Over and Again

by Brooke Edwards

  “Both sides again, buddy?” his father says, his grip a steady pressure on Derek’s knees now. “Moved too quick?”

  He nods tightly, stomach swooping and bile rising in his throat.

  “Okay.” His father squeezes and then releases his knees, his hands reappearing either side of Derek’s face. “Tilt with me, remember?”

  Derek can distantly hear his mother urging Sam and Lydia out of the room, more aware of the tone of her voice than the actual words. He concentrates on the slow motion of tilting his head with his father’s hands guiding him, trying to recalibrate his ears and brain all over again.

  Brock is the only one who startles when a walking stack of pizza boxes comes through the conference room door. Cohen’s face brightens, beaming at the newcomer who can’t see anything past the boxes but must somehow know who is in the room anyway. He lets go of the stack with one hand to wave, and only barely gets it back under the stack in time to save the tipping boxes. Cohen is there a second later, lifting the boxes up and away. The man in the doorway is familiar once the boxes are gone, blond waves of hair and bright eyes, and Brock pushes up to his feet to greet him as recognition hits.

  “Peter, right?” he says, extending a hand.

  “Mr. Hart!” Peter smiles and shakes his hand. “Good to see you. Sort of better circumstances, I guess?”

  “There’s pizza this time,” Rhys says, and the smell of sauce and meat and cheese takes over the room as one of the boxes is opened.

  “Best pizza in the city,” Cohen chimes in, already lifting a slice out of the box.

  “They’re biased,” Daniel mutters, and Brock looks at him, a quip about cops turning down food already on the tip of his tongue. It never makes it out because Daniel is looking at Peter with a soft, hesitant smile.

  Peter’s returning grin is on the wicked side and the dots finally connect. Brock snorts to himself and heads toward the boxes, inhaling deeper as he gets closer. “Shouldn’t we just be grateful he’s feeding us considering the cat argument, Callahan?” he asks.

  He ends up shoulder to shoulder with Cohen, while Daniel sputters behind him. “It smells good,” he says, staring down at the pepperoni and melted cheese. “Where’s it from?”

  “Marty’s,” Cohen says, voice thick as he swallows hurriedly. Brock can see the motion in his throat—Adam’s apple bobbing beneath tanned skin—out of the corner of his eye. He focuses back on the pizza as Cohen swallows again and continues. “Peter works there.”

  “Good to have an inside man.” Brock picks a slice and lifts it, the strings of cheese stretching out. He lifts it higher and uses a finger to break the strings, dropping the ends on top of the slice and stepping back from the box. The sauce, tangy and a little sweet, hits his taste buds first, and he makes a low, appreciative sound. There’s a dull thud from next to him, but when he looks sideways, still chewing, Cohen is biting into his own slice again.

  They don’t have anything concrete by the end of the day, but Cohen can’t really call it a wasted day, either. Howard Masters was definitely under investigation, but they don’t have much to go on as far as what happened during Sal’s last few days. Nothing they’ve found yet would explain why the two men were together. No sightings of Jake Bartlett either.

  By 6:00 p.m. he’s already flagging, their ass-o’clock wakeup call making keeping his eyes open a Herculean task, and he can see Daniel is struggling too. Peter had left shortly after they’d finished the pizzas, a gleam in his eyes that made Cohen sure Daniel hadn’t seen or heard the last of the cat. The thought makes him snicker all over again, the Band-Aids spotting Daniel’s hands and forearms still visible.

  “Shut your face,” Daniel hisses from across the room. The crime scene reports are tacked up on the whiteboard. Rhys is writing up a list of known associates for Masters, and Brock has spent most of the last couple of hours on the phone with a RICO contact, getting as much information as he can on the case they’ve been building.

  “We should go for a drink,” Rhys says, the cap of the pen pressed into his cheek. “A couple beers. Get out of this room for some reason other than interviews or going to bed alone.”

  “If there’s another cat joke somewhere in there…,” Daniel says threateningly.

  Cohen can’t help but laugh again, seeing Brock’s eyes crinkle in the corners while he’s still on the phone. “Danny,” he says, still grinning. “You gotta let it go or they’re never gonna stop.”

  “We’re law enforcement professionals, and I swear it feels more like a reality TV show lately.” Daniel starts unrolling his sleeves, covering the evidence. “One beer. Two, tops. I need at least eight hours of sleep tonight.”

  “Alone?” Kay is in the doorway, hip and eyebrow both cocked.

  Daniel tips his head back, letting out a whistling breath.

  “Got to say, kid,” Brock says, slapping a hand down on Daniel’s shoulder as he passes. “If this was a reality show, I’d probably watch it. C’mon, first round is on me.”

  Daniel stakes out one of the tables with the tall stools while Brock and Cohen go to the bar. Rhys hops up onto the stool, setting it to rocking before steadying himself against the table. His eyes are still relatively bright, his day starting at a much more reasonable hour than Daniel or Cohen’s. “How was James?” he asks.

  Daniel’s been waiting for the question, but it doesn’t stop the gut-punch that makes his breath catch every time he thinks of his boss and his best friend. “Pretty beat up,” he says, toying with the cardboard coaster closest to him on the table. “It’ll be a while before he comes back, and they don’t think he’ll get full mobility back in the leg or hip.”

  Rhys’s forehead creases as he leans forward, crossing his arms on the table. “Must have been a hell of a blast,” he says, and snatches up a coaster to fold between his own fingers. “I read the report. Fairhall fucked up, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know how else it could have gone down,” Daniel admits. He’s turned it over in his head a thousand times and can’t figure out what led to it, if not Coy Fairhall making a colossal mistake. “He was so meticulous with everything else. He found them even though he shouldn’t have been able to, and if it hadn’t gone off—if it had gone to plan, we probably never would have known what happened to them.”

  “Give Derek and James some credit,” Brock says, setting two glasses down on the table and dropping onto one of the stools. “I don’t know your boss well, but you know Derek even better than me. He wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.”

  “He wasn’t in a good way when they left,” Daniel says, dropping the coaster to wrap his hands around the cold glass. “Fairhall got inside his head. He was scared and hurting and definitely not thinking straight.”

  Cohen settles onto the stool on Brock’s other side, pushing a second beer toward Rhys. “James wouldn’t have let anything happen to Derek.” His voice is steady. “Not in a million years.”

  “Enough with the doom and gloom,” Rhys says, lifting his glass. “They’re alive, we’re alive, Fairhall’s not, and Bartlett’s days are numbered. How about we drink to that?”

  Brock, Cohen, and Daniel lift their glasses too.

  4

  Cohen might not have been in the city for as long as some of the others, but he’s been a police officer long enough to know the importance of building up relationships with some of the less-savory types who make up New York’s criminal scene. A text message to the prepaid cell he uses for those informants arrives around the same time he walks into the precinct. Kay is back at the front desk, tapping away at the keyboard and rolling her eyes at whoever is on the phone. She flashes him a grin as he passes her, and then mimes throwing the computer monitor through the glass doors.

  He gets out of her way, knowing she’s joking but still wanting the safety of being further away anyway. The bullpen isn’t quite a hive of activity, not this early in the morning, but there’s enough going on that it takes him a couple minutes to pick a path through and
get settled in at his desk. Rhys is slumped over his own desk, two empty coffee cups already stacked precariously on top of a bulging file.

  Cohen slips the prepaid cell from his pocket and unlocks the screen, tapping his way to the Message menu. The unread message is sitting there, from an unknown number. That’s enough to set the hair on the back of Cohen’s neck prickling. All of the numbers he’s used for informants are saved. It’s not unheard of, some people go through burner phones like they change their underwear, but Cohen’s instincts aren’t convinced that’s what’s happening here.

  The text is simple, just an address and a time. Cohen glances up at the clock. Two hours. The address is about half an hour away, accounting for traffic. It’s a public place and Cohen knows the area reasonably well. He pushes up off his desk, sliding the cell back into his pocket, and yanks Rhys up by the back of his shirt as he passes. “Hey,” he says. “Come with me. We need to run something down.”

  Rhys blinks at him, eyes bleary. He rubs at them, and Cohen heads toward the back wall, where the offices are. “Running what down?” he asks after a second, following Cohen.

  “Maybe a lead,” Cohen says and sticks his head through the ajar door of Roger Murphy’s office. “Hey, Murph? You got a minute?”

  Brock doesn’t go into the precinct the next day. Evan had knocked on his door in the small hours of the morning, and Brock had been just the right mix of tired and frustrated to let him in. He’d woken up with the burn of alcohol and cigarette smoke in his nose and faint bruises dotting his sides, stale regret drying out his mouth. Not even the two coffees and breakfast burrito he downs can take it away.

  Marian clears a small office for him near her own when he arrives, and gives him a long, slightly uncomfortable hug when she presses the keys and access card into his hand. There are piles of files related to the RICO case targeting Howard Masters piled on the floor beside the desk, and he knows there are just as many emails waiting in his inbox. For every hour he’s spent in the courtroom over his career, there have been ten spent in offices that look remarkably like this, poring over case files and affidavits and flicking through books or scrolling through endless walls of text on flickering screens. Its part and parcel of the job, and Brock has been doing it long enough there’s hardly even a sense of dread about it anymore.

  He cracks his knuckles instead, stretching his neck back and to each side before settling into the seat and setting his laptop up.

  “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of trap?” Rhys asks. They’ve been on the road for fifteen minutes, four other officers behind them. Rhys is leaning forward, his hands braced on the dashboard. “We don’t know who this message is from or what they want.”

  “I’m not sure, no,” Cohen mutters, knuckles white around the steering wheel as traffic hums around them, keeping them idling. “Like I told Murph—I don’t know who it was, but it seems convenient that it happened right after Sal turned up dead. We’ve got backup, so if things go to shit we’ll deal with it. This is the first lead that’s turned up, I’m not ignoring it.”

  “I get that.” Rhys stresses the word, tipping slowly back toward the seat. He lands against it with a dull thud. “But convenient is exactly what I’m thinking, and that doesn’t mean anything good for us. Remember?” He sits up straight. “Fairhall managed to get in touch with James a bunch of times. They all called through the switchboard, too. Finding out your burner’s number wouldn’t be hard for someone like Bartlett.”

  “Bartlett wasn’t the genius in that partnership.” Cohen breathes out through gritted teeth, Rhys’s constant movement doing nothing to settle the unease bubbling in his chest. Roger Murphy had pinned him with a hard, searching look when he’d pushed the burner phone across the desk, screen lit up with the text message. Eventually he’d given Cohen the go-ahead to take care of it, insisting he take backup.

  Cops respect gut feelings more than most other professions, but even still, it’ll take a lot more experience than Cohen’s got before someone like Roger Murphy will trust the gut feeling without backup. Rhys hadn’t hesitated, which Cohen appreciates, but it feels enough like kid gloves to chafe. He’s never wanted something to pan out more than he wants something worthwhile to come of this lead.

  “I can’t adopt a cat, Peter!” Daniel puts his head down against the steering wheel, opening his mouth wide and breathing out in a huff. “I’m never home, for one, and for two? The cat you’re talking about hates me. Literally attacked me. I don’t want a pet that hates me, why would you want that for me?”

  Peter scoffs wordlessly. “Don’t try and turn this around. A hungry, thirsty, lonely and scared animal left on her own for God knows how long? I’m surprised she didn’t claw you up worse. Demi from the shelter says she’s an absolute sweetheart. Cats aren’t high maintenance, either—it’s not like I’m trying to get you to adopt a puppy.”

  Daniel opens his mouth, a silent scream twisting up his face. The woman in the car next to him is visibly cracking up with laughter out of the corner of his eye, but Daniel has no shame left. “You’re talking to the people at the shelter?” he says eventually, instead of any of the other things he wants to say.

  “Not the relevant part of that!” Peter’s voice is sharp. “You can’t just leave her in that shelter, Daniel. They’re crowded, and she’s not a kitten anymore. Her chances aren’t good.”

  “This isn’t fair.” Daniel bashes his forehead against the steering wheel a couple more times for good measure. “I don’t even like cats. Can’t Tia adopt her?”

  “Are you willing to go over to Tia’s with me to spend time with her?”

  Another silent scream. Daniel knows exactly why he was so twisted up about his feelings. Peter is actually evil, and it was his instincts warning him off.

  “I liked you better when you were scared of me,” is what he manages, finally, because he is definitely not willing to go over to Tia’s to spend time with a cat he doesn’t even like.

  Peter laughs. “See you tonight,” he says. “I’m going to make you a whole new set of social media accounts. Cops and cats! This is going to go viral.”

  He hangs up before Daniel can find more words.

  Brock is two and a half hours deep into the evidence they have so far, implicating at least half a dozen prominent Wall Street executives, twice that many politicians, and he isn’t even sure he can put a number on the others involved. The investigation has been going on for months from what he can tell, and the scope is staggering.

  Howard Masters is a relatively small fish in the bigger picture, but Brock knows that somewhere in the web of testimonies and stories he’s putting together is the reason the man ended up dead on the street with an apparently not-connected local gang member. When he figures that out, he knows it’s just a matter of tugging the right threads until it all unravels and Jake Bartlett ends up where they want him.

  Someone knocks on the office door as he’s lifting a new stack of files onto the desk. Brock lets them fall, shaking out the cramping in his left hand from gripping a pen for so long, and calls out for them to come in.

  The first thing he sees is fire-engine-red hair against the paint around the doorway. “Briony!” he says, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Aren’t you a sight for tired eyes.”

  He regrets the words immediately when her eyes well up with tears, visible from across the room, and he stands up just in time to catch her as she throws herself at him in a fierce hug. Something garbled gets choked out into his shoulder and he brings an arm up to hold her against his chest. “Hey,” he says, voice dropping. “Are you okay?”

  Her hand smacks at his back before she pulls away, looking at him with red-rimmed eyes and a sardonic twist to her lips. “What do you think?” she says, hoarse. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “Is that a trick question?” he asks after a moment, still half holding her and torn between letting her go or hugging her again to try to avoid the possibility of her crying.

  She ro
lls her eyes and pulls completely away. “Why do I miss you when you’re not here?” she asks, rubbing at her eyes.

  “Because I’m your favorite, and you get bored when I’m not here,” he says instantly. “I know the answer to that one.”

  Briony laughs, a short, surprised sound. “I do love your ego,” she admits, and musters a smile. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s been so quiet.” She glances down at her hands, her fingers twisted together in front of her chest. “No one will tell me what actually happened, and somehow they’ve kept it off the news sites. I’ve been going crazy.”

  “Come here.” Brock yanks her into another hug, tucking her head under his chin. “He’ll be okay. I’ve seen Daniel Callahan a couple of times, and he was up there a few days ago. Derek’s in the best place he can be right now, and that’s the honest truth, I promise.”

  She relaxes, just enough for Brock to feel it against him, and sighs. Her breath makes his opened collar flutter a little, and she pats the side of his chest and hugs him back for a moment. When she pulls away this time, her eyes are clearer and the curve of her mouth softer.

  “I believe you,” she says and swipes at her eyes again, taking a step back. “Now, what are you working on? Can I help?”

  Brock tips his head back and breathes out in a noisy whistle. “Yes, where have you been?” He waves at the pile of files. “My hand is one giant cramp, and I haven’t been able to figure out how to connect the dictation mic since the last program update.”