His Cold Blue Command

by A. J. Downey

  “You might as well answer that,” she said, and Millie sat up straighter from where she was leaning heavily on the counter.

  “Answer what?” my boss asked.

  “Her phone. Whoever it is, isn’t going to stop calling. That’s like the third time in five minutes.”

  “It is?” Millie seemed bewildered and I smiled, holding up my phone, the screen lit with an incoming call.

  “It is,” I assured her.

  “I’m blind,” Dawnie said, with a self-deprecating little shrug. “Over the years my hearing’s got better. Ask Ally; I can hear bats.” She stuck out her tongue and made a face. I laughed and answered the phone just before it could go over to voice mail.

  “Ms. Blaylock?” A woman said through the line, before I could even say ‘hello’.

  “Yes?” I said, immediately picking up on the concern straining her voice.

  “My name is Melinda Montgomery, do you have a minute?”

  I felt my stomach knot in dread at her sympathetic tone.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  29

  Yale…

  “Miss! Miss, you can’t go in there, he’s on a call!”

  My office door swung open and Dawnie, Ally’s best friend, thrust it in until it swung back and hit the wall. “Yeah, that’s the nice thing about being blind, sister. Not like you’re gonna tackle me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said into the phone. “I’m going to have to call you right back.”

  I hung up on the opposing counsel before he could say anything. It wasn’t like I was willing to parley with him, anyway. His client was up on second-degree murder charges in the beating death of his sister’s infant son. Shook the baby boy until his neck broke. There was no deal on the table for that kind of callous disregard for human life.

  “Okay, I know you’re in here, lover boy. Speak, so I can find you,” Dawnie said, her hand outstretched and her cane lightly tapping the floor as she came into the room.

  “What is this?” I demanded, scowling, and came around my desk. She reached me, a light hand against my chest as I tried to fight down my utter irritation with her.

  She wrapped her fingers around my tie giving it an insistent tug and said, “Come on, we gotta go. Ally got a call and left out of the café like a bat out of hell, crying. Millie and I couldn’t get her to talk to us. She hailed a cab and split. It has to be her grandma. I don’t know where the place is to even get a cab of my own, so you were my next best bet. You gotta help me.”

  “Let go of my tie, and I will,” I said, and she made an exasperated sound.

  “Sorry, my dad helps me around that way sometimes. Leaves him hands-free. Come on, you gotta hurry, though. That’s my best friend and might as well be my grandma. I’m scared for them.”

  I didn’t pause. I just shoveled the briefs I would need into my briefcase and picked up my phone, punching in the code that would give me reception.

  “Yes, hold my calls and reschedule my meetings for the rest of the day, I need to leave for a family emergency.”

  “Of course, Mr. Parnell. Will everything be all right?” Darcy asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said shortly and dropped the phone back into the cradle. My cell phone, I slipped into my inside jacket pocket.

  “You’re lucky I drove today,” I said. “Come on.”

  She reached out and found my arm, feeling her way up to my shoulder and placed herself around a half- step behind me.

  “Let’s move it, just try not to run me into anything,” she said and I nodded once, realized my stupidity and the futility of the motion and ground out, “Of course.”

  We made our way out of my office and across the floor of prosecutors at their desks, all staring wide-eyed at our brisk pace from the office. While I was sure that I would be the subject of rumor and speculation, I was equally certain I didn’t care. My woman was out there somewhere, emotionally wounded beyond compare, and I needed to reach her. I didn’t think there was anything I could do to fix whatever had gone wrong, but we would just have to wait and see.

  I’d driven the Mercedes today, and I helped Dawnie into the passenger seat saying, “It’s low, watch your head,” protecting her auburn head with a guiding hand.

  “Smells expensive, what I can get through your cologne, which is nice, by the way,” she remarked. “Way too expensive to be a cop car.”

  “Mercedes,” I told her, shutting her into the car.

  By the time I got around and in, she was trying to feel the two seat belt halves together. I clicked it home, and she frowned at me from behind her round hippie glasses.

  “I’m blind, not completely helpless. Worry about your own.”

  “Wasn’t a mark against your capabilities; more of a self-serving move on my part. I want to get there. Untwist your panties.”

  “Whatever, Romeo. Just get us there already. What are you waiting for?”

  I had paused to slip my phone free and clip it to the dash so that I might use the navigation to find the place. I had only been there once in the last few weeks with Ally, and she had directed me via the bus routes. I plugged the address into the GPS feature of my phone and said, “We can’t go anywhere that I don’t know where we’re going. I’m pulling up the GPS.”

  “Well, your phone is slow as shit.”

  “Noted,” I said and though I loved Ally, her friend was grating on my nerves. I did have to hand it to her in one regard, however. She was far more emotionally invested in Sylvia Blaylock than I was. I was mostly concerned with Ally’s well-being.

  Traffic was a nightmare. An accident caused us to re-route and, of course, that sent the GPS into a fit. Dawnie very nearly hummed with nervous energy and irritation at the delays as she sat rigid beside me. Her mouth set into a grim line, face turned towards the window and the rushing scenery outside. It was a peculiar thing, the way she carried herself and with the glasses, you could almost fool yourself into believing that she was watching things go by.

  “What’s taking so long, now?” she asked, desperation and impatience shading her tone as I pulled up to the curb in the loading zone in front of the care facility.

  “Nothing, we’re here.”

  “Thank God!” She reached for her door handle, smoothing fingertips over things as I hit the catch on her seatbelt for her.

  “It’s not where you’re reaching, just wait, I’m coming around to get you.”

  “Ally might listen to you, but I’m a different bag of bricks,” she said defiantly, and I rolled my eyes.

  The two girls might as well be exact opposites, and I was seriously on the fence as to whether I liked Dawnie or not. She seemed suspicious of me, and was more than a little standoffish, even before today, for all that I’d only met her once before in the intervening weeks since Ally and I had become an official item to my inner circle of friends.

  Dawnie held onto my elbow as we made our way into the building, her cane swishing carefully back and forth in front of her as she tried to feel her way around. I noticed she didn’t use the cane with Ally so much. Another sign that Dawnie didn’t trust me herself, not as much as Ally did. It made Ally’s trust all the more precious to me, for some reason.

  “Going to ask reception?” Dawnie asked, softly.

  “No. Going to her grandmother’s floor. Just going to find her.”

  “Okay, now I’m starting to like you,” she said, and I felt myself smile.

  The elevator pinged and we stepped on board. I pressed the button and Dawnie made to turn around. I said, “No need. The second set of doors, they’ll open in front of us.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Ally usually takes the stairs. Kills me, but I guess it’s good exercise.”

  “That’s what treadmills, exercise bikes, and stairmasters are for,” I remarked, not liking the idea of Ally in stairwells ‒ outside the reach of cameras ‒ where she could easily be attacked.

  “She doesn’t like elevators. When we were kids, the elevator in the Point Side got stuck be
tween floors with us in it. Her, her grandmother, and I were trapped for close to fourteen hours. It’s one of my best memories, but it scared the hell out of Ally. She avoids them every chance she gets.”

  I hadn’t heard the story before. It was something I hadn’t known. It definitely put things into a sharper focus where Ally was concerned. Like why she liked my large shower so much. She said she loved how spacious it was, and was completely enamored with the fact, mentioning it every time she or I used it. I’d found it peculiar but hadn’t assumed that there might be a darker root cause behind her notions about it.

  The elevator pinged and bounced to a stop; Dawnie’s hand tightened around my elbow and said, “Woah, rough stop. Yeah, she definitely wouldn’t like that.”

  We stepped off onto her grandmother’s floor in front of the nurse’s station and I caught one of the aides’ eye. She straightened and smiled somberly at us and in a low tone said, “Ally’s in Ms. Sylvia’s room.”

  “What happened?” I asked, and Dawnie was very still beside me.

  “Ms. Sylvia passed in her sleep; we don’t know much beyond that. It just happens sometimes.”

  Dawnie crumbled a little, but found some sort of well of inner strength, straightening almost immediately. She shook my arm slightly in a bid for me to get on with it, and I led us up the hall towards Ally’s grandmother’s room.

  I stopped in the doorway, struck by how beautiful she was. She stood crying softly, at the wall beside Sylvia’s empty bed, her shaking fingers reaching out and plucking one of the magazine cut-outs of their flower garden from the industrial wallpaper. I placed Dawnie’s hand on the door frame to give her reference and stepped into the room gently. I didn’t want to startle Ally, but it seems the best-laid plans of mice and men…

  She turned and jumped, tears staining her cheeks and breath hitching, but she didn’t make a thing about my scaring her, instead, it was as if whatever resolve she had managed to dredge up failed, now that I was here. She crumbled on the outside as well as the inside, her knees failing her as she backed against the wall to support herself, so she wouldn’t collapse completely.

  “They don’t know what happened,” she said through fresh sobs. “I don’t know what to do…”

  I went to her and pulled her against my chest, arms around her, pressing her face to my shoulder and the side of my neck. I gave her a place to shelter against me and I told her, “You don’t have to do anything but grieve. I’m here now.”

  I couldn’t fix it, but I could at least give her that.

  30

  Ally…

  I couldn’t hold back the tempest anymore. I broke down, choking on sobs, hauling in a tortured breath and letting out a pitiful wail that I muffled against the shoulder of his suit jacket. I hadn’t called him; I had simply forgotten to. It was my grandmother, and it had just been her and I for so long, I had completely forgotten that I had anyone else that I could lean on. Still, somehow he’d known, and now he was here.

  I jumped when a light touch that wasn’t him fell on my waist and I looked over to Dawnie, her expression weak and trembling, like mine, around her glasses. I opened my arm on that side and dragged her against me, too, and the three of us stood there together while two of us cried. Damien was amazing and held us both up. Giving us strength in a continual stream that neither of us could seem to hold onto. Standing in the face of our onslaught of heartache and withstanding it all. Remaining cool and level headed in the face of our grief until we were both simply all cried out and numb for the time being.

  Damien let me go slowly, his hands drifting from my back, trailing along my shoulders, to cup my face, his thumbs smoothing through my devastated tears, his eyes, for once, warm instead of cold. The compassion and support I needed radiated from them as he searched my face.

  “What do you need?” he asked softly and I sniffed, wiping my nose ungracefully with the back of my hand and looking around the room.

  “They said I needed to pick up her things. That they need the room for somebody else. That I had to take it all down if I wanted to keep it,” I said helplessly.

  “Dawnie, can you fold her grandmother’s clothes and box them up?”

  “Might not be pretty, but I can get the job done. Just lead me to it,” my best friend said grimly. Damien guided her to the bureau that held my grandmother’s things and lightly put her hands on the empty box on its surface.

  “Do what you can,” he told her. “I’m going to help Ally with the walls.”

  “Okay,” she said and began feeling her way around the drawers, getting the lay of the land.

  He drifted back over to me and kissed my forehead in that way that always made me swoon. I closed my eyes and he let his lips linger on my skin, murmuring, “I’m here now, just tell me what you need.”

  I sniffed, faltering, more of the endless tears springing to my eyes. I just couldn’t seem to completely shut off the tap. I got a grip, and when I could trust myself to speak, I said, “You, I think. I just need you.”

  “Right here, Bright Eyes. I’m not going anywhere. What else?”

  “Um, I need to take all these down. I’m trying not to rip them. I want to keep them. I don’t know what for yet, I just…” I scrunched down, curling in on myself and he held me through another round of tears, murmuring, but not telling me not to cry. No, he told me the exact opposite.

  “Just let it out; let it all out.”

  It only took an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes, for the three of us to pack up my grandmother’s life in here. That was even more depressing to think about, but honestly, I was too numb to speak, or to really feel anything at all. I just wanted to go home.

  Damien drove us to the Point Side. It’d only taken one trip for the three of us to get everything of my grandmother’s to the car. I’d asked about the money he’d paid. I mean, he’d paid for a whole year for my grandmother to be there, but he just shook his head and said, “I’ll make arrangements for it to go to another patient. It was already spent with no intention of a refund. Let it help someone else in Sylvia’s name.”

  “Big ups for that one,” Dawnie said, before ducking with my help and sliding into the back seat of Damien’s Mercedes. I tried to let her take the front seat, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  She helped me and Damien carry the boxes to my apartment and sighed, handing hers off to him and holding her arms open and out in my general direction. I hugged her tightly, and we both got weepy again. She sniffed and said, “I’ll tell Mr. Comey and my parents.”

  “Thank you,” I said, relieved of that burden, at least.

  “I suppose you should go,” I said, turning to Damien, as Dawnie went up the hallway, hand trailing along the wall, cane tapping in front of her.

  “I’m not leaving you like this.”

  “But your car…”

  “Is parked and insured.”

  “Look, I’ll be okay. At least take it home.”

  “Come with me.” He searched my face and I turned, looking at my pitiful space. It was the first time he’d ever been in it and I liked it. It was cozy somehow. Made me feel less alone.

  He shut my front door and started flipping locks and chains. I shook my head and he silenced what I was about to say with a hard look.

  “Not tonight, Bright Eyes,” he said, and took off his jacket, hanging it off the back of the chair at my sewing table.

  “Go wash your face and get ready for bed. I want you to use everything that is your favorite. Understand me?”

  “My favorite pajamas are in the top of the laundry basket,” I said.

  “They have one more wear in them. Go get them.” His tone brooked no argument. I did what he said, moving through the small space and into the bathroom where I stared at my makeup-streaked face in the mirror. I washed it and felt detached while I did it. Like I wasn’t really there. I was just going through the motions with nothing, nothing at all left to feel.

  I changed and went back out and found Damien tucked agai
nst the metal rails of my day bed. He held the blankets up for me to get in and I did, mutely, the twin bed nowhere near big enough for the both of us, but he made it work, mostly by virtue of draping me across his chest, hauling one leg over both of his.

  I cuddled into his warmth, snug against the side of his body, and closed my eyes. He kissed the top of my head and smoothed a hand over my skin where it was exposed by my short sleep-shorts and cami, and I melted even further. The exhaustion swept over me and I don’t remember anything after that.

  I startled awake; I don’t know how long it was later. I stirred and tried to figure out what was different and realized there was someone carefully moving around in the dark of my apartment. I sat up abruptly, and Damien shushed me, sitting down on the edge of the bed. I put my hand to my chest and willed my heart back in it.

  “I need to run home, get cleaned up for work. I already called Millie. Unfortunately, the prosecutor’s office won’t give me time off for your grandmother. Only if she was my own. Plus, I have court in the Neely case today.”

  “Okay,” I said, huffing out a miserable breath and sliding back down into my warm nest of blankets.

  “Pack a bag for a few days and come stay with me…” he urged and I swallowed hard and thought about it.

  “There’s a bunch of stuff I have to do in a packet,” I said.

  “What packet?” he asked.

  “In my tote, from yesterday.”

  He went over to it on the floor, by the chair where his briefcase sat, and looked inside. He slid the fat nine-by-twelve envelope from the funeral home out of it and said, “I’m a lawyer. Let me look over this and we’ll do it together, tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said, softly.

  “I’ll pick you up here. I’ll call you and let you know what time.”

  “Okay.”

  He came over and kissed me, and my heart gave a pitiful, aching throb in my chest. He stood up reluctantly and murmured, “Go back to sleep.”