Devil's Advocate

by Carla Coxwell

  Having Kristie over a couple of times in the last week had been wonderful. They had been speaking about things that they never had before. Things that, in hindsight, they should have been discussing before they had gotten married. Maybe their marriage had been a bit hasty but that didn’t mean that it simply had to end. Gray had confidence they could work through things and be back together officially.

  Kristie hadn’t admitted it outright but he knew that her mom and his uncle still weren’t pleased with the marriage. Like before, Gray didn’t blame them. But the tension probably did Kristie no favors. He was glad he could offer a place for her to escape from it.

  Now she was on the couch, her nose in a book. It had been ages since he had seen her feel relaxed enough to read. She had even mentioned going back to school to get her teaching degree. Her dreams of law school had gone away, possibly only brought on by her work in the law office or her desire to fix things with Gray. He didn’t know. In any case, Kristie was mentioning becoming a high school English teacher instead.

  “How was Rick?” she asked. “Kass wants to see me sometime next week. I want to see Megan, too.”

  “They’re house hunting tomorrow at some town two hours out. Apparently Kass is bringing Megan, like the kid might offer some sort of opinions.”

  Kristie laughed. “Sounds like Kass.”

  Gray wrapped an arm around her, pulling her in for a quick kiss. “What do you want to do today?”

  “Not sure. Maybe go to the park? It’s a nice day outside.”

  Kristie had never suggested something like that, even before the shooting. But he decided to take that as a good sign that progress was being made in therapy. There were people at the park. If it had been six months ago, she never would have gone to such a place.

  “Sounds great.”

  ***

  As much as Kristie had wanted to stay over again at Gray’s, she also didn’t want to rush back into his arms. She wanted to take things slow, which was difficult for someone who just wanted to run right back into how things used to be. But the distance was going to help them in the long run. It was for that reason that after their day in the park she had opted to go back to her mom’s place instead of Gray’s.

  Her mom was working a late shift at the casino when Kristie had gotten home. Lionel was on the couch, watching the news. He had aged a lot in the past two years. She knew that he had been relieved when the cops had dropped investigating Gray for gang activity. Kristie had also been relieved that the cops were no longer interested in Gray. Instead, they had been focusing their efforts on the Infernos and Armand. Still nothing has been turned up though. She tried not to let it bother her.

  “Hey.”

  Lionel looked up. “Kristie, hey. Your mom had to cover a late shift as a cashier tonight.”

  “Mom hates that,” Kristie replied. “Understandable though. Night shift at a casino filled with drunks trying to hit on the cashier to get some cash isn’t that fun.”

  “Were you with Gray?” He tried to keep his tone casual but Kristie could see right through it.

  She nodded in response, waiting for whatever he was going to ask her. Or maybe he would just flat out tell her not to go see Gray anymore. Not like it mattered since she could go wherever she wanted. Kristie braced herself anyway.

  “How was he?”

  Well, she hadn’t been expecting that question. Lionel was usually extremely quiet about Gray. He used to invite him over often for dinners in an attempt to make him go on the straight and narrow. But after their marriage and Kristie’s shooting, that had fizzled out. Now Lionel seemed at a loss for what to do with his nephew.

  “He’s fine,” she replied. “We went to the park today.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The park? Did he go there to steal a little kid’s bike or something?”

  She knew he was joking. Dry jokes about Gray seemed to be the only barrier he had left when it came to his nephew.

  “No. Although he saw a bike with some robots on it and it was hard to keep him in line. I convinced him he didn’t need it though. Training wheels so aren’t his thing.”

  Lionel laughed in spite of his gloomy mood. “Well, as long as you kept him on his best behavior.”

  “I did. Even let him play on the monkey bars,” she joked.

  Lionel hesitated, as if he was going to say something else but decided against it at the last second. Instead, he nodded and turned back to the TV. Kristie made her way to her own bedroom and plopped down on the bed.

  Complications. Everything was still complicated, even if Kristie could make sense of things a bit better. Her therapist had been right about a couple of things – one was that Kristie was a fixer and always wanted to help people with their problems. That meant she ignored herself and her mental health suffered. Self-care is important, her shrink had repeated so many times that if she were in a fantasy novel, it would have been her house words.

  Keeping self-care in mind, Kristie decided to have a bath. She filled up the tub with hot water and threw in a bath bomb for good measure. She had been taking her baths to the “next level” as she told herself. Indulging in bath salts and bombs and other goodies had made it truly feel as if she were treating herself.

  Kristie sunk into the bath and looked out the frosted window. Life wasn’t going the way she had planned. She had hoped that she would be pregnant with Gray’s child by now. But she understood that Gray couldn’t just pull away from the gang right away. Even if Kristie didn’t completely understand why he couldn’t leave the gang and his revenge for Armand behind, she also knew that she couldn’t completely leave Gray either.

  She loved him. The time they had spent together meant too much for her to simply break it off and be done with it. Kristie closed her eyes. Everything would come together. She just had to make sure to take care of herself as well.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Yo, this property sucks.”

  Gray tried not to roll his eyes. Dern, one of the newer guys and the youngest, had decided to tag along with him instead of Rick. His insight was proving to be useless. But Dern boosted cars so quickly that it almost made Gray’s head spin. It was talent they could put to use.

  “Why does it suck, Dern?” he asked patiently, even though his fingers were itching to text Rick.

  The real estate agent in the corner, an older woman who was seemingly used to dealing with people like Dern, had barely blinked when he had proclaimed the property “sucked”. She was pretending to look at her tablet as Dern walked around the bar area.

  “It’s falling apart,” Dern pointed out, brushing his sandy blond hair out of his eyes, “And it just screams depression.”

  Gray wasn’t sure what that meant but tried to hide the annoyance in his voice. “We’d be fixing it up.”

  “I don’t know if you can get depression out of a dive bar.”

  Gray wanted to say that dive bars and depression went hand in hand but held back. That was when his phone went off. Rick was calling. He held up a finger to indicate he’d be a second and went off to a corner to answer the phone. He felt bad leaving the real estate agent with Dern but she looked like she could handle herself just fine.

  “Thank god you called. Dern is—”

  “Gray.”

  He stopped talking. Something about Rick’s voice sounded off.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Rick. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m going to sound insane but I think Kass and I are being trailed.”

  Gray frowned. “Are you sure? Two hours away?”

  “Like I said, it sounds stupid. But there’s this piece of shit van following us around. At least I swear it is. Kass thinks I need to relax.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “In case something happens. I’m trying to get Kass to give up looking at homes for the day and head home. Like I said, I’m sure it is just me. Why would the Infernos trail us two hours away from our turfs?”

 
; “Get home as soon as you can, okay? Do you want me to have someone from the group meet you on the outskirts of town?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  The call ended but Gray felt slightly sick to his stomach. Rick had passed it off as if he was acting crazy but he wouldn’t have called to tell him about the van if he hadn’t felt as if it were important. Why would the Infernos tail someone so out of their range?

  He tried to clear his mind of the concern he was feeling and turn back to the task at hand. But he couldn’t shake the bad feeling in his stomach.

  ***

  Kristie was at the public library when she felt her phone buzzing in her purse. She had gone to the library on a whim. She was trying to reconnect with her love of reading, something she felt she had lost touch with when she had finished college.

  It was Gray. She hadn’t been expecting to hear from him. Kristie stepped outside of the library, darting out to one of the outside reading areas.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Have you heard from Kass?”

  “No. Why?”

  Gray briefly recapped a phone call he had gotten from Rick. When he finished, Kristie felt faintly sick but pushed it aside.

  “Will you let me know if you hear from her? In case she contacts you before Rick calls me. I asked him if he wanted me to send out a couple of men to meet up with him but he said he’d call me back.”

  Kristie nodded, her stomach rolling violently. “Right. Okay, I will.”

  As soon as Gray hung up the phone, Kristie found herself darting toward the bathroom. She felt cold and clammy as she threw up in one of the stalls. Thankfully the bathroom was empty. The only other people in the library at this time on a Sunday were the older crowd. The library was only open for four hours on Sunday and only in the summer. It was usually dead. Today Kristie was thankful for that.

  After she finished throwing up, she sat down next to the stall, trying to gather her thoughts. The fear had overtaken her and had triggered her to feel the way she had used to feel. Her therapist had told her that she could have flashbacks or triggered events like this. Kristie pulled out a bottle of water from her purse and took tiny sips, trying to calm down.

  Was someone really following Rick and Kass? She could see herself thinking something that crazy. But Rick wasn’t the type of person to cry wolf. If he called Gray about that, then he truly believed that someone was tailing them. The thought made her sick.

  She decided to call Kass. But the phone rang and rang with no answer. She shot her a text to give her a call. Then she waited for her stomach to settle. Kristie still felt vaguely sick but decided she would try to work through it. She felt too concerned to stay at the library, so she opted to go home instead.

  ***

  Gray wanted to cancel the rest of the showings but the thought of doing this all again made him decide to go through it. Otherwise, he knew would be dwelling on waiting to hear from Rick. Forcing himself to look at possible bar locations with Dern had him focus on something else at the very least.

  By the time it was around six at night, he still hadn’t heard from Rick. His anxiety was making him feel a bit ill. Dern was rambling to him as they headed toward his house to drop him off. In the morning, it had seemed to make the most sense to pick up Dern instead of taking separate bikes. Now Gray regretted it. When Dern finally got out of the car, he felt relieved.

  When he finally got back to his own apartment, he found himself laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. He missed Kristie. Gray would have felt better if she had come here tonight. He was thinking about texting her. Would she be upset if he asked her over?

  He loved reconnecting with Kristie. He understood that she was trying to take things slowly on her end as well. He could respect that. But he was still craving her. Right now he felt if he could just talk to her, he could relax.

  His phone went off. He sat up and looked at it, rattling loudly on the coffee table. Kristie’s name was flashing. For some reason, instead of feeling relieved at seeing her name when he had just been thinking of her, pinpricks of dread had started up on the back of his neck.

  “Kristie?” he said, finally answering.

  There was a long pause and then suddenly Kristie’s voice, sounding impossibly small, came out from the other end, “Gray?”

  “Kristie? What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  “You need…” She stopped herself and then spoke again, “You need to come to the hospital.”

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What happened?” Panic was filling him, which only grew worse when Kristie made a low keening wailing noise on the other line.

  “Kass,” she sobbed. “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kristie was used to physical pain. After Armand had shot her twice, she remembered tumbling like a house of cards. She remembered a blaze of pain in her gut then everything going very gray and the sound around her dulling. She knew people were panicking. She faintly remembered Gray clutching her until she was swallowed up by blackness. Kristie had been grateful for the blackness. It had taken her away just as the pain was eating her up.

  With mental pain, there was no blackout. Sure, in old movies, they always had women fainting over the smallest thing. But when Kristie had gotten the call from Kass’s mother, there had been no fainting. She had curled up in a ball in the corner of her bedroom and sobbed. There was nothing else to do but cry.

  Gray was coming to get her. Kristie knew that she had to get up and try to get ready. Rick was still alive but in critical condition. It didn’t look good. The only blessing they had was Megan had been unharmed. Little Megan… Before she knew it, she was crying again.

  It felt like seconds, but must have been at least twenty minutes. She heard Gray let himself in with his key and then his arms were around her. Lionel was out somewhere and her mother was at another night shift. Kristie clung to Gray. He held her as she sobbed. When she finally cried out enough so that she could speak, she realized his own cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Do you…do you know anything that happened?” he choked out.

  Kristie took a shuddering breath, “Rick…he was right. Someone had been tailing them. Apparently a car…probably that van… drove by. Fired a slew of bullets in the car. It killed Kass instantly. Rick is grievously injured.”

  “Megan?” His voice caught in his throat.

  “She’s okay,” Kristie said as tears welled up in her eyes again. “She’s okay. She somehow didn’t get hit at all. She got lucky.”

  Kristie buried her face in Gray’s shoulder again as she cried. She knew she needed to pull it together. Gray needed to see Rick. Maybe she could help Kass’s parents out with Megan. Her stomach lurched violently, and she realized she was going to be sick again.

  Kristie ran toward the bathroom and began to throw up. Gray held her hair back, not saying anything. Her stomach seemed incredibly sensitive the past couple of days and it made her feel sick all over. She wanted to crawl into bed and forget everything but she knew it wasn’t possible.

  Once she finished throwing up, she looked up at Gray.

  “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Had it really and truly only been a week ago that Gray had driven to the hospital to see little Megan? How had so much changed in an entire week? A week ago, Megan had been born and Kristie had come over. Life had been finally changing for the better.

  And now Kass was dead. Gunned down by one of the Infernos. And Rick wasn’t going to make it.

  He hated admitting that to himself. He knew he was supposed to be hopeful. To believe that Rick could still make it through and recover. But if it truly was how Kristie had explained it to him, he had to be honest with himself and couldn’t see Rick surviving a slew of bullets being fired at him. Megan had, a voice in the back of his head, still hopeful, said.

  They pulled into the parking lot. Gray glanced over at Kristie. She was deathly pale and her hands were shaking a little
. Her eyes were wide and brimming with tears. She had lost her best friend to this mess. First she is gunned down and now Kass is dead, Gray thought bitterly as he got out of the truck.

  He gripped Kristie’s hand tightly. He was trying to put on a brave front for Kristie but his heart was breaking with each step he took toward the ER. They wouldn’t let them see Rick yet. But if there was a chance he could see him…even to say goodbye…Gray wanted to be there.

  Kass’s parents were in the corner of the waiting room, clutching Megan as if she was a lifeline. Megan was sleeping soundly, oblivious to the panic around them. Kristie burst into tears again as soon as she saw Megan and ran over to them. Kass’s father looked up at Gray and patted the seat next to him. He looked exhausted, as if he had aged twenty years in a couple of hours.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said to Gray. “If Rick…it will mean a lot to him. He always spoke very highly of you.”

  Gray loathed the fact he was already using past tense to describe his best friend. “Kristie filled me in but I wanted…if you knew anything…” He trailed off, feeling hopeless with his own words.

  Kass’s father got a faraway look in his eyes. “I know the bullets…they struck Rick in the head as well as the chest,” he said, veering away from discussing Kass. “And he’s in critical condition. He has no family, and they’re trying to see if they can remove as many of the bullets as possible and stabilize him. We’ve been waiting to hear ever since that. But the doctor said…it’s grim.”

  Grim. Gray chewed on the word, trying to let it sink in that he might not get to say goodbye to Rick. If things went to hell and he didn’t see his friend, the last memory he would have was of a panicked phone conversation between the two of them. How could Rick be fighting for his life in there while Gray waited here?

  “How is Megan?”