Suppression: Laurel Springs Emergency Response Team #2

by Laramie Briscoe

  “Stay with me,” I tell him, as I see his eyes start to close. “Stay with me. We’re here with you, just stay with me,” I beg him. “We’ve got so much to do.” The words barely make it out. “A child, a relationship to figure the fuck out, a life to build, Nick. Stay with me, please.”

  Stella continues working on him as I keep my gaze pinned to his.

  “I’m sorry Kels, I’m so fuckin’ sorry that I’ve not let you in.”

  “Stop.” I put my fingers to his lips. “Stop, save your strength. We’ll figure this out somewhere besides the side of the road.”

  “We may not have that time.” His voice is insistent. “Tell Mom and Dad I love them. Love hasn’t been,” – he breathes deeply again, the sound rattling around in his chest – “an easy thing for me to do.” He coughs. I grip his hand tightly in mine. “But I love you.” I see tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. “I do. If I’ve ever loved anybody, it’s been you.”

  I’m losing my mind as I sit here, holding his hand, listening to him talk. “I love you too, but you don’t have to tell me all of this. We’ve got time.”

  “No, we don’t,” he argues. “Stella, thank you for being the best sister I could have ever asked for. I love you more than I could say. You’ve always understood everything without me having to say a word. The connection we’ve had since the day I came to live with you has been everything I could have asked for.”

  “I love you too, Nick,” Stella cries. “Now please stop talking. Save your strength.”

  “I just…” he exhales. “Just wanted you all to know.”

  As his head tilts to the side, the paramedics and other members of the Laurel Springs PD arrive. Both Stella and I are pushed away as Morgan and Blaze work on him.

  “He’s not flat-lining,” Blaze assures us. “He passed out from blood loss, but we’ve got to get him out of here. What do you all need?” She glances at Ransom who looks like he’s about to lose it himself.

  “His body cam,” he answers, the words strangled. “It’s on his vest.”

  “It was Ezra,” I blurt. “He told me when he still had a little energy left.”

  “Get it quick, and let us do what we need,” she tells him as she steps back.

  “Got it.” But I notice he takes a moment to grip Nick’s hand, giving his best friend all the strength he can. “We’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “C’mon.” I hear at my back. “I’ll take you over.”

  The one person I want besides Nick is right there holding me up. When I look up into the face I love so much, I officially break down. “Daddy…” I throw myself at him, letting his strong arms catch me. “Please tell me he’s not going to die,” I wail into his shirt and vest, letting the tears flow, letting the sobs out.

  He pulls me away from him. “Nick is one of the strongest men I know. He’s gonna flight, Kels. Y’all are gonna figure this shit out, and we’re gonna get the fucker who shot him and left him for dead on the side of the road like a dog.”

  “Damn right we are.” I hear my brother, who holds his hand out for the body cam. “Y’all go ahead. Ace and I are on this. Keep us apprised, but we’re gonna get this son of a bitch tonight if we can.”

  It’s a blur as I’m herded to my Dad’s car, buckled in and sitting next to the man who always makes me feel safe. It’s then I know I have to come clean, someone else has to know this secret besides Stella.

  “Dad.” I reach over, grabbing his hand with mine. He grips it tightly. “I’m in love with Nick,” I sob, coughing as I sniffle, trying to keep it together. “And he might die tonight. How do I handle this?”

  “Oh Kels.” He returns my tight grip. “Let’s get through the next few hours and then we can talk about it.”

  “Okay,” I nod, agreeing because I don’t know what else to do.

  “Just take a deep breath, sweetheart. We’ll get this figured out.”

  I do what I’ve done for most of my life. I let my dad take my fear, and I do my best to believe that only good will prevail.

  Twenty-Five

  Mason (Menace)

  It’s hard to watch my daughter fall apart in front of me, and even harder to watch the Keplers try and keep their heads about them as we all gather at the hospital in Birmingham The last time we were all here was when Ransom got shot, and I don’t think any of us have forgotten that.

  Kelsea looks like a ghost of herself. She’s always been my bright, vibrant girl who took after her mom. There’s no room she can’t light up, but right now her light is gone. It’s a reminder of what destruction the world can bring, even when it looks like you’ve got the world in the palm of your hands.

  I’m furious this happened to Nick as he was doing his job. As he was protecting the people of Laurel Springs. It makes me angry someone would come gunning for him because he was trying to protect a boy from a father who’s much more like a predator.

  “Thank you so much for keeping him.” I can hear her saying to Ruby. “Please don’t turn the TV on. He doesn’t know, and I don’t want him to know yet. I’d like to be the one to tell him. Love you.”

  “Renegade and Havoc are headed out to keep him safe,” I tell her. “Caleb and Ace are already tracking Ezra down. They will get him.” Maybe me being so positive about it to her will make me feel more confident about it, too.

  “I just don’t understand,” Whitney cries. “How did they get him from the highway? How could he not have seen?”

  Ransom, more pissed than I’ve ever seen him, answers the question. “Because he was fucking ambushed. He never even saw Ezra coming. I saw the bodycam footage. He was dragging shit out of the middle of the road, trying to make it safe for the public and he was fucking shot. Please tell me Caleb and Ace have found him.”

  “They’re trying.” I put my hand on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly.

  “They better not stop until they get him.”

  Stella puts her arms around Ransom’s waist. “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can, handsome. Be patient.”

  “It’s hard to be patient when my best friend is in surgery.”

  “Think about how I felt.” She rubs his chest. “Knowing you were back there and I couldn’t do anything to help. Imagine how he felt. We just have to be willing to let the doctor’s work.”

  My eyes shift over to where Kelsea sits with her back to the wall. She’s got her cell phone in her hand.

  “What’s going on?” I ask as I have a seat next to her.

  “He’d texted me earlier, asking if I wanted to go to the lake this weekend, and I didn’t answer him,” she cries, rubbing her cheeks. “I thought I would be able to talk to him when he got home, and this, she shows me an obviously personal picture of theirs. He’s got a smile on his face that I’ve never seen him have. It’s obvious he cares deeply for my daughter.

  “We took this the other day,” she sniffs. “When we were waiting to get a banana split at The Café with Darren. We realized we didn’t have many pictures together. We took a family one, and then Nick and I took this one.”

  “You both look so happy.”

  She glances up at me, her eyes wet. “We were, so much happier than I’ve ever been. I keep wondering if maybe this happened because we were happy. Like maybe people aren’t allowed to have things work out like you dreamed they would. Because I dreamed of this life with him, Dad.” She wipes under her eyes. “Even when he was so closed off I couldn’t even get a smile out of him, I dreamed of a life like this with him.”

  I hug her tightly. “I know you did, and he loves you, he’s going to fight for you.”

  She sniffles again, breaking every piece of my heart. “I hope so.”

  Stella

  Common sense tells me I shouldn’t be here, I should be keeping my stress level down. My heart says there’s nowhere else I want to be. Ransom sits down. Calmer now, he puts his arm around my neck, holding me close.

  “He’s gonna be okay, ya know that, right? He’s a stubborn son of a
bitch.”

  Tears streak down my face. “I know, I keep thinking back to that summer he wrecked the four-wheeler. Remember that?” I smile.

  There’s an answering smile on Ransom’s face. Not wanting to be in the here and now, I let my mind drift back a few years.

  “How bad is it?” I stand with my hands on my hips, looking at my new brother. I haven’t really called him that yet, but he officially took my last name two weeks ago.

  “Not bad.” He grimaces as he tries to get off the four-wheeler.

  “Liar, you can barely get off the dang thing. We need to go tell mom and dad.”

  “No!” he argues.

  “What if it’s broken?” I argue back.

  “It ain’t like it’s the first time I ever had a broken bone, Stella. It’ll just be the first time it didn’t come from the end of another person’s fist.”

  I’m quiet as I think about what he’s said, and it breaks my heart. “But if it’s broken, you’ll need to go to the hospital.”

  “Never have before.” He turns away from me, like he thinks this argument is over.

  “Dude, if I were you, I’d just listen to her,” Ransom echoes from up ahead where he’s stopped his four-wheeler. “She gets something in her head, and she doesn’t let it go.”

  “Thank you, I think.” I make a face at Ransom.

  Turning back to Nick, I try again. “Let me just call them and see what we should do.” I point to a gas station up the road. “They’ll let us use a phone since our cells don’t have signal out here.”

  “No!” he yells.

  “Why not? If you’re hurt, you should be seen!” I yell back.

  Neither Ransom nor I expect the sound that comes from Nick’s chest, it’s like the war cry of a wounded animal. His face is red, his chest pumping up and down.

  “I don’t want to give them a reason to send me away.” His voice is at a whisper as he finishes the statement. “I like it here, I like it with your family. I don’t want to move again.”

  Walking over to him, I take his very broken arm in my hands. “Who says you’ll have to leave? It’s not my family, it’s our family. Your last name is Kepler, and there’s nothing that’s ever going to change that. Got it?”

  He looks like he wants to argue, but I do what I do best, and that’s bulldoze right over a situation. Within the next fifteen minutes, we’ve called my parents and they’re on their way to take Nick to the Emergency Room.

  “Besides,” – I hit his shoulder with mine as we sit together, waiting on them to show up – “you’ll get a badass cast that everyone can sign, and you can make up how you hurt yourself. Ya know, seem really cool for all the girls.”

  He blushes, laughing along with me. “I’ve never had a sister before.”

  “I’ve never had a brother before either, but I think if I were ever given the option to choose one, it would have been you.”

  Ransom grins at me. “We didn’t get to ride four-wheelers the whole rest of that summer, but I can remember going to Six Flags, and they let us in the front of every line because he had a cast. He thought he was hot shit.”

  “We all did,” I remind him, putting my hands on my stomach. “We even got free food out of it.”

  My laughter fades into tears.

  “Babe, what’s wrong?” he asks, cupping my cheeks, those serious eyes of his searching mine.

  “What if he’s not here for this baby? What if I have to do this without him?”

  “Don’t even think like that.” Ransom hugs me tightly. “Remember the story of your mom being pregnant with you and Trevor getting hurt? This shit has come full circle. Things will be fine.”

  As I look up at the patient board, the display telling me that Nick is still in surgery, I hope Ransom’s right. I can’t do any of this without the boy who means so much to me.

  Twenty-Six

  Caleb

  If I could legally kill this son of a bitch, I would do it. I’ve watched the footage from Nick’s body cam twice now. Both times I’ve fought not to puke. This man has no regard for human life, and those are the miserable pricks that deserve to spend their lives behind bars.

  They don’t get to have the love of a woman, the warmth of a bed, the freedom to move about as they would like to, and to be honest they don’t fucking deserve it. As I hear Nick grunt when he gets hit by the bullet, I feel sick again.

  “I can’t watch this shit anymore, I’m ready to kill this motherfucker.”

  Ace clears his throat as he secures his bulletproof vest, then puts a jacket over it, proclaiming he’s a member of the Laurel Springs Police Department. Looking at him, I know he’s just as ready to put an end to this as I am. “Where we going first?”

  “Dumbass like him? He’d go straight home.”

  “You think so?”

  I nod, securing my vest, making sure my side arm is ready to go. “He won’t have anyone to run to. Chances are because he kept Darren isolated, he’s also kept himself isolated. None of us know what we’re facing though, that means he’s had plenty of time to load up. SWAT will back us up,” I tell him. “But I want him. When we take him down, I want to cuff this bastard. I’ve never seen my sister so upset, and this asshole is going to take the blame for that.”

  Minutes later, we’re flying down the streets of Laurel Springs. Ace drives, because I don’t have it in me to not act like a fool just so we can get there faster. Part of me wanted to argue with him, the other part of me knew it would be better for me to sit here and stew.

  “Ya know.” Ace slows to take a turn, accelerating as we come out of the curve. “When Ryan and Whitney first talked about taking a foster child, I thought they were insane. It’s weird, but up until that point in my life, I thought all foster kids were inherently bad with chips on their shoulders.”

  “I think we all kinda did, but Ruby offered to tutor him, and we got to know him better. He was smart as hell and all he needed to be given was a chance to succeed.”

  “He grew up to be a damn good man,” Ace agrees.

  “And for him to be ambushed like that?” I hit my fist against the dashboard. “Pisses me the fuck off.”

  SWAT has arrived, along with over half of the Laurel Springs Police Department. Grabbing the microphone for our outdoor system, I take a deep breath and call him out.

  “Ezra Metcalfe, you’re surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”

  All of us are prepared for the bullets that buzz by our heads. Going for a bit more cover, I say the same words again. This time we’re shot at, but I distinctly hear a fuck you!

  “He won’t come out.” Ace looks at me. “He’s gonna make us go in there and get his ass.”

  “Should we breach?” the SWAT commander questions.

  “I don’t think so, we don’t know what he’s got in there. Maybe we draw him out? If we wait, he’ll probably come out on his own.”

  Ace’s eyes get wide as he points his gun toward the house. “Or maybe he comes out with guns pointed at us.”

  I turn, looking to where Ace’s gaze is fixed. There are a number of people telling Ezra to drop his weapon, and when he fails to do so, deadly measures are taken.

  “Fuckin’ waste.” I punch my vest because it’s just all so damn unnecessary. “Call it in.”

  Kelsea

  “It was suicide by cop,” Caleb tells me. “He gave us no choice but to shoot him, and I say that as a person who really wanted to watch him pay for what he did to Nick.”

  Regardless of who this man is, Darren’s now lost the only flesh and blood he’s ever known. “Can you bring Darren to me?”

  “Yeah.” He sighs heavily into the phone. “He’s asleep but I’ll grab him and drive down there. All of this should come from you since he’s comfortable with you.”

  “Thanks.” I disconnect the call, wrapping my arms around my waist. How the fuck am I going to do this? How am I going to tell Darren his father tried to kill Nick and now his father is dead?

  Arms wrap aroun
d me and I rest my head on my mom’s shoulder. “I don’t think I’m strong enough for this, Mom.”

  “You are, you’re a Harrison through and through. We rise to occasions like this.”

  “It’s just so senseless, I want to scream, cry, and beat anything that’ll let me get this damn aggression out. It didn’t have to be like this. It’s so unfair.”

  “Life isn’t fair.” She hugs me tighter. “If there’s one thing I hope I’ve taught you, it’s that. But just because it’s not fair doesn’t mean you have to stoop to their level. You can handle this with your head held high.”

  “How? All I want to do right now is crawl in a hole and never come out.”

  “You do that, Kels? And they win.”

  She turns me around to face her. “You go in that bathroom, compose yourself, and fix your face. You’re the one person he’ll want to see when he gets here, and you have to pull it together, baby girl. Once you get through telling him, we’ll sit together and pray as a family, because that’s what we are.”

  All I want to do right now is curl up in a ball and never face the world again, but I know my mom is right.

  “Kels!” I hear his voice before I see his body running toward me. I catch Darren in a hug, squeezing him tighter than I’ve ever squeezed anyone else. “What’s happening?”

  I know he’s probably heard other people talk, and I know it’s up to me to be the one whose honest with him, the one he can ask questions of, the one who can wipe his tears if he has them. Taking him to the edge of the waiting area, I sit him down, then turn to face him.

  “Nick got shot tonight.”

  “By my dad?” he asks quietly, his eyes wide.

  There’s no point in lying to him. “Yes, by your dad, and I have some information about your dad. When they went to arrest him, he tried to shoot the cops. They ended up shooting him.”