He’d slept well.
All night, Emma kept checking on his arm, his fever, and to give him pain meds. Now he felt a little more human.
Finally.
When Greyson came around to his side of the bed, he helped the man up. He dropped his good arm over his shoulders, and Greyson supported his weight.
Out in Dimitri’s kitchen, he helped him sit at the island, and made them coffee.
“How’s the arm?”
“Better. I can feel my fingers. Once we find my brother, I’m going to go in to see a doctor. I don’t want to risk it. I want to be able to go back to work at some point.”
“Well, I’m not hiring you back.”
He stared at him.
“I see.”
Greyson pulled down two coffee mugs. That was pretty much the tone he expected. It also meant the man wasn’t lying. He was feeling better.
That Dimitri Gideon chill was there.
“I don’t think you do. You and Kat are not employees, Dimitri. You’re our family. If you want to hover, do it on your time. We can get people to babysit us.”
“It’s all I really know how to do,” he said. “Please don’t replace me. I’ll replace Kat since she’s a mother now. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me keep my job.”
“It silences the demons?”
He nodded.
“Did you really kill your wife and child?”
His cheek twitched.
“Yes.”
“She betrayed you?”
He nodded and knew he needed to be honest with Greyson. While Emma had told him, she’d cleaned it up.
A lot.
It was typical Emma.
“I killed my father, and I was on the lam, I guess. I headed to Romania with the girls. I met Anastasia there. She was just some girl. She was barely nineteen. I figured I could hide in plain sight.”
“Did you love her?”
He shrugged.
“At first, no. It was a cover. I needed to keep my sisters safe, and hiding them in a normal family seemed right. She’d help raise them, and be a good mother to them. What did I know about being a mother? Mine left us with a monster.”
He filled his coffee mug.
“So, it was a marriage of convenience?”
“Yes, because in the countryside of Romania, you didn’t just shack up—unless you wanted an angry father killing you. I figured Anastasia was safe. Her parents were dead. She was working at a little shop.”
He listened.
“How did it go bad?” he asked.
“I was coming back from a job, and she betrayed me. Russians and Romanian’s don’t get along as a rule of thumb. Years of war will do that. Conquest will do that. She didn’t like me because I was Russian. I never hurt her, I took care of her too.”
“Then?”
“She reported me to the KGB. They were looking for me since I shanked my father. They came and got me. I was there over a month in that foul place. The worst part, other than knowing I was betrayed by Anastasia, was that the girls were alone with her. I didn’t know if she hurt them.”
He sipped his coffee and listened.
“They hurt you.”
He sipped his coffee.
“In ways I still can’t talk about, so, yes.”
Greyson knew the signs of someone being a survivor of sexual abuse. At first, he thought maybe his father, but now…now he got it.
“The soldiers?”
“Yes.”
He placed his hand over Dimitri’s.
His best friend stared down at it.
“I knew what the girls suffered. I lived it. I knew their pain, their degradation, and their agony.”
“I’m sorry. If I could carry it for you…”
He didn’t doubt that.
“When I finally was strong enough, I went home. I didn’t know she’d betrayed me—until I got there. The man who tortured me was there, paying for the girls. They were next. I couldn’t let them do that to my sisters—my girls.”
“What did you do?”
“I killed him the second he brought them out. Then I put them in his car, and I went in for her.”
Dimitri sipped his coffee, his hand shaking.
“I asked her why. She called me a filthy piece of Russian garbage. She told me she could never love me because I was nothing.”
She ran at me with a knife, and I grabbed her wrist. It twisted and went into her body. I stabbed her.”
“Dimitri, you defended yourself. That’s different than stabbing your wife in the chest. The way you tell it isn’t what happened. That’s not murder. It’s protecting yourself.”
“Is it? I could have let her kill me. I could have given up. I hurt her. To me, it’s the same.”
The man was so damn stubborn.
“As she was dying, she told me I impregnated her with my disgusting child. Then she died.”
Greyson knew he was suffering.
“She was likely lying.”
“And if she wasn’t?”
“You can’t pay forever. At some point, my friend, you have to let it go so you can live again. You’ve been trapped in that moment for so long. Let it go. It’s time to live.”
He laughed.
“Like with Marissa Pierce? I was nothing but kind to her, and she hates me. The first woman I’ve actually ever been attached to, and…”
“So…this Poppy.”
He laughed.
“You’re worse than your wife.”
“Hey! My wife knows people. She talked to her. If that woman wasn’t interested in you, she would have arrested you.”
“I still have to face her today. There’s time for that yet, I’m sure. I’m not meant to be loved.”
He smacked him in the head.
“HEY! I’m wounded.”
“You’re an idiot. If I wasn’t a man, I’d chase you down. You’re sexy.”
He stared at him.
“This has to be a dream.”
“Yeah, a nightmare. I’m not good at this shit. We drink a few beers, shoot some pool, and then call it a day. Only, I’m down a brother or two, and I don’t know how to do this.”
He got it.
“Is there anything redeemable about me?” he asked.
“Yes. You fight for justice, you saved your sisters, and you’ve saved our bacon more than a few times.”
“How will I know there’s someone out there for me?” he asked with sincerity. He didn’t know how to tell.
“She’ll save you.”
He laughed.
“Oh, well, that’ll never happen. I’m always the savior, and never the one being saved.”
“I’m serious. My wife saved me,” he said, touching his good shoulder. “If there’s a woman out there for you, she’ll beat back the demons, buckle in, and do the fight.”
He sipped his coffee.
That was a whole hell of a lot to ask any woman.
He was nothing but demons.
* * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *
When he got the call, he checked his phone and rolled out of the cabana. The sun was just coming up in Vegas, and he had to get downstairs.
Leaving his wife to sleep, he headed down, got dressed, checked out the whiteboard, and met Chris in the lobby.
He hugged him.
“I missed you,” Chris said.
He waved at the guards.
“We missed you too. She’s asleep.”
“I picked her up breakfast,” he said, holding a box of cupcakes. “The way to her heart is through a bag of sugar. I don’t doubt for a second that eating healthy went out the window as soon as you got away from me.”
He laughed.
Yeah, they’d been on a junk food bender.
“I plead the fifth. Anyway, she’s asleep in a cabana. There’s a pool upstairs.”
“Are we moving in? I like a pool.”
He laughed.
“No, Callen will be selling it after we’re done here. We don’t nee
d more houses. We have PLENTY.”
“Damn right.”
In the penthouse, he showed him their room, the bathroom, and the rest of the place.
“Where am I crashing?” he asked.
Ethan lifted a brow.
“Well, I can find you some space if here isn’t sufficient. I assumed you’d be joining us.”
He grinned.
“Just checking.”
“Go make coffee, and I’ll get her up. She’s going to be hungry. I don’t think we ate yesterday. I mean, I didn’t see her eat.”
He headed into the kitchen, and Ethan grabbed her clothes, sent a text, and headed upstairs to meet her.
He found her at the overlooking ledge of the building. She was standing there in her robe as she watched the sun come up.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, for a city that has so much evil in it that I can’t even fathom it.”
Ethan knew what was coming. His wife was finally ready to discuss what had happened. It was on her time, and it was about to begin.
“He destroyed her, Ethan. She was still a child.”
And here it was.
“Just when I think that there can’t be a sicker person out there, I run into an animal like Viktor Marchenko. He blinded her, violated her, fed her dog food—when he fed her—and then killed her like she was nothing.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“And in the end, before she was killed, you gave her love, compassion, and hope. You gave her a piece of you before she died.”
She wiped her eyes.
“But was it enough?”
“All gave some, and some gave all. A veteran coined that. Warriors give everything, and you, my love, are a warrior to your core. You gave her the best moments in the last part of her life.”
“I hope our children become teachers, artists, and construction workers. I hope they don’t follow us into this madness.”
He kissed her on the temple as they watched the sun come up over ‘Sin City’.
“I think we’re out of luck on that one. I’m pretty sure Cat will be an ME, Charlie is going to want to kick in doors like her mom, and EJ and CJ will be in jail as lifelong criminals.”
She laughed.
Elizabeth couldn’t help it.
“But there will be visiting hours, and a stocked commissary for snack time.”
Even he laughed.
“Yeah, I know. We had better keep working long enough to get them off the hook.”
His phone chimed.
“Who is calling you at six in the morning, Ethan?”
“I have a couple of presents for you.”
She was curious.
“Blackhawk,” he said, as he put it on speaker.
“Director, I have the address for you, and I also have the appointment made for this afternoon. He’s skittish, so be wary. Cleveland is a snake. If he suspects a Fed, he’ll bolt. We’ve been watching him for a while.”
He figured as much.
“Send me the address and time of the meet. Thank you, Doug. I owe you one. The FBI will have Homeland’s back when they need us.”
It was all about wheeling and dealing.
“Don’t mention it, Ethan. Really. You didn’t get this hookup from me.”
He hung up.
“What was that?” she asked.
He led her to the cabana with the clothes. “I’ll explain as you get dressed.”
“Out here?” she asked. “Uh, naked woman and no walls?”
“I know. It’ll fuel some sexy fantasies all day for me. Want me to take pictures?”
She laughed.
“Fine. Talk,” she said, as she got dressed.
“I sent a text to a friend at Homeland. What you just heard was an address and meet time for the gunrunner.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, all we needed was the name Dimitri gave us. It opened another door to finding Marchenko.”
“Dimitri who?”
He snorted.
“Life, as I’ve learned from the deputy director job, is seldom black or white, Elizabeth. It’s got lots of gray.”
“Is Doug, the man who just called, that gray?”
“Oh, yeah. And Grey is gray.”
“Of course,” she said, laughing.
“You know what I mean.”
She pulled on panties. As she stood there topless, he grinned maniacally.
“Cue the music.”
She pulled on her shirt.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice there’s no bra in this pile of clothes you brought me...”
“I know,” he offered, smiling like an idiot at her chest without a bra. It was a thing of beauty. His dick was already stirring.
“Well, then I guess the world will see my big, bouncy tits as I do an interview. In that world, there will be men too.”
And there was reality.
He sighed and pulled the bra from his back pocket.
“You ruined the fantasy.”
She pulled off the t-shirt, pulled on the bra, and then finished getting dressed.
“So, what’s the catch? Who is really going to be meeting Cleveland in Vegas?” she teased.
He snorted.
“Uh, no catch. You are. This is your job. My job is to make it easier for you to do your job. My job is to bail you out, and my job is to pray a lot.”
She kissed him.
“Your job sucks.”
“I have the best perks for this job, Mrs. Big Bouncy Tits. It’s worth it.”
That made her smile.
“Nice one.”
“I also have one more surprise.”
“What?”
“It’s in the kitchen in the penthouse.”
She couldn’t imagine what that would be. Well, maybe more donuts. She loved them.
It was a cop thing.
Sue her. They didn’t have dinner last night.
“Why all the gifts?”
He touched her face where she’d been scraped to hell and back by some rogue cop and a piece of rock after the building exploded.
“Because I love you, and it’s my job to give you what you need to be happy.”
She couldn’t love him more.
“Head down. I’m going to go shower and think of big, bouncy tits. I have to have some fun while I have meetings at the office all day. I’m going to help you find that inside man or woman.”
He didn’t tell her about Chris, and how he’d be also babysitting there too. Ethan didn’t trust the cops in this city.
They would make a strike at him to hurt Elizabeth.
She laughed.
“Okay, handsome. I’ll ride down with you.”
They headed to the elevator, and once inside, she kissed him for all she was worth.
It was warm.
Heated.
And showed him how much she loved him.
“What was that for?” he finally asked.
“That is my job. I’m supposed to love you, reward you with some kisses, and tell you that without you, Ethan Blackhawk, I wouldn’t do this. You’re the ONLY reason I can keep doing it. You’re my strength. Thank you.”
He kissed her on the tip of her freckled nose.
When they headed into the penthouse, there was someone making coffee.
“And that’s the person I’m going to kiss next,” she stated. “I need coffee.”
When Chris came around the corner, her heart skipped.
“Well, sweetness, pucker up.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, staring at him in disbelief.
“I heard you found some bodies and you might need your favorite ME to handle that for you while you hunt a sicko.”
She headed his way.
Then she jumped on him, and he caught her.
She kissed him next and then hugged him.
“This is the best surprise today,” she said, grinning over her shoulder at her husband. “You know me so well. Some men buy m
e shiny shit—like Callen. You give me an ME. That’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
“I brought you red velvet cupcakes,” Chris offered.
She began laughing.
“Today is going to be a damn good day!”
And she hoped she was right.
It wasn’t like it could get much worse.
Right?
* * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *
Precinct
Early
When he found his partner, she was sitting at her desk, and she was already having coffee.
“Well, the early bird gets the captaincy. Is that how it works?” he teased.
Yeah, she wasn’t so sure about that.
The whole word ‘captain’ pissed her off.
“About that, can we talk?” she asked, glancing over at Hunter Dietrich.
“Sure, what’s up?” he asked.
“Why do you think I was offered the captain job?” she asked. “Why do you think Raye asked me if I wanted it?”
He thought about it.
“Well, you’re a good cop. You have excellent gut instinct. In the field, you’re closing every case, and kicking ass. You do all the work. I just sit here and look pretty.”
She laughed.
“I know. I’ve carried you for months.”
“Well, you are damn good at your job.”
“So why take me out of it?” she asked. “I’m not a paper pusher. You do our paperwork, and you handle that kind of shit. Why would he want me to do that job?”
He shrugged.
“I guess only he can answer that.”
Then, it hit him.
“Are you over it?” he asked.
Yeah, she really was.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that the reason Raye offered it to her was TO GET HER OUT OF THE FIELD.
He was removing one of the last few good detectives in homicide.
He’d rode Chris Ford.
He quit.
He screwed over Emma Croft.
She quit.
He was screwing with Riley Henderson.
He was likely never going to get his job back.
Now her.
Why?
In her life, clues mattered, and this was a big, fat clue. The powers that be were pointing her at this, and they were waiting for her to figure it out.
“I don’t know if I can do it justice,” she said, not exactly lying. If Raye was crooked, she couldn’t help him.
True Justice Page 34
