Dream Chaser - SETTING

by Ashley, Kristen

  Boone straightened, turned and swept his light over the bodies.

  They’d staged a kill-or-be-killed scenario.

  Covering their bases.

  But also making Bogart, who was known to be the bigger asshole of the two, out to be the ultimate bad guy.

  No hero in the end for Kevin Bogart.

  Bogart had a gun lying close to his hand. The look of the scene, he’d died holding it.

  Chest shot.

  Straight to the heart.

  He was flat on his back.

  Boone turned his attention.

  Mueller was a mess.

  He approached the body and squatted to its side.

  Headshot, right side, gun was a .45, which was why Bogart was on his back. The force of that caliber of a bullet in this small of a space knocked him right there, obliterated his heart, he was dead before he hit floor.

  Mueller had done himself sitting on the floor directly opposite his partner, leaning against the front of an armchair, legs out in front of him, not crossed. His gun hand had dropped with the gun still in his grip. It was loose, but it was there, to his side.

  Boone did another sweep with his light.

  Wall behind Mueller, bullet hole. Just in case anyone missed the message that Bogart was an asshole, he’d fired on his buddy not to dispense justice for the brother they’d taken out. Instead in an attempt to save his own ass.

  Boone did another sweep, to the side. Blood spatter and brain matter went six feet across the room, all over the floor, low on the wall.

  Killed sitting on his ass.

  Died keeping his seat. What was left of his head was lolling to the side, his body was slumped, but upright.

  Not cross-legged. Legs straight.

  Crossing his legs would not keep him upright after taking that shot, but his legs weren’t even crossed.

  There was no support to hold him upright.

  “How’d he not fall sideways, taking a forty-five?” Boone asked.

  Eddie got closer and squatted.

  Hawk got closer and did the same.

  To avoid the spatter, they were all in a tight huddle at one side of the body.

  Mag approached but loomed over them with his cell phone held up but pointed down on the body.

  “There. Shirt,” Mag grunted.

  They all focused on his shirt.

  Button down. Cotton.

  Little wrinkles at the chest. Barely perceptible.

  Like someone had the material in their grip.

  “Could have been a struggle between him and Bogart,” Eddie noted.

  “Could have been someone holding him steady to take a bullet,” Hawk noted. “Hunker down the right side of him, spatter would not be affected.”

  Mag moved his light. “No scuffs on the carpet.”

  “Unconscious?” Boone asked.

  “I wouldn’t sit still for someone to plug my temple with a forty-five,” Eddie said.

  “Why would they hold him up?” Mag asked.

  “Maybe not unconscious. Maybe incapacitated,” Hawk remarked, straightening to stand and asking Eddie, “You gonna call this in?”

  “Hank is waiting five minutes away for my call to come in hot. And that should have happened about ten minutes ago,” Eddie answered.

  Hawk nodded and did a hand gesture that meant Mag and Boone moved.

  “We’ll talk,” Boone heard Hawk say low to Eddie.

  “Yeah,” Eddie agreed.

  At the back gate, Hawk ordered, “Rendezvous, office,” before, in different directions, they all melted into the night.

  * * *

  “The widow and the rat.”

  They didn’t bother with the conference room.

  Mo and Axl had been called in and they were all standing at the front of the workstations when Hawk started it after Axl, the last, showed.

  Boone didn’t verbally question Axl being there.

  But it made him antsy.

  “The rat got word out about our meeting with Mamá Nana. Crowley’s widow shared about Eddie and Hank and Ally,” Hawk went on.

  It made sense, because not only would no one know Hawk’s team was making moves, not even if they were watching and doing that closely, there had been no heat applied.

  The bad guys probably knew three things.

  The first, after Bogart and Mueller visited Ryn, the players met at Hawk’s offices.

  The second, Mamá Nana arranged a sit-down.

  And last, Lynn Crowley got some visits.

  There might be murmurings about Slim and Mitch asking questions as well.

  But it was Hawk’s reputation, Lee’s, maybe even Chaos helping at Ryn’s house, that got panties in a twist.

  Enough they killed two of their own.

  They’d drawn attention.

  They were now deflecting it.

  “The good news is, Ryn’s off the hook,” Hawk said.

  There it was.

  The reason Axl was there.

  “You sure of that?” Axl asked.

  “Maybe they didn’t know the extent of Cisco’s desire to keep her safe, which got their puppet dead, and that exposed them,” Hawk said by way of answer. “Boone and Ryn were new at the time, so maybe they underestimated Boone’s commitment to his woman, which got our protection, and they’re not stupid, they know it got our attention. Either way, or both, they’re not gonna be that stupid again.”

  It made sense.

  There were still going to be precautions.

  “But we’re going to take precautions,” Hawk spoke Boone’s thoughts and trained his eyes on Boone. “Panic button with her at all times. Also ones installed in her apartment. We put a tracker on her car. We do some training sessions with Dorian at Smithie’s. And she keeps you in the know about where she’s going and how long she expects to be there.”

  Boone nodded.

  That worked.

  “This means Cisco knows he might have a rat, and he didn’t shut him down,” Mag noted.

  “I wouldn’t either,” Hawk said. “I had a crew loyal to me, I wouldn’t start picking them off, shaking the commitment of the ones I got, and unnecessarily thinning out my team. I’d put cheese on the trap to make sure I got the one who needed got. And we’ve underestimated Cisco in the past. This man wants us to think he’s a thug. He wants everyone to think he’s a thug. He’s not a thug. He’s decisive. He’s patient. And he’s smart. He’s put out some cheese. It just remains to be seen if he catches the one who ate it.”

  “That puts Mamá out there,” Boone said.

  “Mamá knows where she is, but more, Cisco knows he put her there so if you think he went the extra mile to keep Ryn safe, you can imagine where he’d go for Mamá,” Hawk replied.

  “So you think Mamá’s in the clear too?” Axl asked.

  Hawk shook his head. “Not exactly. What I think is Mamá can take care of herself. But she’s in the know of everything we find out so she can best do that.”

  Word on that.

  “Do you have the story of how Cisco and Mamá got where they are?” Boone asked.

  “I didn’t, but I asked, and Mamá was feeling chatty, because I think she wanted me to know what makes Cisco. So now I know it’s got to do with a girl named Cristina who is no longer whoring for her drug dealer boyfriend, but instead she’s at Columbia, majoring in literature,” Hawk answered.

  “Jesus, Columbia. Mamá’s taking it up a notch, handing out degrees to one of the best universities in the country,” Axl muttered.

  “Mamá isn’t the one paying her tuition or her rent,” Hawk shared.

  “Jesus,” Boone and Axl both said.

  “Is this girl Cisco’s?” Mag asked, not masking the hope that this would mean Cisco’s focus would be off Evie.

  “No, she’s just a girl who needed someone to give a shit,” Hawk replied. “And Cisco did that.”

  Well.

  Jesus.

  And again, Boone was fighting the feeling he might like this guy.
<
br />   “So he does a solid for Cristina…” Boone let that trail.

  Hawk picked it up. “Mamá doesn’t let a good deed like that slide.”

  “She gave him what he needed to take top of the heap,” Boone surmised.

  Hawk nodded, but said, “She didn’t share that. But it doesn’t take a leap to get there. After assisting in knocking down Valenzuela, who had tendencies she could not get on board with, she set a man she can respect, as much as she does anyone like Cisco, a man who has some of her sensibilities, the important ones, in a place of power. And after she does, he owes her.”

  “It could be her downfall,” Mag said.

  “I could be wrong, but my guess is, they cleared Cisco, they’ll lose interest in Mamá if they ever had it in the first place,” Hawk replied. “No one knows the extent of her network. They just know it’s extensive. I get her not wanting any heat. But I get them steering clear of someone like her, not only because of the questions that would be asked if she was targeted since she’s never done anything overtly illegal, or the shit she could maneuver if they failed and she acted in retribution, but the fact there might be a riot someone has to answer for if she was taken out. But bottom line, they made bold moves that fucked them up, and I see indications tonight that they’re going to take a serious change of direction.”

  “Doing that making a pretty fuckin’ bold move,” Mo pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Hawk agreed. “But you can’t deny there’s a finality to it.”

  The men nodded because none of them could deny it.

  “I want bugs in Lynn Crowley’s house, and I want eyes on it,” Hawk ordered.

  In other words, Ryn was safe, Cisco in the clear, but the team wasn’t giving up.

  That didn’t sit great with Boone.

  “On it,” Mag said.

  “You don’t think Lynn Crowley is working for them,” Axl put in, doubt in his voice.

  “I think she’s scared as fuck and under their thumb,” Hawk told him.

  “Hang on with this,” Boone cut in, feeling some weight that his boys were doing this partly on their time, partly on Hawk’s dime, and if the bad guys could be believed, Ryn was safe. “We’re not pulling up stakes?”

  Hawk locked eyes with him.

  “I got two men who mean a lot to me who’ve spent their entire careers dealing with some seedy shit for the betterment of society. And this kind of thing muddies anyone holding a badge. But more, it’d crawl deep into my gut I knew there was a possibility that every day I went to work next to a piece of shit. Slim has dealt with the dregs, he knows how low humanity can go, he lived with it undercover. He’s keeping his shit on this. But it’s torturing Mitch. And I want it stopped.”

  Boone got that.

  Totally.

  He lifted his chin.

  “I want you to establish a connection with Cisco,” Hawk continued. “I’ll give you a safe phone. I doubt this is done for him. He’s not going to sigh with relief, get back to business and ignore that they targeted him. And we can’t control him. We might have the same goal, but we’d be working it at cross purposes. We need to see if he’s in to work together. If he is, he could be an asset.”

  Boone did not question this.

  They’d worked with far worse.

  Hawk dismissed them, and Boone left with a safe phone.

  He looked up the number in his own cell, put it in the safe one, and called Cisco on his way home.

  “Let me guess, you had an interesting night,” Cisco said by way of answer.

  “Take it the word’s out.”

  “You take it right. News crews and everything, my man. Cop on cop murder suicide? Big shit.”

  “So you’re in the clear,” Boone told him.

  “Say what?” Cisco asked.

  “Message sent, you were framed. Suicide note was a very long confession about Crowley, Morton and what happened to Ryn.”

  “Well…shit,” Cisco said slowly.

  “And from here, Hawk wants to work together.”

  “Well, shit,” Cisco repeated, this time with humor.

  “We’re not feelin’ real amused by any of this, Cisco,” Boone told him.

  All humor left his voice when he asked, “You think I am?”

  “I think shit needs to get done and the best way of doing it is not chewing on opposite ends and hoping we meet at the middle.”

  Cisco took his time replying.

  Then he said, “Obviously, I have some things to sort out.”

  Obviously.

  “Then we’ll have a sit-down,” Cisco finished.

  “Obliged,” Boone replied. “And last thing, consider whatever debt you think you still owe paid to Ryn.”

  It had not been lost on him Cisco’s note mentioned “partial” payment.

  “She okay?” Cisco asked.

  “She’ll be a lot better when I share my news when I get home tonight.”

  “Living together,” Cisco mumbled. “That was fast.”

  Not officially.

  But the new shine of meeting someone you connected with who made you laugh and made you feel deep and was a great fuck was not wearing off.

  And Boone knew it never would.

  Considering their volatile start, he still thought they should have their own space to retire to their corners if they had the kind of situation that they needed to do it.

  But in a few months, yeah.

  He’d make moves to make it official.

  A few months after that, he’d make more moves to make it very official.

  “Take care of her, Sadler,” Cisco demanded.

  “Like you have to tell me that,” Boone replied. “We’re done. Chat soon.”

  And then he hung up.

  The rest of his drive home wasn’t long, but he did it thinking a little about Kevin Bogart, who had been married twice, divorced twice, and had three kids, two with the first, one with the last, none of them who lived with him.

  But Lance Mueller had been married for eighteen years, that appeared to be going strong (until that night), and had two kids, both in high school.

  Now they had a dad who was a dirty cop, but he probably didn’t take freebies from prostitutes, and even if Hawk’s crew cleared up this mess, Mueller’s wife and kids would probably live the rest of their lives thinking that he not only did that, but he also killed his partner.

  And this got Boone to wondering what the other soldiers in that crew were going to think of all of this.

  You get out of hand, you’re not only dead, but your memory is tainted in ugly ways, both publicly, and worse, to those you love.

  It went back to what Hawk said about ferreting out a rat and not losing the loyalty of the ones who were just that. Loyal. Finding the weak link at the same time keeping the team strong.

  His crew had no idea how big this was, who was involved or even what they were involved in doing. The only remotely visible soldiers were Mueller and Bogart.

  That meant there was someone with brains behind this operation.

  But tonight was a mammoth misstep.

  Dramatic shit like this almost always heralded the beginning of the end.

  Which made Boone wonder if Hawk and he weren’t, in a way, wrong.

  They weren’t hunkering down to weather a storm, only to come out stronger.

  But instead, whatever they were doing, it was close to being done. They were going to get what they wanted. And it was worth a desperate move to protect it.

  He’d talk to Hawk about that tomorrow.

  Now, he was home, and after he parked and jogged up the stairs to get to her, he found Ryn as suspected.

  Awake, curled on the couch, and watching TV.

  Probably the ID channel.

  “You okay?” she asked immediately, uncurling like she was going to put her feet on the floor and come to him.

  “I’m fine, baby,” he answered, wasting no time in getting to her so she wouldn’t get up.

  “Everyone okay?” she went
on, her eyes intense on his face.

  “Everyone’s good.” He sat down next to her, slouched, put his feet on the coffee table and pulled her into his side. “But I have some good news, and some weird news.”

  “Give me the weird news first,” she bossed.

  “Mueller and Bogart are both dead.”

  She gasped.

  “And before you jump to it like I did, it wasn’t Cisco. It was a murder suicide.”

  Another gasp.

  “Mueller confessed,” he told her. “To everything. Cisco’s in the clear. You’re safe to go about your life like normal, with some precautions,” he added so she’d be prepared when he shared what those cautions were.

  “Murder suicide?”

  He nodded.

  “Really?” she pushed.

  He shook his head.

  “Oh shit,” she muttered.

  “In case you missed it, the good news, it’s done for you,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, and I got the weird news. You’re just holding back on the bad news, which is that it isn’t done for you.”

  Funny. Loyal. Generous. Gorgeous. A sweet fuck.

  And smart.

  That was his girl.

  “Two of Hawk’s best buds are cops, sweetheart,” he reminded her.

  “I get that,” she said.

  He pulled her around so she was mostly in his lap.

  “But it’s done for you,” he repeated. “You can go back to Smithie’s and you can strut around in your ridiculous fur coat and we’ll figure out a schedule for the house and if we wanna hire some guys to finish it so you can get it on the market and start looking for your next project and life will just be life.”

  “Life will just be life,” she parroted. “That’s probably the part that’s going to be weird.”

  He kissed her briefly, pulled away, and said, “We’ll get used to it.”

  She smiled at him, he saw relief there, and that made him glad.

  He also saw something deeper there, and that meant she felt the same as Boone did with the depth of her emotions for him, and that didn’t surprise him. He’d been seeing that for weeks.

  He still liked it a fuckuva lot.

  And last, he noted that she’d put on a nightie, but she was still wearing her collar.

  Which meant the next kiss he went in for wasn’t brief.

  He picked her up during it and carried her to bed.

  That was the end of the effort he intended to expend.