by L. A. Witt
“I’ve had it for a few years,” I said quietly. “Lisa and I both—”
“Oh my God.” Ben’s eyes were huge. “Emily? Does she have it?”
“No, she’s negative. She’s been tested repeatedly since she was born.” I shook my head. “She doesn’t have it.”
Ben battered me with questions, but it wasn’t an interrogation. He obviously knew a thing or two about HIV, and he wanted to be completely up to speed on my condition.
The whole time, Casey was silent. He pinched the bridge of his nose and didn’t say a word.
When Ben was apparently satisfied—rattled but out of questions, anyway—he took a drink and fell quiet. And Casey still didn’t speak.
I stole a look at Darren. He gave me the same encouraging smile Erin had.
“Casey?” I said cautiously. “Are you—”
His hand dropped to the table, startling all of us and rattling our silverware and glasses. “I can’t believe you’ve had this for years and never said a word. What the hell, Dad?”
Oh, hadn’t I had this conversation with Erin?
“I know. I should have said something. But I—”
“How did you even get it? You drilled it into our heads the whole time we were teenagers about safe sex and all that.” He glared at me, unaware or just not caring that he’d turned a few heads in the restaurant. “Do I even want to know?”
I pulled in a breath. “Look, I did some things I regret. And I—”
“Ben! Casey!”
Emily’s voice snapped the tension, and the boys were instantly out of their chairs and crouching down, arms out as my youngest—their half sister—sprinted across the room.
“Oh my God, you’re getting so big!” Casey hugged her tight and kissed her cheek. “How old are you now? Ten? Eleven?”
She giggled as only Emily could. “I’m four and a half, silly!”
“Four and a half? No way! You’re way too tall for that!”
She erupted into laughter. As Lisa caught up, she said hello to the boys, and joined us at the table. Emily sat between Erin and Ben, and they quickly busied themselves with some crayons and paper placemats. I smiled fondly. Things had been rocky when I’d told my kids Lisa and I were expecting a baby, but all three of them had been madly in love with their little sister since the day she was born. Yet another reason for me to feel guilty—I hadn’t taken Emily to see them or had them come visit nearly as often as I should have.
As everyone settled in and we ordered our food, Casey shot me a look that said, This isn’t over.
My stomach somersaulted again. My appetite was pretty much MIA, but if I didn’t eat, Darren would have a fit, so I ordered a gyro and hoped for the best. While everyone caught up and chatted, Casey kept eyeing me uncertainly, but he said nothing. Nothing about my HIV status, anyway. He was perfectly chatty with everyone else, but there was definitely some frost between us right now.
Well, I’d been right that my kids wouldn’t be thrilled. I hadn’t expected them to be, but I had hoped I was worried about nothing. That they’d be, while not happy, willing to accept it.
I couldn’t read Casey. Was he angry that I had the disease? Or that I hadn’t told him?
But I didn’t ask, and he didn’t speak up. We carried on with dinner, and I just kept reminding myself there’d be time to clear the air with Casey in private later. This was a start. It hadn’t gone so well with Erin either, but once the shock had worn off, she’d been all right.
He would be too.
Eventually.
By the time dinner was over, everyone had relaxed somewhat. Casey was still tense, still obviously less than happy with me, but he hadn’t said anything more about it. Could’ve been worse, I supposed.
I paid the bill, and we all made our way to the door. Emily needed to use the bathroom, so Erin took her, and the rest of us went outside.
We chatted a bit more, but then Ben and Casey wanted to get back to their hotel since they’d had a long day of traveling. I hugged them both goodbye, and they shook hands with Lisa and Darren.
“Where’s Erin?” Ben looked around. “Aw, hell. We’ll see her tomorrow at lunch. Dad, could you let her know we took off?”
I nodded. “Will do.”
Lisa glanced back at the restaurant and scowled. “What is taking those two so long, though?” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get them.”
She went back in, and it was just Darren and me.
“Well,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“No.” I adjusted my grip on the crutches. “Could’ve been better.”
“Casey will come around. He probably just needs some time to absorb it. I mean, Erin came around.”
“True.”
“Well, we should go. I’ll go get the car.” He kissed my cheek. “Wait here.”
“Thank you.”
Then he headed in the same direction my boys had gone. I closed my eyes and exhaled. The night had gone well. Not flawlessly, but I really couldn’t complain. Casey and I would talk later, and—
“Andreas.” Lisa’s voice turned me around. She stepped out of the restaurant, a puzzled expression on her face. “Did Erin and Emily come out already?”
“What? No, they—”
Tires squealed. Metal crunched.
What the hell?
I turned, and to my horror, Ben and Casey were getting out of their rental car, probably to inspect the damage the other car had done.
Some employees and bystanders hurried out the door, no doubt to see what was happening and maybe to help. In the commotion, someone bumped into me, and I stumbled. Then a foot swept my good leg out from under me, and I toppled, landing hard enough to send pain shooting through my bad ankle.
“Andreas!” Lisa grabbed my arm, but then she was knocked aside too.
“Drop the gun!” Darren shouted in the distance.
I scrambled, trying to get to my feet. I reached for a crutch, but my pistol was already in my hand. I didn’t even remember taking it out.
A bullet ricocheted off something. Someone shouted.
Oh shit!
“Go get Erin and Emily!” I shouted to Lisa. “Keep them inside!”
Lisa darted back into the restaurant.
Tires squealed again.
More gunfire. Shouts. A car peeling out. An engine vanishing into the night.
And then . . . nothing.
Panicked shouts and murmurs, but otherwise, silence.
Someone helped me to my feet and gave me back my crutches. I looked up to see Darren and Ben coming across the parking lot. Ben was limping pretty hard, one arm tucked protectively against his side, the other slung over Darren’s shoulders.
“Oh my God.” I hobbled toward them as quickly as I could. “Ben?” I touched his arm, hoping my sheer panic didn’t make it into my voice. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, grimacing painfully. “Just . . . got the wind knocked out of me. When they tried to . . .”
My mouth went dry. “Where’s your brother?” I looked around as my pulse ratcheted up. “Where the fuck is Casey?”
Darren, still keeping Ben on his feet, shook his head. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get to—”
“What?” The world spun around me. “Darren, what are you . . . Who . . .”
“Three guys,” Ben said. “They clipped the car, then came at me and Casey and—” His voice wavered.
“They got Casey into the car,” Darren said. “I couldn’t get to him. I’m sorry.”
“You did what you could.” I hadn’t seen much, but I had complete faith that whatever he could have done, he’d done. “Did you get a look at them?”
He frowned and shook his head. “Sorry. I was trying to—”
“Andreas.” Lisa’s voice was filled with a kind of palpable terror I hadn’t heard since the day her doctor had told her that she—and possibly our unborn baby—had HIV. “Emily and Erin are gone.”
The world dropped out from under me. My crutches were
literally the only thing that kept me from crumpling to my knees. “What? They’re . . . What do you mean they’re . . .”
Reality started sinking in. Ben was hurt. God knew how close Darren had come to an injury or worse.
And . . .
Casey.
Erin.
Emily.
I sank onto the bench. Twenty-plus years of cop instincts disappeared in a heartbeat, replaced by nothing but pure, bone-deep panic. I was trained for this. Enough that I could be calm to the point of near apathy in a crisis.
I wasn’t calm this time. I was closer to catatonic. I couldn’t move. Think. Breathe. Act.
Three of my kids.
Gone.
Just . . . gone.
And I had no idea what to do.
I had never seen Andreas so motionless before.
It was wrong. It was like a hurricane-force wind suddenly stopping, or a raging blizzard evaporating, leaving you muffled in snow and slowly freezing to death. Andreas was never quiet, never still—even when he was asleep, he twisted and turned until I had to lie on him to keep him in one place. Right now, he was so perfectly immobile I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.
I’d seen this kind of shock before—hell, I’d experienced it myself more than once—and I knew that I needed to try to engage him. I needed to get him up and moving, and preferably checked out by the EMTs that were arriving on the scene now. Officers had already secured the scene, and more were on their way, and I doubted Andreas wanted any of them to see him like this. Especially not right now, when so much of the attention on us was negative already.
“Dad?”
Oh Jesus, I’d almost forgotten about Ben, and I was the one holding on to him. “Here, sit down,” I said, helping him turn and settle next to his dad. “Where did he get you?”
He grimaced. “My right side, but it’s not that bad.”
“You should get checked out.” It was a light bulb moment for me, the best way I could think of to snap Andreas out of it. “Andreas.” I crouched down in front of him and put both my hands on his knees. “Hey. Ben needs your help.”
“No, I’m sure I can—”
“He needs you to go with him to the ambulance to get looked at, just to make sure he’s okay,” I said firmly, ignoring Ben’s token protest. The kid needed the help almost as much as Andreas needed to give it. Jesus, all of his siblings had been kidnapped, one of them violently, right in front of him. He needed his dad, and his dad sure as hell needed him.
Fuck, Ben was only a few years younger than me. Why did I feel infinitely older right now?
“Andreas.” I said it louder, and this time his dull eyes managed to focus on me. “You need to help Ben.”
“I . . . Ben?” He looked left, and once he saw his son, some of his animation returned. “Shit, you’re— We need a—” He looked back at me, and I was so relieved to actually see him looking out of his eyes that I could have collapsed. Except I had more to do now than ever before, and I needed to get started as soon as possible.
“Ambulance.” I pointed at the flashing lights that had just pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Go and get him checked out, and let them take a look at you too.”
“I can do that.” He frowned. “Where’s Lisa?”
She’d been here a moment ago. “I’ll find her. You take care of him, I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Okay.” I helped him to his feet, making sure his hands were firm on the crutches, and watched him straighten his back as Ben threw an arm around his shoulder. First crisis averted, or more likely, just put off. Next up—Lisa.
“Sir. Sir!” The restaurant manager was suddenly right in my face, a stormy expression on his. “That ambulance and those police cars can’t just block our entrance. It’s against the fire code and it’s distracting to our guests.”
I held up my badge. “Your guests are going to have to deal with it, because this is the scene of a criminal investigation now. Nobody leaves. I don’t care if they’ve already paid their bill or finished their shift, absolutely no one leaves the premises before they’ve talked to an officer. Is that understood?”
“I . . . suppose.”
“Good. Make an announcement, blame it all on me, I don’t care, but if anyone steps foot outside this place, I’m holding you accountable.”
He sighed. I wanted to punch him. “Can you at least calm down the hysterical woman? She ran into our kitchens and is harassing our staff, and they can’t work under those conditions.”
“What hysterical woman?”
“I’ll show you.”
It turned out the “hysterical woman” was Lisa, who’d run back inside to check again and make sure she hadn’t missed the girls somehow. She was coming out of the staff’s break room as I got to her, demanding to know if they’d seen the girls, and wasn’t it possible they were back here? Wasn’t it?
“Lisa.”
“Darren!” Her hands dug into my arms like claws. “Do you think they went out the back? They might have just . . . They might be outside, right? I checked the alley, but maybe they circled around to the front. Have you checked? Did you see them?”
“We’re going to figure it out,” I promised her. That was the best I could do. “We’re going to find them.” I could hear more sirens in the front of the building—more police were arriving. Great. Not that I didn’t need the help, but lately I couldn’t be sure if that help was going to be genuine or not. Andreas and I had managed to piss off almost every colleague in the city by putting away so many dirty cops with our first big case. It was fifty-fifty whether I’d get a handshake or someone spitting in my face.
“But what if they— What—”
“You’re going to need to give a statement to an officer, okay?” I gently turned her and led her back to the front of the restaurant. “And stay close, so I can keep you in the loop.” It wasn’t completely kosher, but she was Emily’s mother. There was no way I was keeping anything from her when it came to the welfare of her kid. Not right now, at least.
“Okay.” Lisa took a few deep breaths. “Okay, okay. Where, um . . . where’s Andreas?”
“He took Ben over to the ambulance to get checked out.” I pointed at it as we got to the entrance. “You might want to go check on him, make sure he didn’t take any damage when he fell.”
“He didn’t fall, he was tripped.”
Fuck, I hadn’t even seen that. “This is why you need to make a statement. I’ll send an officer over as soon as I can, all right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, all right.”
There were two police vehicles here now, and a third one pulling up. When I saw who got out of it, I did a double take. “Thibedeau?”
The taller man walked up to me, unsmiling and still in his perfectly pressed suit despite the fact that I knew he’d gotten off work an hour ago. “Corliss.”
“What are you doing here?” He was a detective with Internal Affairs; he had no reason to be at the scene of a kidnapping.
“I heard the call come in over the radio, and I remembered that Erin told me she was going to dinner here tonight. I tried her phone and got no response. I wanted to see for myself what was going on.”
“It’s . . .” a fucking nightmare and I want a goddamn do-over. “Not good.” I explained the little I knew to him: Erin and Emily going missing after they went to the bathroom, Ben and Casey’s car being deliberately hit and both of them attacked, me exchanging shots with the masked man jerking Casey into the van before they drove off, and someone in the crowd deliberately getting Andreas out of the way.
“This sounds like a setup.”
“No shit.”
Thibedeau frowned at me. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side in this. The last thing I want is for any of Detective Ruffner’s family to come to harm, especially his daughters.” He’d met Emily before, and Erin worked directly for him. I could buy that he was genuinely concerned. “But you need to let me help you.”
“Fine.”
Whatever, I could be nice. I could share.
“I’ll organize officers to interview patrons and get contact information so we can start letting people go. You talk to the manager about security footage and see if the staff has anything to say.”
I was more than happy to let him deal with the other cops. “Make sure to check and see if any of them took cell phone footage. If they did, I want their phones.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Not my first case, Detective.”
I bit back the urge to snap at him. But it’s your most important case, damn it! I didn’t need to alienate any more of our colleagues. I gritted my teeth, kept my mouth shut, and went to talk to the manager again.
He was less than cooperative, but after I assured him I would shut his goddamn restaurant down for a fucking week if I had to, he was a lot better about giving me access to his cameras. There were two: one of the front entrance, one of the back, and they weren’t just for show, thank God. I made him start copying the footage for me while I talked to the staff, who weren’t very helpful. Apparently it was a busy time, everyone had been rushing, and no one had noticed a thing except for a busboy, who said he thought he’d heard a little girl crying before the back door closed. Which . . . fuck. My heart just about shattered inside my chest.
My phone buzzed with a new message. It was from Andreas. Need you out front.
I might have broken the sound barrier with how fast I ran out there. Fortunately, it wasn’t dire. Or . . . not exactly. Andreas and Ben were squared off nose to nose—he wasn’t using his crutches, damn it—and were having a very loud argument in front of an awful lot of curious eyes.
“I’m not leaving.”
“You’re sure as hell not staying here!”
“You can’t make me go, Dad, I’m an adult!”
“For God’s sake, someone just tried to abduct you. I’m trying to keep you safe!”
“Where am I going to go that’s safer than with you?”
“Anywhere!” Andreas exploded. “All of you were with me, and now you’re the only one still here! What does that tell you, Ben? How good of a job did I do protecting you kids this time around, huh?”
