“I hope you’re not out to hurt my friend, Lina. Because I’d hate to have to destroy your life.”
“Looking forward to seeing you try. Now go annoy someone else.”
SIXTEEN
A PAIR OF THANK-YOUS
Nash
Ilooped Piper’s leash around my hand and grabbed one of the two bouquets out of my vehicle’s cup holder.
“Come on, Pipe. Quick stop.”
We got out on the street just as Nolan pulled up to the curb behind me. I threw him a sarcastic salute, which he returned with a half-hearted middle finger.
I was actually almost starting to like the guy.
Piper led the way up the walk to the duplex. It was a two-story brick-and-vinyl building. Both units had a small front porch and flower boxes.
I headed up the three steps to the door on the left. There was a gray-and-white cat crammed up against the screen in the front window. Classical music filtered out to me. I gave the skeptical cat a wave, then I stabbed the doorbell.
Piper sat at my feet, her tail wagging with enthusiasm. It wasn’t as annoying as I thought it would be, having her at work with me. Her routine demands for attention kept me from spacing out over paperwork. And while she wasn’t comfortable enough to let any of the other officers pet her yet, she had started taking hourly trips around the bullpen once she figured out they had treats for her in their pockets.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door along with an annoyed, “I’m coming. I’m coming. Hold your damn horses.”
The door opened and there she was. My guardian angel.
Xandra Rempalski had thick, curly hair. It was black with strands of violet woven throughout. She wore it half up in a lopsided topknot while the rest cascaded past her shoulders. She had tan skin and brown eyes that went from annoyed to curious to recognition.
Instead of scrubs, she was wearing a denim apron with hand tools and loops of wire stuffed in the pockets. Long, silver earrings made up of dozens of interconnected hoops dangled from her ears. Her necklace dripped with tiny chains that formed a V between her collarbones. It reminded me of chain mail.
“Hi,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid I hadn’t done this a long time ago.
“Hi yourself,” she replied, leaning against the doorframe.
The cat lazily threaded its way between her bare feet. Piper cowered behind my boots and pretended she was invisible.
“I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Chief Nash Morgan, age forty-one, two gunshot wounds to the shoulder and torso, O negative,” she rattled off.
“I guess you do remember me.”
“It’s not every night a girl finds the chief of police bleeding out on the side of the road,” she said, flashing me a quick grin.
Piper chanced a peek around my boots. The tubby tabby hissed, then plopped its ass down in the doorway and started licking its butthole.
“Don’t mind Gertrude the Rude,” Xandra said. “She’s got attitude for days and no sense of propriety.”
“These are for you,” I said, shoving the bouquet of sunflowers at her. “I should have come by earlier to thank you. But things have been…”
She looked up from the flowers, the smile fading to a sympathetic grimace. “It’s tough. Seeing it on shift isn’t easy. I’m sure living through it is no picnic.”
“Feel like I should be kind of immune to it,” I confessed, looking down at Piper, who had once again glued herself to the back of my legs.
Xandra shook her head. “When you start being immune to it, that’s when it’s time to get out. It’s the hurt, the caring that makes us good at our jobs.”
“How long have you been in the emergency department?”
“Since I graduated with my RN. Eight years. Never a dull moment.”
“Ever wonder how long you can afford to care?”
Her smile was back. “I don’t worry about things like that. It’s one day at a time. As long as the good balances out the bad, I’m ready for the next day. It’s never gonna be easy. But we aren’t doing this for ease. We’re doing it to make a difference. Things like this? A thank-you from one of the ones who made it? That goes a long way.”
I should have gotten her a card.
Or something that would last longer than a pile of sunflowers.
But I had nothing but words. So I gave her those. “Thank you for saving my life, Xandra. I’m never gonna be able to pay you back for that.”
She hitched the bouquet up on her hip. Her earrings caught the light and glittered. “That’s why you just keep payin’ it forward, Chief. One day at a time. Keep doing good. Keep balancing those scales.”
I hoped to hell removing Dilton from duty was a step in that direction. Because right now, like everything else I did, it felt like not nearly enough.
“I’ll do my best.”
“You know, having something besides the job helps. Something good. Me? I date inappropriate men and make jewelry,” she said, sweeping a hand over her apron full of tools.
Right now, I felt like I didn’t have a damn thing besides a needy foster dog and a hole or two that would never be healed.
There was a resounding crash next door followed by a loud, long wail. I jolted, my hand automatically moving to my service weapon.
“Don’t,” Xandra cautioned briskly. She stowed the flowers and the cat inside and made a move to push past me.
“You need to get inside,” I insisted, nearly tripping over Piper as I hurried down the steps. Nolan was hustling up the walk, his holster unsnapped.
“Wait! It’s my nephew. He’s nonverbal,” Xandra explained, following me next door.
The details of her statement came back to me. She’d been running late to work because she’d stayed to help her sister calm her nephew.
I paused and shared a look with Nolan. I let her pass me on the steps.
“He has autism,” she said, letting herself in her sister’s front door.
“Keep the dog,” I said, tossing Piper’s leash to Nolan and following her inside.
My blood was still pumping, focus still narrowed. In the middle of the gray living room carpet was a man—no, a boy—curled on his side, hands covering his ears as he rocked and howled with a pain only he could feel. Next to him were the splintered remains of a toy brick castle.
“The cops? Really, Xan?” A woman bearing a striking resemblance to Xandra knelt just out of range of the violent kicks from the boy’s long, gangly legs.
“Very funny,” Xandra said dryly. “I’ll get the blinds.”
“Can I do anything?” I asked cautiously as Xandra quietly closed the curtains on the front windows.
“Not yet,” Xandra’s sister said over her son’s plaintive screams. “We have a doctor’s appointment in an hour. His headphones are charging.”
I stood inside the door feeling helpless while the two women worked in tandem to make the room darker, quieter. A protocol, I realized.
The wails soon quieted and the boy’s mother slid a weighted kind of cape over his shoulders.
Before long, he sat up. He was tall for his age, with dark skin and the spindly limbs of early puberty.
He glanced at the ruined castle and let out a low moan.
“I know, buddy,” his mother said, carefully sliding an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay. We’ll fix it.”