“Well, fuck,” my brother said.
“Guess those exterior cams are now a priority,” Knox said to Lucian after I finished filling them in.
“I’m assuming Lina should be outfitted with her own tracker,” our friend suggested.
Knox smirked. “She’ll love that.”
“Good. Then you can deliver it to her,” I said.
“Why can’t you fucking do it? You’re the one sleeping with her. Or, according to Way, ‘making heart eyes’ at her.”
“I’m busy today. Just drop one off for her and yell at her until she agrees to carry it,” I said.
Knox’s eyes narrowed. “Somebody pissed in your wheat bran this morning, sunshine?”
“I don’t have time for this. Just get it done.”
Knox thankfully wasn’t as combative early in the morning, so he left my office swearing under his breath.
Lucian, however, remained seated.
“Aren’t you breaking out in hives by now?” I asked him. He wasn’t a fan of cops or police stations and for good reason.
“You’re exceptionally pissy this morning. What’s wrong?”
“Besides a 3:00 a.m. warning rock through the window?”
Lucian sat and stared blandly at me. I decided to wait him out and turned my attention to my emails. Our standoff lasted three and a half messages.
“Do you think we’re all doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers?” I asked finally.
“Yes.”
I blinked. “You don’t wanna think about that for a minute?”
He crossed his arms irritably. “I’ve thought of little else for the past few decades. It’s impossible to outrun your genes. We were made by flawed men. Those flaws don’t just dissolve out of the bloodline.”
Rain pelted the windows, ensuring I couldn’t forget the misery outside.
“Then what the fuck is the point of anything?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?” He absentmindedly patted the jacket pocket where he stowed his single daily cigarette. “My only hope is if I keep getting out of bed every morning, someday it will all make sense.”
“You know, I was already feeling pretty shitty before you brought your cloud of doom in here,” I told him.
Lucian grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You don’t have to move your entire life up here for this, you know.” His parents’ house held ghosts for him.
“I’ll stay where I want to stay and work where I want to work.”
“Someone must have been pissing in wheat bran all over town,” I quipped.
It was right about then that my office door flew open.
“Why the hell am I finding you here instead of at your damn door? I swear to God, Morgan. You’re worse to babysit than that little old church lady in Ala-fucking-bama,” a disheveled Nolan announced, storming into the room and kicking my trash can for emphasis. “It’s two steps forward, thirty-seven thousand backward with you, and they don’t pay me enough to put up with this shit.”
“Why don’t you quit then?” I snapped, feeling too sorry for myself to spread it around to anyone else.
“I quit and you end up full of holes. Then I’m supposed to live with the guilt of it? Great fucking plan.”
“I might have a position for you,” Lucian announced. He had that crafty bastard look about him that should make anyone on the receiving end very, very nervous.
“Oh, really?” Nolan said, still pissed off.
“Really.”
“What’s the catch?”
“Catch is such an ugly word. Let’s call it an addendum.”
Nolan didn’t look impressed.
“Stop seeing Sloane and the job is yours.”
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Nolan said.
“Okay, seriously? You hate her guts but you don’t want her dating anyone else? Even you have to realize how unhealthy that is,” I said.
“I never claimed to be healthy,” Lucian said in his scary voice.
“Then why the hell am I taking advice from you?” I demanded.
“How the hell should I know?”
“Bunch of feral assholes,” Nolan muttered, storming out of my office.
Lina: Hey. Everything OK? I woke up and you were gone. Not that you need to clear all your movements with me. Or whatever.
The rain made for slick roads, and slick roads made for accidents. The first call wasn’t bad. A fender bender with an anxious new mom and her infant on the way to the pediatrician.
Bannerjee calmed both mom and baby while the tow truck was called. Meanwhile I dealt with the traffic and cleanup, forcing myself not to think about the woman I’d left warm in my bed.
We hadn’t even dried off from the first call when we got the second.
There’s a mode of operation first responders learn to shift into so the trauma they witness doesn’t haunt them. It works. For the most part.
But given the mood I couldn’t shake, the circumstances, the cruel coincidence… I knew I was already spiraling before things got worse.
It was dark and I was thoroughly frozen by the time I trudged up the stairs to my apartment. My shoulder and head were battling it out for which could ache more.
I just wanted a hot shower so I could stand under the water until my soul thawed. And then I wanted to go to bed and sink into the blackness until I could forget about the pain that I hadn’t been able to save anyone from.
There was a husband and two little boys holding vigil in the ICU waiting room hoping their wife and mom would wake up.
I’d arrived after the fact. Generally how things worked. Something bad happened and then the cops came. I’d helped the fire crew and paramedics pull her from the mangled prison of twisted metal, held a poncho over her motionless body while they belted her onto the gurney, and felt fucking helpless.
I was supposed to save people, but I hadn’t even been able to save myself. It was dumb luck that I was still here. A lucky coincidence that Xandra had been there at the exact right time.
I unlocked my door with frozen fingers, anxious for the dark, the quiet.
Instead, I was met with light and warmth and the smell of something cooking on the stove.
There was music, an upbeat country classic playing loud. Memories of her pulling me or Knox or my dad into a dance in the kitchen assailed me, making my chest ache.
Jayla Morgan was the light and laughter of our little family.
When she didn’t come home that day, part of me died. Part of all of us died. We were never the same.
Piper trotted up to me growling playfully through a stuffed snake.
“Hey!” Lina called cheerily from the kitchen. “Before you panic, I didn’t actually cook. Mrs. Tweedy made a triple batch of chili and I found a box mix for cornbread in your pantry that I managed not to burn. I figured it was the perfect, miserable day for it.”
She was in leggings and a long-sleeve white top that was cropped at the waist and open with crisscrossed straps at the back. Her skin was dewy and her short, dark hair tousled. The earrings I got her dangled from her ears.
In that moment, I knew a longing so intense I felt my knees buckle.
In that moment, I understood my father.
In that moment, I realized I was my father.