by Quinn Avery
“Mornin’, Captain Dorkus,” Redding sang, draping his arm over Stinger’s shoulders. “Did your mom sign your permission slip so you could come play with the big boys today?”
“Always with the mom jokes,” Mugsy snarled behind him.
Stinger pushed Redding away. “What’re you doing here?”
Redding cackled in the cocky way that got on everyone’s nerves. “Thought I’d tag along with you losers today. Maybe teach you a thing or two about how it’s done.”
As Brewer grabbed his helmet from his locker, he noticed Mugsy seemed on edge. His square jaw was firmly set, eyes steely. Beads of sweat lined his thick hairline when he slammed his locker door. No one who knew Redding really liked the guy, and Brewer was especially irritated that he was going out with them on his last watch.
But whatever was bothering Mugsy was something more complicated.
11
As Brewer navigated the response boat back to base following the interdiction, he decided he couldn’t have asked for a better last day of service. They’d recovered several thousand pounds of cocaine bricks from a single-engine vessel. Air support had transported the smugglers back to land while Brewer and his team had unloaded the drugs into the cutter.
It was the kind of successful day at sea that made Brewer glad he’d enlisted. As he started the hour-plus cruise back to base, he was just beginning to realize how much he’d miss it—especially the countless hours of sunshine and fresh air that came with the job.
At the hull, his three teammates engaged in some sort of heated debate that involved strained necks and wild arm movements. Suddenly Mugsy was cocking his arm back, ready to knock Redding out. Stinger nudged his way in between, face dark red as he shouted at each of them.
Brewer quickly eased the throttle back to idle. “What’s goin’ on up there?” he hollered.
Redding spun around, a brick of cocaine in hand. “Just doin’ a little business.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Brewer demanded, pointing at the contraband. “Why didn’t you turn that in with the others? Have you lost your damn mind?”
“This little guy is worth twenty K,” Redding reminded him. Smirking, he wiggled his eyebrows. “Only takes the misplacement of a few to earn a good living on the side.”
Mugsy and Stinger stood to the side, eyes cast downward. It was as if their consciences were heavy with guilt. What the actual hell?
“You’re talking about skimming contraband and selling it?” Brewer barked, his voice dropping a whole octave. “You’re insane.”
Redding’s smirk grew. “I’m not selling it, numbnuts. I’m just passing it along to other resources, and taking a forty percent cut.”
“Forty percent sounds pretty specific,” Brewer said. “Almost as if you’ve done that kind of thing before.”
“You thought I bought my sixty-six ‘Vette with a government paycheck?” Redding shook his head and released a belly-laugh. “Get with the program, Hawk. Half the guys on base are doin’ it. No one told you before now because they all think you’d narc.”
Heat ripped through Brewer’s chest. Damn straight he’d turn their stupid asses in. He took pride in serving his country. “Then why tell me on my last day? Why not keep that information to yourself?”
“Because we’re lookin’ for a mule on the outside.” Redding lifted his chin in Mugsy’s direction. “Your boy thought you’d be interested in earning a little extra with the wedding and kid on the way.”
Brewer felt a rush of betrayal when he sternly eyed his best friend. “You’re into this shit too?”
Mugsy’s chin dropped to his chest. “Someone had to pay for my nana’s bills, Hawk. Nursing homes ain’t exactly cheap.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Brewer grumbled, lacing his hands over his helmet.
“Hawk—” Mugsy started.
Brewer slammed the throttle down, almost knocking the others off their feet. He watched Redding closely as the traitor placed a call on the satellite phone. How could Brewer have been so blind to what was happening around him?
For the remainder of the trip, neither Mugsy nor Stinger would look Brewer in the eye. After years of working side by side with them, his best friend and teammate had become total strangers in the blink of an eye.
As Brewer moored to the dock on base, he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Redding stormed after him into the locker room. “You gonna narc on us, Hawk?” he demanded. “Be the asshole who lands his entire team in the clinker?”
Eileen from administration entered, one eyebrow arched. “Hawk, there’s a call for you in the front office.” The way her narrowed gaze skipped between the two men, it seemed she sensed the tension between them. “I’m sorry, was I interrupting something?”
“No, we’re done here,” Brewer stated. He shot Redding a dark look before heading out after Eileen. Once they reached her desk, she passed him the handset.
“Yeah?” Brewer answered, still harboring anger over his team’s betrayal.
“Brewer Hawkins?” a man’s voice grunted.
“Yessir.”
“This is Detective John Baker from P.S.P.D. You’re going to want to come down to PS General right away.”
Brewer immediately honed in on the uneasy feeling he’d had all day. Stomach clenched, he gritted his teeth and squeezed the handset. “Why? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your fiancée was brutally attacked.” The detective paused, forcing out a harsh breath. “It…doesn’t look good.”
12
A young blonde behind the reception desk in Papaya Spring General’s emergency room sat rigid when she spotted Brewer storming in her direction. One of her hands reached for a telephone while the other braced against the desk.
“Isabella Romano!” he shouted through the plexiglass, his fiancée’s name blazing through his throat like acid. “Where is she?”
The nurse held a finger up as she muttered something into the handset. Brewer shoved off from the desk, and raked his fingers through the patch of short hair on top of his skull. Ever since receiving the detective’s call, his heartbeat had throttled against his throat, and wouldn’t ease up. Paired with the massive pain in his chest, he was convinced he’d have a heart attack.
Isabella was his everything. When the detective told him she’d been attacked, he’d dropped to his knees, unable to pull in a breath. Eileen couldn’t get a response outta him, so she’d yelled out for help. When Mugsy came running in, Brewer snapped back to his senses and shoved his friend aside on his way out the door. He blew through several stop lights on his motorcycle, and went three times the legal speed.
If anything happened to Izzy—or, god help him—his son…
Hit with a violent wave of nausea, he bent over.
A rather serious looking man with a thick mustache approached Brewer. He wore a tweet sports jacket, and emitted body odor. “Mr. Hawkins? I’m Detective Baker.”
Brewer clutched one of the man’s pudgy arms. “Is she…” he wheezed, “…the baby…”
“Let’s go somewhere more private,” the man suggested, glancing around the packed room. People coughed and fussed all around them, but all Brewer heard was the wail of a small baby.
“Tell me now!” he demanded, gripping the detective harder. “What the hell happened?”
“We believe the perp entered the back door of your home without forceable entry,” the detective told him. “Either Miss Romano, your fiancée, knew the perp and let him inside, or the door was unlocked.” The man lowered his voice, eyes dark with sympathy. “I believe she was attacked while she was trying to escape. She suffered several blows to the back of her head with a metal weapon—possibly a hammer or a crowbar. The surgeon in charge said it’s too early to assess the overall damages. She’s in surgery now. They’re trying to stop the bleeding around her brain. If she survives, they’ll place her in a medically induced coma until the swelling of her brain has cleared.”
No.
Not his Isabella.
What kind of monster would attack a pregnant woman?
“What about the baby?” he whispered. He shook the man with all his might. “What about my boy?” he bellowed.
The detective solemnly shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. She miscarried before the first responders arrived.”
A mournful sound wrenched from Brewer’s chest.
Isabella remained in a coma for three months. In that time, Brewer only left her side when forced out by her sister or parents. The day the doctors came to tell the family that they didn’t believe she’d ever recover from her injuries, Brewer was physically removed from the premises by security.
“With patients in Isabella’s situation who have suffered a severe head trauma, there’s always a chance of recovery,” the head doctor told Isabella’s parents. “However, your daughter is not showing any signs of brain activity. Keeping her on life support at this stage may prove to be pointless. And there’s the issue of expenses incurred…the bills can become astronomical.”
That’s when Brewer had charged at the doctor, telling him he was wrong, and security was called.
Brewer paced the sidewalk across from the hospital, burning through an entire pack of cigarettes. He wouldn’t let them take his Isabella off life support even though the Romano family had already lost their house in foreclosure, and their immigration status was under question. He refused to quit on Isabella because he knew she’d never quit on him.
Once she was healed, they’d try for another child. One could never replace the son they lost, his namesake, but he’d try anything to fill the gaping hole in his chest that grew with every day that passed.
It was on him to come up with the money, and he needed far more than he’d make fixing cars in the civilian job he’d lined up before leaving the military.
While sucking on his last cigarette, he grabbed his phone from his back pocket, and dialed his closest friend.
“Hey, man,” Mugsy answered in a mournful tone, “I’m glad you finally called. Hawk, I’m so sorry to hear about Izzy and the—”
“Tell Redding I’m in.”
13
Long after the Romanos returned to Jersey, Brewer continued to visit his fiancée every single day for hours on end. He didn’t know what else to do with himself. He couldn’t sleep, and had no desire to eat. He couldn’t fathom going to work every day while Isabella fought for her life. Her attacker was still out there somewhere, and Detective Baker didn’t have a single lead.
Despite her parents’ wishes to let her go and honor her request to have her organs donated, Brewer refused to allow his beloved Isabella to be sliced apart that way. Not when she could still come back to him. The hospital staff treated him with kid-gloves, like he’d gone insane. Some days he wasn’t so sure he hadn’t.
The thing was, he’d been raised in a system that shuffled him from one abusive foster home to another, and he never understood the real meaning of love until he met Isabella. He couldn’t imagine a reason to go on without her. There was no one else who mattered that way. He’d do anything to keep her around, and he did.
The drug gig was pretty simple. Whenever a bust was made, Brewer would meet up with one of his still active team members at a set location downtown just after sunset. He’d deliver the package the next day to an open locker at the bus station, closing it with a new padlock. Then he’d mail the padlock key to a “Fred Cannon” at a PO Box in L.A. with the locker number scribbled on the back of the envelope.
As many times as he assured himself he was only doing it for Isabella, the guilt for betraying everything he believed in—including his prior involvement in the military—started to fester. He punished himself by never indulging in a single damn thing, from a meal out, to a comfortable place to live. He didn’t have the heart to move into the new house without Isabella anyway.
He took shelter under bridges, benches, public beaches—wherever he could sleep until he was chased away and had to find somewhere new. He’d run away from foster care enough times as a kid to know what it took to survive on the streets. He ate just enough to sustain his body, still losing all muscle mass and an extra twenty pounds. Whenever he saw a reflection of himself, he’d do a double-take.
He dutifully continued to play the part of a drug mule until eight months later when Isabella’s parents secured a court order to terminate life support. Brewer had mourned his fiancée so many times that he was completely numb when watching the nurses end her life. He continued to sit in her room long after they’d wheeled her away to harvest her organs. For the last time, he was forcibly removed by security.
That night he drank his weight in alcohol, and woke curled on a bench ten blocks away from the bar where he’d started. The bender continued for weeks on end, allowing him to evade all contact with Redding and the other impure Coasties.
Two months after Isabella’s funeral, he’d hit rock bottom. He didn’t realize how far he’d fallen until Mugsy happened to walk by the pier where Brewer had been squatting.
“Hawk?” his friend gasped. “Oh shit, man, is that really you?”
At ten in the morning, Brewer had already polished off a 12-pack of cheap beer. He was coherent enough to recognize Mugsy’s voice, and knew he had to get the hell outta there. There was no way he’d let his old friend see him that way. He reached over to scoop his bag from the sand, and fell on his side.
“Holy hell,” Mugsy muttered, hooking Brewer by the arm, and dragging him back up to his side. “Brother, you’re a mess, but it’s good to see you. Everyone’s been wonderin’ what happened to ya.”
“I’m done with Redding,” Brewer mumbled, shaking his head. “I’m out.”
Mugsy clapped Brewer’s shoulder. “We all are. Stinger and me quit after you went missing. We were worried Redding or whoever he answers to had done something to make you disappear. You scared us, man.”
It was the wake up call Brewer didn’t know he needed.
Mugsy became a constant companion for the next few months, encouraging Brewer every step of the way to quit drinking, and get his life back on track. What remained of Brewer’s share of drug money was donated to kids who were stuck in the system like he’d once been. He landed a decent job at an auto repair shop down the street from the motel where he’d been staying since becoming clean. A couple of years later, he started the paperwork to open his own shop, using what remained of his government paychecks.
He truly believed he had left his mistakes in the past.
Part III
14
Papaya Springs, California
October 27th
“For six years, I thought I’d never see Redding again,” Brewer finished, letting out a weighted sigh.
Bexley remained mute on their perch atop the quiet bluff overlooking the city. The sun had long since slipped beneath the horizon, and thousands of lights in Papaya Springs twinkled with the false illusion of merriment. The last time she’d fought the need to shed tears, real tears that involved a snotty nose and chest-wrenching sobs, was…she didn’t even know. Maybe at her mother’s funeral.
Brewer’s jaded past suddenly put everything into context. It was the reason he lived in the motel, and didn’t seem to own any valuable possessions other than his motorcycle. It was the reason he only seemed to have meaningless flings, and showed no interest in commitment.
He was punishing himself.
Just when he thought he had the family he’d always wanted, he’d lost his child and the love of his life at the hands of an unknown murderer. The tragedy had triggered a bout of temporary insanity, causing him to partake in something that went against everything he believed in.
A lit cigarette dangled from Brewer’s fingertips as he took a swig from the bottle of whiskey that Bexley had purchased at the convenience store down the road. “Don’t waste your pity on me, Squires. I made the choices that le
d me down this path.”
Bexley swallowed against the sorrow building in her throat. She understood the feeling of not wanting to be coddled. She also understood how lonely life could be without a supportive family. She’d always had Cineste, but even their relationship was strained for a time after Bexley ran off to New York.
“Life sometimes has a way of turning everything you know upside down,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. Tilting her head his way, she sighed. She wished she could tell him she was sorry for everything he’d been through, as it sounded dreadful. But she knew it would only irritate him. “Are you aware that the detective who worked on Isabella’s case is now Grayson’s lieutenant?”
“Small world,” he bit out.
“So this friend, Stinger…you think his death is related to Redding’s operation?”
With a stony expression, he bobbed his head. “I suppose everyone’s secretly fighting their own demons, but Stinger was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Never let much bring him down. He was always trying to bring everyone else up. Last time I talked to him was a few months back, and he’d just gotten married…they were trying to start a family.”
Bexley’s heartstrings tugged with the sorrow in his voice. “Have you kept in touch with Mugsy and Redding?”
“I haven’t had anything to do with Redding since Izzy died. Mugsy reaches out every now and then to make sure I’m still on the straight and narrow. He’s the one who told me about Stinger. He was a total wreck when he called.”
