by L A Witt
“No? Do you already have a therapist?”
“I don’t need a therapist.”
Dr. Franks sighed. “I’m not trying to insinuate anything negative by asking, Ryan. For a person with your job—with our jobs, jobs that engage with life and death situations on a regular basis, therapy is a useful tool. Doctors have higher rates of suicide, substance abuse and alcoholism than the general public.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth.
“Again, I’m not accusing you. I’m referring to general statistics, numbers that have been proven over and over again. I bring this up with every doctor I treat, not just the ones who have been through things like you have. But,” he pushed up his glasses with a little sigh, “given that in addition to your stressful work, you’re dealing with the aftermath of a violent attack, it would be remiss of me not to suggest getting some help. Someone to talk to without fear of judgment.”
“I have someone to talk to.” It wasn’t even a lie—I had Mark.
Dr. Franks was already shaking his head, though. “A professional, Ryan. It’s important to have a support system that includes friends and family, but relying on them for the entirety of your emotional well-being can be dangerous.” He handed me a card. “I see the on-staff psychologist once a month, myself, but the practice listed here is also excellent, and close by.”
I didn’t even look at it. “Thank you. Are we done?”
He nodded. “We’re done. I’ll see you back in a week.”
“Six days.”
“I’ll make sure you’re on the schedule.” He left, and I hurried as fast as I could to get back into my clothes. It wasn’t fast at all—I groaned like an old man every time I had to bend more than ten degrees in any direction, and my head was pounding again—but I was anxious to get out of there.
Therapy. Ugh. It was one of the dark secrets of medicine, that doctors were often in more need of care than the people they were seeing. Get some therapy. Easy to say, not so easy to do. I was a physician, for crying out loud. I was a healer. I should be able to help myself. Save the therapy for the people who would benefit from it—not me. I knew how to cope.
Yeah, like you coped so well yesterday before Mark showed up.
I told my mind to shut it, finished sliding on a pair of ratty loafers—no sneakers for me, I wasn’t messing around with laces right now—and got out of the office as fast as I could. My rideshare was waiting for me in the parking lot. She helped me step up into the back of her comfortable SUV, which was slightly embarrassing, then headed toward my address.
I let my eyes close and my mind wander as she drove. Dr. Franks did have a little bit of a point, maybe, about the importance of self-care for doctors. I’d seen plenty of burnout in my peers before, but that wasn’t what was happening with me. I wasn’t burned out, I loved my job. I loved it so much I wanted to go back to it as soon as possible.
Keep telling yourself that.
Therapy had been wielded like a threat in my grandparents’ house. Every time one of us did something they didn’t like, we’d get some variation of, “You’re a nutjob, you’re crazy, I’ll send you to a shrink and they’ll prove it, you need more help than I can give you, you need more help than anyone can give you.” It was awful on my sister and me, to be told that we were weird and strange and unfixable, and that if my grandparents sent us to a psychologist or therapist they might prove it, and then…
Of course they never sent us. Of course it was just another empty threat. It was odd, the things that stuck with you from your childhood.
“Here you are, sir.”
Ah. Home. In my empty driveway, since Ronnie had tucked my car into the garage for me before taking me to my appointment earlier. When I could finally drive again, I didn’t feel safe coming out here to get in the car. Fuck. I hated feeling unsafe in my own stupid driveway.
“Sir?”
“Right. Sorry.” I paid my fare, got out of the car under my own power, and very slowly and carefully walked up to my front door. I dreaded entering it a little less this time around. The blood had been completely washed away by the rain, and I might be alone now, but I at least had plans to talk to Mark later. The prospect of it warmed me right up. The thought of seeing him as well put an actual smile on my face.
I put my key in the lock and turned, pleased that it opened so easily. I stepped inside and toed my shoes off at the door, then eased one arm out of my jacket as I turned to look down the hall.
I frowned. The rug was rumpled. The weird, lumpy, bizarrely comfortable throw rug my decorator had chosen for my front hall was twisted on one side, like someone had tripped over it and not bothered to straighten it out again. And was that mud on my…
Realization struck me like another foot to the stomach. My breath caught in my throat as I lurched back toward the door, one hand reaching for the knob as the other groped in my dangling jacket pocket for my phone. A hard hand grabbed the back of my neck, slamming me flat against the door. I moaned in pain.
“Hey there, Doc.” Hot breath gusted over my ear. “Welcome home. How’s the head?”
Officer Russel. I knew his voice, but more than that, I knew the feel of that grip. And he knew exactly what he’d done to me.
I wanted to shout, to try to fight, but I forced myself to focus past the adrenaline. You’ve got to calm the patient down, and right now? You’re the patient. “It hurts,” I managed after a second.
“Yeah, that’s too bad, huh? It’s unfortunate that something like this had to happen to you. But.” I felt him shrug. “That’s what you get when you play dangerous games.”
I wasn’t ready to go there. “Can you let me up a little, please?” I asked hoarsely.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you not comfortable? That’s not what I want at all.” Slowly the pressure left my neck, finally letting up completely. I eased myself away from the door. “Don’t even think about going for the handle again, Doc,” Officer Russel advised in his fake-friendly voice. “All I want is a nice little conversation with you.”
I turned around to look at him, and saw a gun in his hand pointed at my gut. My lungs tried to seize again, but I pushed through the fear, taking a few shuddery breaths. “Nice conversations aren’t held at gunpoint,” I said.
“I just wanted to be sure you knew it was in your best interest to stay nice and calm while we were chatting. So, come on.” He tilted his head toward my living room. “Have a seat.”
I walked slowly down the hall, past Officer Russel and into my living room, and was stunned to see it ransacked. All the cushions had been pulled up off the couch, the table was turned over—the TV had actually been taken off the wall. “What…”
The muzzle of the gun nudged my back. “Sit.”
I walked around the couch and lowered myself down onto the hard, springy seat of it. Officer Russel perched on the arm across from me, his empty hand folded neatly over the one carrying the gun. There was an empty holster at his hip, and another one beneath his jacket that I could just see the bulge of through the leather. God, how many weapons was he packing?
Now that I looked closer, I could see that his hands were trembling. It was minute, but I was trained to pick up on things like this—things most people couldn’t hide no matter how hard they tried to. He looked rough—his shirt was wrinkled and untucked, he had no tie on today, and his feet were flexing in his leather shoes. I could hear his toes clench and relax, clench and relax, straining the material. I stayed very, very still as I asked, “What can I do for you, Officer Russel?”
“You can start by telling me where the phone is.”
What? “Mine is by the door,” I said slowly. “Where I left my jacket.” As if on cue, it started to trill. I didn’t even try to get up.
Officer Russel glanced that way, his expression tightening. “Not your phone. His phone. Fredericks’ phone.” He got up and began to pace, agitation written in every line of his body. My phone stopped ringing. “You took it off the guy when those paramedics brought him into th
e ED, didn’t you?”
“I—”
“Didn’t you!”
Denying it wouldn’t do any good, and I didn’t want to make him any madder. “Yes. I did.”
“That was against the law, wise guy, withholding evidence like that.”
The irony was so thick I almost choked on it. “I’m sorry,” I somehow managed to say with a straight face.
“You fucking should be. Now where’d you stash it?” He looked wildly around my living room, as though there were anything else he could trash at this point. I was grateful my decorator’s tastes tended toward minimalism. “I checked your bedroom, your bathroom, your goddamn garage… Shoulda done a better job of hiding your keycode when you use that after a run, by the way.”
So that was how he got in. Fuck me. “Yes, I should have.”
“Yeah, you fucking should have. Now where is it?”
“I don’t have it anymore.” How could he possibly, rationally think I would keep an item like that in my possession? Then again, he probably wasn’t thinking very rationally at all. “I gave it to Internal Affairs. They’ve had it for a while now.”
He glared at me and shook his head. “No. No, they would have picked us up way faster if they actually had it in hand. The only reason they grabbed DeMarco this late in the game is because they must have that other snitch in hand, or maybe…” His eyes narrowed. “Did you give it to that IA son of a bitch when he visited last night? What’s his name, Thibeau, Thibedeau?”
Jesus, when had this guy not been watching me? “No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Why the fuck else would he come all the way across town to see you?”
I had a feeling that telling Officer Russel the real reason Mark had come by last night would make him very uncomfortable, and I needed him as comfortable as I could get him right now. “He was just checking in on me after the… accident. He said I could be disqualified as a witness if I had a head injury.”
“You could.” He waved the gun at me. “You damn well could, so you better watch your mouth around me, Doc.” He grimaced. “So you don’t have the phone.”
“No.” My phone trilled again. Neither of us said anything until it finally stopped.
“That’s him,” Officer Russel said, suddenly icy calm. “It’s way past the time I should have heard from DeMarco. He was picked up, which means they tried to pick me up. Thibedeau’s covering his bases, checking in on his little rats.”
He’ll be coming here. The thought was heartening and terrifying all at once. I wanted Mark to come here, to bring all his skill and professionalism to bear, to save me. But Officer Russel was a murderer backed into a corner, and while he was relatively composed right now, there was no way he wouldn’t fire on Mark if he thought it would help him. I couldn’t let that happen. “You can leave,” I said suddenly. “You can take my car. You can just tie me up and leave me here. You have a head start if you go now.”
His lip curled. “You trying to make me run, Doc?”
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” I told him with complete seriousness. “If you stay here and Detective Thibedeau arrives, probably with backup, things could get bad quickly. Do you even have a bulletproof vest on? I just want us all to be safe.”
For a moment, Officer Russel looked nothing so much as a worn-down old man. “There’s no safe in this fucking city,” he spat. “Specially not for guys like me, risking my neck every day on the street. So a few mistakes get made every now and then, so what? It’s not like you’ve never had anybody die on your table, Doc.”
“I’ve definitely failed to save people before,” I said, aching with the memory of Martin, so scared at the end but so strong. “But I never killed them.”
“Nah, maybe not. But it all amounts to the same thing in the end, right? Somebody’s dead, too bad. All the living can do is keep living, keep doing their jobs. I’ve helped more people than I’ve ever hurt, and that’s the goddamn truth.” He really believed his own justification. The realization made me sick to my stomach.
“Please,” I whispered. “Just go. Now, while you have time. My keys are in my jacket pocket, right next to my phone. Car’s in the garage with a full tank of gas.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sure,” he said after a moment. “Sure, I’ll go. But I think I’ll be bringing you with me, Doc.”
What?
“Get up.” He came over and grabbed my arm, jerking me to my feet. “Go get the keys. Go! Now!” he shouted. I limped back into the hallway, where my coat lay crumpled on the floor. I reached for it, stifling a groan, and rifled through the pocket until I found my keys. My phone was right there, maybe I could—
“Leave it and get your ass over here!”
I left it, handing the keys to Officer Russel as soon as he was in range. He took them and shoved them into his pocket, then took my arm again. I hated the feel of his hands on me—my skin prickled and crawled beneath my shirt. “Get to the garage, come on.” He led the way and I stumbled after him. We went through the kitchen door that led into the garage, where my sedan sat cold and dark.
“I’ll start the car, you open the place up,” he said as he headed toward the driver’s side. I pressed the grey button that retracted my garage door. It came up slowly, slowly…
And just as Officer Russel opened the car, a familiar voice called out, “Police! Stay where you are and show me your hands!”
Oh my God, Mark was here! I was overjoyed, until I got a look at Officer Russel’s face. His jaw tightened grimly, and he hoisted the gun in his hand as he moved to crouch behind the engine block. He looked like a man who had nothing left to lose, like he’d forgotten me entirely, focusing solely on the cops beyond the rising door as he took a shooting stance.
Oh fuck, Mark.
Chapter 21
Mark
“Mark, he’s got a gun!”
The shout sent me and the other two officers scrambling for cover, but it also sent panic through me. Just as I’d feared when Ryan didn’t answer his phone, Russel was here. With Ryan. And he had a gun. Oh, this was not good.
From behind the patrol car, my own pistol drawn and ready, I watched the garage door continue to rise. Two sets of feet beside a vehicle. Then they were on the move, coming out into the driveway, which the patrol car was blocking.
“How do we play this?” Officer Kelly asked under his breath.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
On the other side of the patrol car, someone grunted, and the crack of knees on concrete prompted a “fuck!” that was definitely Ryan’s voice. Stealing a glance under the car, I confirmed the worst-case scenario—Russel had Ryan on his knees in the middle of the driveway, and he was standing beside him. I didn’t have to see more than that to know there was a gun in play and that it was probably trained on Ryan.
I sat up again, leaning against the car, and swore.
“Come on out, Thibedeau,” Russel growled, his voice tinged with hysteria. “Let’s talk about why I shouldn’t blow your boyfriend’s head off.”
I clenched my jaw against a wave of nausea. Russel knew how shit like this went down. He knew he was cornered, and he knew he was fucked. Scenarios like this frequently ended in suicide by cop, and innocent hostages could easily be caught in the crossfire.
And Officer Russel didn’t think Ryan was an innocent hostage. This could very well be an if I’m going down, I’m taking him with me situation, and my heart thundered because I couldn’t get to Ryan. Not before Russel shot him.
Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I’d been relieved to leave shit like this behind when I’d left being a street cop for good, and I’d never been this personally invested in the outcome of a standoff.
“Thibedeau,” Officer Kelly whispered from a few feet to my left. When I turned, he nodded sharply to his left, and I craned my neck to see his partner, Officer Glass, crouched behind the rockery around the front yard. She was a good ten feet closer to Russel and Ryan than Kelly
and I were.
Without making a sound, she tapped her chest, then pointed over her shoulder, toward the corner of the rockery, and gestured to indicate going around the corner. My heart pounded; I didn’t like sending her closer to Russel, but it wasn’t like I was in any position to move in myself.
And if she could get behind him…
Get the drop on him…
Heart still racing, I nodded. She returned it, and she started inching along the rockery toward the corner.
“Cover me,” I said quietly to Kelly.
Before he could respond, I put up my hands over the hood of the car, gun visible but my finger obviously outside the trigger guard.
“Russel,” I called out. “All right. Let’s talk.”
“Thibedeau,” Kelly whispered sharply, but I ignore him.
“I’m standing up. We can talk this through.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” Russel demanded.
“Shit,” Kelly muttered.
I rose slowly, and it was a struggle to keep my expression neutral at the sight of Ryan kneeling with his hands upraised and Russel’s pistol digging into the side of his head. He was shaking, the bruises on his battered face underscoring how human and vulnerable he was. How easily those bruises could be the least of his problems in very short order.
Behind him, Officer Russel glared at me with murder in his eyes. And, worse, panic. He knew he was fucked. Not good. Not good at all.
“Put the weapon on the ground,” he ordered. “And kick it over to me.”
Carefully, I thumbed the release for the magazine, which I let clatter to the pavement at my feet. I kicked it away, and then, still moving slowly, I brought my other hand up, pulled back the slide, and ejected the round from the chamber. It landed on the ground with a tink, and rattled as it rolled away.
Behind me, over the sound of my own heartbeat, I heard Kelly quietly radioing for backup, but emphatically telling them to run fast and silent, and to stay back until he gave the order. He paused, then asked for an ambulance as well, and I gulped. He knew as well as I did this was going to go bad one way or the other. At this point, the only variables were how many ambulances we needed and who’d be in them.
