next time.” She tried to look stern, but she was sure she only looked a hot mess, so she lay back against the pillow and turned her attention back to the television. “Do I want to know what Pia’s father was doing here?”

  She saw him cringe out of the corner of her eye, and felt his fingers tighten around hers. “He…” He sighed. “He wanted to see how you were. To apologize on behalf of Pia.”

  The word ‘apologize’ made her want vomit, but then again, that may have been a holdover from the anesthesia. Fifty different responses came to her mind, but all she could manage to say was, “I see.”

  Sean loosened his grip on her hand and began stroking the back of it with his thumb. “I told him to go to hell.”

  “You didn’t kill him.” She didn’t mean to sound impressed, but the look on his face when they all left the room made her doubt that both of would still be breathing at the end of the encounter.

  “Occurred to me, not gonna lie.” His face looked stark in the soft flickering glow of the television above them, his jaw set firmly. “He’s the reason you left.”

  When he looked at her then, his blue eyes almost sapphire with hurt, she wanted to run. Fuck. This wasn’t a conversation she’d wanted to have. Ever, if she could have managed, but definitely not tonight. “I don’t really wan
t to get into—”

  He held up a hand, stalling her words in her throat. She watched him slowly unfold himself from the chair and move to the side of the bed. After taking her face in both his hands, he pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “I know, and I know why. We don’t have to talk about it. It’s okay. I just wanted you to know that I know.” He stared into her eyes, seemingly searching for a reaction.

  The relief she felt was intense enough to bring tears to her eyes. It wasn’t that she was protecting Arturo from whatever karmic debt he’d incurred by being the bitch’s delivery boy, but hiding her own shame for not taking a stand then. All the hurt she’d been through and caused had been for nothing. She just wished healing emotional wounds didn’t have to come as a result of life-threatening physical ones.

  Ellie looked down at her shoulder, which had been throbbing constantly since she’d awakened. As much as she desired her pain meds, the need to know what happened was great. She wanted so badly to ask Sean, and knew she might not get another chance for awhile. “So… Janine tells me I got shot….” she started, trying to keep her tone light and casual as she laced her fingers with his. Like extra ventilation in her shoulder was a normal occurrence.

  Sean tensed and she could see the muscle in his jaw tic as he closed his eyes and rolled his head around his shoulders. “You did. It’s been a long day. How much do you remember?” His voice was soft, and the raspy quality she found so sexy deepened, betraying his stress and fatigue.

  She rubbed her thumb back and forth across the top of his hand, hoping to ease the tension in him a bit by reassuring him that she was okay. “Bits and pieces. She took me in my car. The ‘where’s’ kinda fuzzy, but she was pissed, Jesus, she was pissed. Like the anger had incinerated every other emotion and left her with a cinder. Erinyes.”