Threats in the deep, p.13
Threats in the Deep, page 13
“I’m just not getting this. Someone decides to start shooting cops over a routine evidence discovery? That’s a pretty bold choice when no one’s done any digging on those weapons yet.”
“Preemptive strike?” Kerrigan asked, pulling her cup from the machine. “Bold assertion of dominance? Who knows why criminals do what they do? All I do know is you need to watch your back. We all do. Sera, too.”
“Sera, too.” Gavin turned that over, her earlier fears that she’d been the target opening up yet another avenue. “She thought she was the target earlier. That Darius was shot because of her. Wrong place, wrong time sort of thing.”
“Is she working any big cases?”
“I don’t think so. Her schedule was shifted, like mine, to focus on the task force.”
Kerrigan took a sip of her coffee. “Let’s talk to her. See if she’s made any enemies recently. Arlo got the sense this was a cop problem, but when criminals start a war it’s not necessarily for a predictable reason.”
“But why go to war at all? Those weapons were only just discovered. I still don’t get why you’d draw this sort of attention.”
“I don’t have the reasons, Gav. I just have a new line for us to tug.”
As he followed his friend and colleague back down the hall, Gavin wondered about that. It was an awfully flimsy line, with very few facts attached to it. What if they tugged too hard and unraveled something far deeper than they ever expected?
Yet as he thought about the deadly weapons laid out on the boat deck earlier, Gavin had to admit that they’d already started to tug that line. And maybe there was more in motion than any of them realized.
* * *
Sera had never considered herself someone comfortable with grief. She had her own, of course, but she kept it carefully buried. And she regularly came up against grieving families in her work. People decimated by the loss of their loved ones at the hands of another.
She’d found a way, through the years, to compartmentalize those tearstained, distressed faces. They were a part of her work, and that same work was what would give them some measure of closure. It didn’t bring their loved one back, but she remained hopeful they found peace in the fact that justice had been done for them.
But now? Watching the entire Houston family rally around Jayden as he waited for news of his husband? Sera understood something else.
Just how clearly grief was an expression of love.
With that sudden understanding so present in her mind, when Sera saw an empty seat beside Jayden’s mother, she moved over to offer whatever comfort she could.
“Mrs. Houston?”
The woman looked up, her expression still welcoming even in the midst of her sadness. “Sera, sweetie. Come take a seat.”
They’d been introduced earlier after Sera had been released from her hospital room, and the kind woman had peppered her with questions about how she was feeling and how the baby was.
Sera hadn’t even questioned how Mrs. Houston knew. She simply accepted that she did.
Weathered hands took her own, cradling them. Sera stared down to where they held on to each other, the seamless blend of youth and age wrapped together, and she wondered what it must be like to have such warmth and encouragement. Such care and love. Even before her mother’s fall into apathy and recreational drug use, she’d never been a warm woman. Her parenting style was tepid at best and flat-out cold much of the time. For as much as she hated the reason she’d been given a peek into the Houston family dynamics, clearly led by their matriarch, Sera was touched and awed by how present they were for each other.
“This is a terrible time.” Mrs. Houston shook her head, her dark eyes solemn.
“I only just met Darius and Jayden today. There’s such love there. Such a deep bond.”
“There was from the start.” Mama Houston smiled, even through her sadness. “My boy thought I didn’t know. Kept him and Darius a secret when they first started going out.”
Although Sera didn’t want to assume, not every family welcomed gay children and their significant others. While it flew in the face of what she’d expect from this family, you never could fully know what someone went through.
Which made the continued explanation that much more special, Sera realized.
“I know my children, and I’ve always given them all my love and told them to share that love with others. To be careful with others’ hearts and ensure others were careful with theirs. But my Jayden was scared. Of the relationship. Of his feelings. Of the fact that this might actually be real.”
And as the woman wove her story, Sera was astute enough to see a reflection of her own behavior in Jayden’s all those years ago.
Even more, she recognized the fear Mama Houston spoke of with bone-deep understanding.
She’d recognized it after the night she’d spent with Gavin all those months ago.
Their night had been extraordinary, their connection even more so. And instead of staying and, at minimum, seeing if he wanted to continue talking, she’d fled.
“Did you convince him?”
Mama Houston smiled at that, one that reached all the way to her eyes and broke through that haze of sadness. “It took longer than it should have, but he got in line quick enough. Love has a way of doing that, you know.” Mama patted her knee. “You’ll see. And you and Gavin will figure it out, too.”
“Oh, I don’t—”
There was another gentle pat to her knee. “You don’t have to have it all figured out tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the day after. But that baby’s going to have a way of solidifying all the things you’re not quite ready to talk about. And then the two of you can figure out where you go from there.”
Gavin walked back into the waiting room with Kerrigan, and their eyes caught and met.
Then the two of you can figure out where you go from there.
It was good advice. Wise, even. But she wasn’t sure she and Gavin had the same base of love and understanding as Jayden and Darius had. Or if they were destined for the same.
Oh, they had attraction. And something that could blossom into a real friendship, which would be important toward building a stable future for their child.
But love?
“Thank you for that. Especially given all that’s happening.”
Mama Houston reached over and squeezed her hand once more. “It’ll all work out, sweet girl. It will.”
Sera nearly responded when a doctor came into the waiting room, her expression grim. Her gaze was unerring as it found Jayden and was full of a compassion that left Sera with a distinct sinking in her stomach. “Mr. Houston?”
Jayden stood, his attention on the doctor as he crossed to the entrance of the waiting room.
Sera watched it all play out, even as there was an odd awareness already filling her mind.
That grim look.
The compassionate yet resigned expression in the doctor’s eyes.
And the seeming lack of air in the room.
“Mr. Houston. I’m sorry to tell you that there were complications. Your husband succumbed to his injuries.”
Sera felt the collective wail of grief wash over the room. And without thinking, she wrapped her arms around Mama Houston and pulled her close, the grief that was an expression of love rising up around her in an overwhelming wave of pain.
Chapter 10
Numb.
Gavin had felt it once before—this absolute base functioning and little else—and had believed he’d never go through it again, but he’d been wrong.
So very wrong.
Because this evening he’d gone to have drinks with his good friends, and now he was taking Sera home in the knowledge he’d never speak to one of them again, all while another would be broken beyond repair.
Sera had been more than willing to stay at the hospital as long as was needed, but it had become evident that while he, Sera, Kerrigan and the rest of the department who’d gone to sit vigil were welcome, the family needed to be alone.
Jayden would have need of them in the coming days, weeks and months, but for the moment, he needed privacy and his family. So as a unit, his brothers and sisters in arms, they’d stood before him, paying their respects before leaving him to the open maw of grief.
Sera had gently fussed when they’d first come in, asking Gavin if he needed anything, but he just shook his head, taking a seat on her couch after asking if he could stay for a few minutes. She’d been quick to let him know he could stay as long as he needed before disappearing into the kitchen and returning a bit later with a steaming mug of tea that smelled fruity for herself and a bottled water for him.
“Can I get you anything else?”
He shook his head, trying to find the words that were rolling around inside of him. The ones tied to big emotions he normally kept hidden.
Which was why what came out next was as much a surprise to him as it was to her.
“My father was murdered when I was fourteen.”
He kept his expression neutral—a skill he’d honed over the years for the rare occasion this subject came up—and studied her face from where she sat on the opposite end of the couch, her knees drawn up.
Would she be shocked?
Horrified?
Angry he hadn’t spoken of it before?
Only she was none of those things.
Instead, she unfolded her legs, laid her tea down on the coffee table and moved in closer, reaching for his hand. “Tell me about him.”
Not it, Gavin thought. The murder. Or what happened?
But him.
His father.
“Robert Sinclair Hayes the Fourth. Of the Fifth Avenue Hayeses, a bastion of Manhattan society since the turn of the twentieth century.”
When she only nodded, encouraging him to keep going, Gavin recognized the gift of simple understanding. And while it didn’t make it easier to get through the story, it did make a difference that she was holding his hand.
He wasn’t alone.
“My parents had a love match, which was a bit of a surprise for their upbringings, his especially, where duty was still somewhat expected. My mother wasn’t from society, so that made waves for a while. But they got together in the ’80s at college, and my grandmother ultimately stepped in with Bobby Three, as she called my grandfather. Told him to get with the times.”
“Bobby Three?” Sera smiled. “As in Robert Sinclair the Third?”
“Yep.”
“I like that.”
“She coined it at their first meeting, and it’s stuck for almost seventy years.”
And it had stuck. Because while his grandparents had started out with a marriage of duty and social station, love had grown in its place through the years. Love and a heck of a lot of fondness and understanding.
Recognizing he was stalling, Gavin kept on with his story.
“My father had been through a difficult stretch at work. Late nights and, what we later found out, threatening phone calls almost daily.”
“Who threatened him?”
“My father was a lawyer.” He smiled as the recognition dawned, oddly, for the first time. “Like you.”
Her smile was gentle, a sweet counterpoint to their dark conversation. “Clearly ensuring our child will have a balanced and measured legal mind.”
“Obviously.”
“Please tell me more, Gavin. I’d like to know.”
Why did this never get easier?
He’d have thought, after nearly twenty years, talking about that terrible day and all the terrible days that followed would be easier. Or, if not easier, something he could dispassionately recount, the emotion of it all shoved down so deep he could find his way through to the other side.
Only as the tears welled up, shaking his shoulders with wracking sobs, he knew an irrevocable certainty.
It would never truly be better.
And now his friend would live with the same.
* * *
Sera moved in, wrapping her arms around Gavin and pulling him close. He was a large man, and the embrace should have been awkward, but somehow they found a way.
They fit.
Hard sobs echoed through him, and Sera couldn’t help but wonder how a person moved on past that sort of shock and grief. And then she realized it wasn’t about moving past. Perhaps it wasn’t even about accepting. It was simply about getting through to the other side.
Although she wouldn’t compare her own life to this sort of devastating, shocking act by another, she did know what it was like to push through. To force yourself to keep going, even when the acts were small, destructive ones that added up over time until a person was simply numb from them. Until you finally accepted that the place you had to get to in order to survive wasn’t like anything you’d ever imagined.
“I’m sorry.” Gavin shifted to pull away, but she held firm.
“It’s a terrible experience to live with. And it made all the horrors of tonight even more present. You’re entitled to your emotions, Gavin. It’s right you should feel them.”
“Feeling them doesn’t change a damn thing about the outcome. Not for my father and certainly not for Darius.”
“But it does for you.”
Of course, the reality was that his father and Darius were no longer in pain. There was no suffering for wherever they’d moved on to. It was those left behind who had to deal with the unbearable grief of their loss.
He didn’t answer, but she got the distinct sense that while he acknowledged what she was saying, he wasn’t ready to accept it. That he’d somehow convinced himself if he didn’t feel his way through the loss of his father, he could simply hold it at bay.
Seem familiar, Forte?
Since the internal shot of honesty hit a bit too close to home, Sera refocused on Gavin. She did owe him the same honesty about her past, but now wasn’t the time.
“Are you ready to tell me the rest?”
“It’s not especially surprising. A disgruntled criminal he prosecuted found a way to strike back. His record was already much too long by the time my father came into his life, but somehow my dad became the scapegoat for all his anger and discontent with life. He’d gotten it in his head that someone had to pay and was already orchestrating things from inside prison. Two weeks after he got out on parole for good behavior, he shot my father coming out of his office in Midtown.”
It was a risk lawyers lived with—the justice system was nothing if not public—but the actual number of lawyers who faced threats to their lives wasn’t nearly as high as TV and movies made it out to be.
But it did happen.
And it was a risk.
One Gavin’s father had paid a terrible price for.
“I’m sorry.”
He turned to look at her, his dark brown eyes still grief-filled, even if some of it had dimmed slightly with the telling. “Thank you, but it was a long time ago.”
“I’m still sorry. For your father. And I’m also sorry about earlier. About rushing out of the bar. I wish I could change that.” She pulled away from him, suddenly unable to touch him as she faced the reality of what her impulse and anger had wrought.
All that upset and anger and weird reaction she’d had to the other couples had sent her out into the street, desperate to go home and be alone. Wrapped in her cocoon of isolation where she felt safe and warm and in control.
“I brought this on. By leaving the bar. By putting us outside. By putting Darius in the crosshairs.”
“You didn’t do this.”
“How can you say that?” And suddenly, the whole night crashed in on her, the terrible truth of it all. “And how could I have blocked it out up to now? I was the reason we were outside.”
“You didn’t aim the gun, Sera. Nor did you pull the trigger.” He reached for her, but she’d already stood, moving away from him and whatever comfort he thought to offer.
“I let my emotions carry me outside like a child. How can you say I’m not responsible?”
“Because you didn’t pull the trigger!”
The outburst was a surprise, Gavin’s words sort of echoing through the sudden quiet of the room.
And in its wake, she simply crumpled. “That wonderful man is gone.”
Gavin was by her side immediately, pulling her into his arms and holding her upright. His voice was soft in her ear, and any lingering harshness in his tone vanished as he crooned softly to her. “I know he is. I know.”
“I—”
“Shhh. You didn’t. This wasn’t you, Sera. You didn’t do this.”
The fierce urgency in his tone and the deep conviction that she wasn’t at fault echoed through her mind, a discordant counterpart to what she already thought.
Nay, what she already knew.
They were targeted this evening. She didn’t know how or why, but she and Gavin were the target of the shooter. The way she’d seen that flash under the lights. And the fact that there was such a focus on the two of them as they stood there, having their argument.
Yet why had the shooter missed, hitting Darius instead? He wasn’t all that far from them, but he wasn’t so close that she believed the shooter had simply had bad aim.
Which circled her back around to the why of it all.
And how much could have been avoided if she’d just remained inside.
* * *
The text had come late confirming the early morning meeting at the 86th, but Gavin had expected it. He’d already spoken to Wyatt and Arlo the night before and had been anxious to get in and get going with whatever information Arlo managed to uncover on scene outside the bar.
What he didn’t expect was the full turnout at the 86th.
