by Aiden Bates
Ozzy's mouth dropped open. "I mean we had a fight, but—" He clenched his jaw. "Damn it." He sighed. "Once this case is over, we're going to have to have a come to Jesus meeting, I think. It's obvious that there's a lot he just doesn't get."
Robles' eyes narrowed. "I think he gets just plenty, man. You're avoiding the house like it’s the plague. Everyone can see it. Again, not our business, but it's not like we can't see it. What's going on that's keeping you away from him?" He tilted his head to the side. "Do you think that he's being unfaithful? Because I can tell you, buddy, he isn't."
"No!" He pounded his hand on the desk.
"He's not going to be willing to wait around forever, man. I get that the honeymoon couldn't last forever, but remember that Ryan did actually dump me. We loved each other plenty, and he still dumped me because I was being an idiot. Don't let that be you. He took me back and I'm still trying to figure out why. Don't think, even for a minute, that you'll be that lucky."
Ozzy closed his eyes. "Look. It's just a matter of finishing this case, okay? If he can't manage to hold out until we finish this case, then he's not cut out to be mated to a cop." The thought clawed at him. He only wanted Pete. He needed Pete. He didn't want to lose him, but facts were facts. He was a cop, and that wasn't going to change.
Another week and a half after that confrontation found Ozzy sitting at his desk, as usual. He was fairly certain that they had the evidence they needed to convict Sierzant of racketeering, drug running, and a host of other charges. He didn't have the evidence that they needed to convict Sierzant of Tim Harbaugh's murder, and that was what he needed. Once he had that, once he'd arrested Sierzant for that one crime, he could back off and work on things at home.
His phone rang. "Detective Morris, Cold Case." He didn't bother to look at the caller ID.
"Ozzy." The woman's voice dripped with ice, venom, and spite. "This is Cynthia Norris. You know, Peter's mother, back before you abandoned him."
Ozzy looked up at the ceiling. "Lord give me patience." He picked his head up. "I haven't abandoned anyone. I'm working on a very important case right now, Cynthia. One that happens to involve your son, and an organized crime organization that's threatened your son twice now. I'd think that would arouse your interest—"
"Three."
"No, it was just two. Unless there was something that Pete just didn't bother to tell me." Had things deteriorated to the point where Pete just wouldn't tell him that he'd been threatened again?
Cynthia gave a bitter little laugh. "He can't very well tell you anything, can he? He's been taken."
Ozzy's entire world narrowed to the telephone. "What?"
"His nanny, Ruth, got away with the child. She said she heard gunshots as she was fleeing. She wanted to stop, but she had to get Marissa to safety. That was their plan all along. A plan," Cynthia said, with a terrible emphasis, "that Peter came up with all by himself, because he had to."
Ozzy couldn't get enough air into his lungs. "Where are you?"
"I'm at home, silly boy. With Ruth and my grandchild, should anyone want to speak with her." She hung up.
Ozzy's hand shook as he dialed the only number that he could think of: Lt. Devlin.
Within moments, the empty office was alive with activity. Oliver had still been in the office; he rushed upstairs to assure Ozzy that he and his most trusted colleagues would process the house to within an inch of its life. Ozzy knew that they would miss nothing, the fact that it was dark notwithstanding. Devlin showed up at the office not long after that, with Ed Amos in tow. Amos, like Ozzy, had still been in the office.
The others filed in slowly, since they were all coming from different places. Robles brought Ryan with him, because when they found Pete he was going to need a friend. Ryan was as big as a house by now, but he was as alert and quick-reflexed as ever. Langer showed up a little bit after them, in civilian attire; he'd been at a rock show, and drove straight to the office when he got Devlin's text. Tessaro came next, carrying two boxes of Dunkin Donuts coffee. "No one sleeps until Pete is found," he declared, and then he jerked his head at Ryan. "Except Pretty Boy." He grinned as Robles bristled.
Nenci was the last one to show up, but he showed up with something important. He showed up with a scanner. "We don't often listen in on radio frequencies in here," he grinned. "It's distracting. But I figured that we could make an exception now."
It made sense. They were dealing with dirty cops. Dirty cops would be talking to other dirty cops on the tools that they usually used. "All right," Devlin said, taking charge after one look at Ozzy. "Robles, you and Langer need to go out to the crime scene and check it out from top to bottom. I know Oliver's already out there. I want detectives out there too, not just technicians. Ozzy, you and Tessaro are heading out to Weston. I want you talking to the witness. Take Amos with you, I get the sense that he's going to need to hear some of that.
"Nenci, I want you to be here with Ryan, manning the radios. Can you promise me that you won't shoot one another or do I have to take your guns away?"
"No promises," Ryan told him, with a glower at Nenci. "But considering that this is for Pete, and Ozzy, and Marissa, I'll only shoot him in the ass."
Nenci flipped him off, but it was casual, and Ozzy staggered to his feet to follow Tessaro and Amos to Tessaro's car.
When they got there, the gate was locked, and they could hear the telltale spark of electricity that suggested that it had been electrified. "Huh," Tessaro said, raising an eyebrow. "Grandma's not playing."
"Do you have a security code?" Amos asked him.
"I don't." Ozzy shook his head. "She hates me."
Amos took his phone and called Cynthia. After he held the phone away from his ear to receive her aggressive greeting, he spoke. "Sorry to reach out this way, ma'am, but I had no other way to reach out. My name is Lt. Ed Amos, I'm here with Ozzy Morris and Pat Tessaro. We're here to speak with Ruth Venalainen about the abduction tonight."
He paused, and the gate opened just wide enough to admit Tessaro's car. It closed just after the bumper closed behind him, and Tessaro winced at the close call.
They parked in the circular drive, and an armed guard let them in only after seeing all of their badges. Cynthia met them in the overly elegant foyer, along with the eminently useless Angus. "So. Now you care." She sniffed.
"Not the time, ma'am. We have multiple departments working multiple shifts. No one sleeps until Pete is found." Tessaro gave her a little smile—still authoritative, but sympathetic. "We love him too. Not as much, of course, but we love him too. Ozzy tells me that you knew this was a possibility, that you planned for it. When was the subject brought up between you?"
Ozzy wandered away in search of Ruth and Marissa. He found them ensconced in a small, cozy nook between the stairwell and the kitchen.
"Oh, Ozzy!" Ruth looked up at Ozzy and sobbed. Marissa started in too, and Ozzy took his daughter into his arms and held them both close. He needed to get Pete back, and that was his priority, but he was a cop. His job was to help people, and they'd just been through a deeply traumatic experience.
Besides, Marissa was his daughter. If Pete was missing, it was Ozzy's job to take care of her.
Chapter Fourteen
Pete woke up to two things. He woke up to pain, pain that was on par with giving birth—although it was nothing like bringing a child into the world. And he woke up to pressure, pressure that felt exactly like four grown men sitting on his limbs. When his eyes flew open, shocked into wakefulness by pain and misery, he could see that he felt that way for a reason. Four large men were, in fact, sitting on his limbs.
The pain had a logical source too. Russ knelt down on the dusty ground beside Pete. He had a sharp knife in his hand, and a pair of tweezers. A younger man crouched nearby with a Mag-Lite aimed at the wound in Pete's arm, and Russ was using the tweezers to poke around inside his arm. "Oh good. You're awake." Russ rolled his eyes. "This is going to hurt. Hey Moab, bring some of that vodka over here, would you?"
"Vodka?" Pete croaked.
Russ smirked. "You wouldn't want to have me digging a bullet out of you without any anesthetic at all, would you?"
Some guy that Pete didn't know held the bottle to his lips and turned his head to look back at Russ. "Drink up, buddy. This is going to hurt."
Pete thought about resisting. He'd been kidnapped. He needed to keep his wits about him. At the same time, there was no element of choice here. Russ was going to operate, whether Pete consented or not. Taking something to numb the pain would be in his best interests. He drank until Moab pulled the bottle away.
His stomach was empty—it often was these days—and he was more than a little dehydrated. It didn't take long for the vodka to hit. He watched as Russ took the bottle and took a healthy swig from it himself before turning back to Pete's arm. "You know," Russ said, digging into the flesh of his arm again, "I don't like the way this bullet hit. I can't find it; I think it ricocheted off the bone. That's kind of weird."
"Is it?" Pete tried to remember his breathing exercises from the hospital. If he'd gotten through that, he could get through this.
"Trust me, I would know. I'm a professional. I was, anyway." He put his knife aside, on the dirty and dusty ground, and started to poke around at the wounds. "There we go. I was never a professional at this, of course. I was a cop. You do what you have to do as a cop, but field surgery isn't usually one of the job requirements."
"Mmm. Never hurts to be repaired. Prepared." Pete grunted as Russ used the tweezers to pull the bullet out.
"I guess you're not a big drinker." Russ chuckled.
"Not since I got pregnant, no." Pete closed his eyes. "Also I think I'm a pint or so low, maybe."
"Yeah. I think my genius partner over there might have nicked something important. Don't worry. We'll get you stitched up, you'll be good as new." He ruffled Pete's hair with his bloody hand. "We'll get you a sling for that busted wing, too."
"We will?" asked the guy holding Pete's right leg.
"Sure we will. We've got to hold him until the boss comes. There's no reason we can't make him a little more comfortable. I mean, his arm's fractured, Johnny. I could see the damn bone." Russ scowled at the man, and Johnny shut up.
Pete's gut tied itself into a knot. His arm was broken? A fracture was less awful than a full break, but it was still pretty bad. It would keep him from being able to pick up Marissa, or wash her, or change her. He'd have to hire a backup, temporary nanny to help Ruth, because it wasn't fair to Ruth to expect her to spend every minute of every day with the baby.
Who was he kidding? The chances of him getting out of this alive were slim to none. They might not intend to kill him now—otherwise they wouldn't have wasted the time and energy fixing his arm as best they could. Still, they'd cut his throat without a second thought if they thought it would get them something. He groaned and passed out just as Russ started the stitching.
When he woke up again, there was no more pressure on his limbs, and he wasn't lying on the floor anymore. He'd been moved to some kind of a beanbag chair. It was indifferently clean, but it was softer than the scuffed wooden floor he'd been on before.
He felt awful. He chalked the headache and vague nausea up to having consumed so much vodka the last time he'd been awake; he'd never been a heavy drinker and he hadn't drunk much at all since Marissa showed up. Drinking alone had never been his thing.
Would he ever get a chance to see Ozzy again? Would he have a chance to tell him that he loved him? Even if things didn't work out, even if Ozzy didn't love him anymore, he was still glad they'd been together.
Someone cleared his throat. Pete rolled over, only now realizing that his arm had been strapped into a makeshift sling, and saw Joe Sierzant standing near Russ. He struggled to rise, but found bracing himself to stand with only one arm to be more difficult than he wanted it to be.
Russ stepped in to help him up. Sierzant rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry my man shot you," he told Pete. "His orders were to bring you in alive and unharmed. He's being dealt with."
Pete did not want to know what that meant in the Sierzant organization. There were so many different possibilities. "Thank you," he said, squinting against the dim light pouring in through the dirty windows. "I appreciate that."
Sierzant grinned. "You're probably wondering why you're here."
Pete bit his lip. "My guess is that you're trying to use me to get Ozzy to back off. Because you didn't kill Harbaugh, and I'm inclined to believe you."
Sierzant pursed his lips a little. "Really? Why is that?"
Pete tried not to sway on his feet. "Honestly? Because you don't strike me as the kind of guy who would be ashamed of it if he had. Not that you'd go bragging about killing a cop in front of cops, that would be stupid. But you wouldn't spend as much time and effort on convincing Ozzy, or me, that you hadn't done it if you had. You're a very confident man, Mr. Sierzant. You're not ashamed of anything you do."
Sierzant laughed out loud. "Did I tell you that I like this guy or what, Russ?" He patted Russ on the back. "You're exactly right. How is it possible that you can be so right and your man can be so wrong?"
Ozzy. What was he doing right now? Did he even know that Pete was gone? Pete had no way to know how much time had passed, only that the vodka had burned its way out of his system. Was he looking for Pete, or had he delegated that responsibility to someone else in his obsession with Joe Sierzant?
"I don't know," he admitted. He met his kidnapper's eyes. "He hasn't been confiding in me about the case. I know he's found some things that he feels strongly about. You'd have to talk to him about that." He gave Sierzant a grin. "If you feel like giving me a ride back to Framingham, I could probably arrange something."
"I'm telling you, this guy, he's a pistol!" Sierzant laughed again. "You look tired. I'm going to let you get some rest. Russ, have someone find a blanket for my friend here, would you? The poor guy is shivering."
Russ winced and followed Sierzant away. Pete staggered over to the window. How could he be shivering? He didn't feel cold. He felt warm, uncomfortably warm.
The windows were the old-fashioned type, huge, heavy, and impossible to operate with one hand. Even if they hadn't been impossible to open that way, they had been nailed shut at some point when they put in air conditioning.
He stumbled back over to his beanbag. As near as he could tell, he was in an old school. The school clearly wasn't in use anymore; the desks had all been removed. When had the last class been taught?
He settled back into position on the beanbag. It wasn't big enough for his body, not being intended to be a bed at all, and he had to curl up like a dog to fit onto it entirely. Part of him was grateful just to be alive. They hadn't set out to hurt him, and seemed genuinely concerned about his welfare. The rest of him knew that it was all crap. If they were all that worried, they'd have brought him to a hotel or a motel instead of leaving him on a dirty beanbag in an abandoned school.
All of him could agree on one thing: he missed Ozzy, and terribly. Their last words to one another had been a fight, and that had been weeks ago. He didn't want to leave it this way. There hadn't been a chance to make up. They hadn't been around one another since then; Pete hadn't even seen his lover in passing. Maybe he should have gone into the office and forced Ozzy to pay attention to him. Ozzy would have been mad, but at least they'd have had that face off instead of fading away into nothing… and then this.
He wanted Ozzy. He wanted Marissa, wanted to see her tiny face staring up at him in wonder again. He wanted to feel her little fingers on his face, or grabbing at his clothes. He just wanted the warm comfort of family again.
Russ returned with a blanket. It was none too clean, and even stained here and there. He settled it over Pete with tenderness and a degree of affection that Pete wouldn't have thought he possessed. "Thanks," Pete whispered.
"Don't mention it," Russ murmured." He sat down beside Pete's beanbag. "I've got to say, Pete. I'm sorry about all of this. I w
asn't on board with the decision to bring you in. I was worried about you getting hurt." He sighed and rested his head on his hands. "It's like this. I know that taking Joe up on his offer was the wrong thing to do, morally speaking. And I know that I've done a lot of things that I'm not so proud of while I've been out here, you know? But I never went after a cop. I never went after a cop's family. I get that it's extenuating circumstances, but there are some lines you just cannot cross, you know?" He tugged at his collar and looked away. "And I ain't the only one that feels that way." He sighed. "I'm not comfortable with your fever, buddy. I'm just saying." He got up and left the room.
Pete looked back up at the ceiling. Maybe Russ was feeling something about this whole mess, but if Pete had a fever why wouldn't he bring him some water? Or maybe some kind of recording device, so he could record a last message to Ozzy?
