Over and Again

by Brooke Edwards

  “When they put Bartlett away for murder, a couple of his friends were charged with perjury,” Andrew says without preamble. “One had a record and they sentenced him pretty harshly. The other was clean and said that Bartlett blackmailed him into lying under oath. Someone paid his bail and his sentence was suspended.”

  “Okay.” Brock nods. “Is the one that went away still there?”

  “He was killed by another inmate yesterday.” Andrew flips open the file, pushing it across the table toward Brock. “There was a brawl, when the guards got between them and the dust settled, his neck had been broken. Died pretty much instantly.”

  “And the one who got away with it?” Brock leans over, glancing down at the file.

  “Think it might be worth sending a couple uniforms to pick him up,” Andrew says, rubbing at the back of his neck.

  “I think that’s a great idea.” Brock looks over the mugshot in the dead man’s file. There are no coincidences, not when you’re untangling a web like this. A loose thread to tug is exactly what they’ve been waiting for. “What’s his name?”

  “Louis Wilson.” Andrew reaches for his cell. “Address on file is in Brooklyn. I’ll see if Martine and Guy want to take a ride and pick him up.”

  “Excellent.” Brock glances back at his screen. “You were saying there’s a Rotolo in Vice, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Andrew says absently, tapping at his cell. “Natasha. Met her not long after I transferred here. She used to work with Carter in Homicide, back when they were both detectives. She comes up here sometimes. When I asked around about why she went to Vice, sounds like she put in for the transfer out when Carter got promoted.”

  Brock frowns. “Doesn’t make the most career sense to go backward to Vice,” he says. “Especially to willingly transfer.”

  Andrew shrugs. “Wouldn’t want to ask her, seems like it might be a touchy subject.”

  “Vice is in this building too, right?” Brock asks.

  “Yeah.” Andrew nods, and slides his cell back into his pocket. He uses the crutch to get to his feet. “I’ll leave that file with you. I’m going to go and keep seeing whether I can tie Masters to anything. Yell out if you hear anything?”

  “Sure.” Brock smiles, already pulling his laptop closer and pushing the file aside.

  He types Natasha Rotolo into the search engine as Andrew limps out of the room.

  “Pierce Osborn.” Cohen runs his tongue over his teeth. The name sits wrong on his lips. “He’s a cop?”

  “Former.” Roger stabs the file in front of him with a pushpin, scowling beneath his beard. “Retired a few years back. A few too many internal investigations cleared him too quickly, and I think—this is speculation—that he eventually made more of a mess than they were willing to cover up. Early retirement got him out of the picture.”

  “If he’s retired, then how the hell is he getting into the precinct without us knowing about it?” Rhys’s eyes are wide. “We’d have him on sign-in logs or security footage. Has he even been there?”

  “No, he’s got to have someone on the inside that we haven’t noticed.” Cohen shakes his head. “He wouldn’t just walk right in the door. He got away with this for years, he’s not stupid enough to do that.”

  “So we’re right back at square one.” Rhys’s shoulders slump.

  “No,” Roger says suddenly. “Not square one. We know where to look now. Old cops groom the rookies, it’s how things go. Osborn was my generation.”

  “Who were your rookies?” Cohen asks, but he’s pretty sure he knows the answer.

  “James.” Roger’s mouth draws tight. “A couple others who moved on or aren’t with us.”

  “And Osborn’s?” Rhys’s fists are clenched, knuckles white.

  “Only two are still here,” Roger says, eyes grim and dark. “Guy West and Natasha Rotolo.”

  James is surprised when his phone rings and Daniel’s contact photo flashes up on his screen, but not as surprised as he is by the questions the younger man asks.

  “Is there anyone in the department who’d want to hurt me?” he repeats, blinking at the darkened television screen. “I—no? Not off the top of my head.”

  “Anyone you’ve butted heads with, or who might have said something you brushed off?” Daniel presses. “I’m sorry, I know you’re recovering, but we need to know.”

  James massages at his thigh, still blinking and trying to catch up. The realization that there’s someone in the precinct he still considers his, who is leaking information, burns. It not only directly led to the consequences both he and Derek are battling every day, but is also putting his officers in danger, and James can’t even begin to think of who he could have pissed off badly enough to fall that far from the oaths they swore.

  “I—I can’t think of anyone,” he says eventually, still turning it over in his head. “I’ll keep thinking, but I can’t think of anyone who would do that. Not one of us, Danny.”

  “I know,” Daniel says, and his voice is strained. “I’m sorry, but I had to ask. Just keep an eye open up there and keep thinking, okay? I’ve got things down here.”

  He hangs up before James can muster up any more words, and then Clinton is in the doorway, concern written in the lines of his face.

  “Everything okay, James?” he asks.

  James sucks in a breath, still massaging at his thigh. “Yeah,” he says after a few seconds. “Just something at work. They’ve got it under control.”

  He’s still turning it over and over and over again when Genevieve and Derek get back from the grocery store. Derek sits beside him on the sofa, startling him out of his fog, and offers him a still warm, grease-stained paper bag.

  “Got you some lunch,” he says quietly, and his hand settles tentatively over James’s on his bad leg. “Are you hurting?”

  “No,” James says, pressing a kiss to Derek’s temple. “No, it was just tight. Is this what I think it is?”

  Derek squeezes his fingers and nods, leaning into his shoulder with a sigh. He stays there while James unwraps the sandwich, spreading the paper out over his lap.

  10

  Daniel’s still reeling a solid ten minutes after Cohen drags him back out of the building and into the coffee shop half a block down.

  “I don’t know Natasha, but I’m too close to Guy to make that call,” he says when he can string words together. “He’s been around longer than I have. I can’t—I can’t think of him as dirty.”

  “And we can’t pin it on Natasha just because she’s not one of us.” Cohen rubs at his eyes. “This guy gave Osborn up without batting an eye, but he couldn’t tell Roger anything else, so obviously they’re smart enough to not have the whole chain open to compromise.”

  “Like a terrorist cell,” Daniel says, his stomach twisting and swooping. “We need to know, and we need to know now. They’ve got to know we’re onto them, whether it’s Natasha or Guy. They’re going to move on whatever their end game is, and they’re going to do it fast. We have to be faster.”

  Cohen’s cell starts vibrating against the table and he snatches it up.

  “Brock,” he says.

  Daniel watches as his face drops into something stony and cold, a hard set that doesn’t look right on a face that normally wears earnest like a uniform.

  “We’re down the street, at the coffee shop,” he says eventually. “Get out of there. Bring Nottage with you and make sure it looks natural.”

  “Guy is there,” he says when he puts his cell back down on the table. The color is draining from his face. “Went into an office with Roger and a man that Brock didn’t recognize.”

  Daniel’s cell lights up before he has a chance to respond, a candid of Peter laughing flashing on the screen. Inexplicable dread claws at his insides, cold and damning, as he answers the call to Peter’s voice.

  “Hey, where are you?” He sounds like he’s only just stopped laughing. “Tia and I came to have lunch, but Kay said she hasn’t seen you back yet. If yo
u’re not close, I think you might end up down a detective because Tia’s going to eat this poor guy alive.”

  “You’re at the precinct?” Daniel asks around a lump in his throat.

  “Yeah,” Peter says, and Daniel can hear Kay laughing in the background. “Where are you?”

  “Just down the street,” Daniel says, standing up. Cohen opens his mouth, but Daniel moves his hand sharply in front of his own throat. “You and Tia should meet me here before I have to go back, okay?”

  “Sure, I’ll just drag her up there. Order us a couple of sandwiches?” The faint sound of someone else talking to Peter filters through the speaker.

  “Pete—” Daniel braces himself on the table, looking up at Cohen. The other man’s eyes are wide and sparking with worry.

  “Daniel?” Peter’s voice wavers, high at the end. “I think something’s wrong, there’s a flashing light but no sound—”

  The call cuts out, and all of the strings holding Daniel up are cut too. His elbow hits the table with a crack, but the pain barely registers.

  “Someone hit an alarm,” he says.

  “Roger was in a room with Guy.” The rest of the blood in Cohen’s face drains away, and his hands spasm into fists. “Brock and Andy are up there still.”

  “Kay and Tia too.” Daniel blindly throws the first bill he finds in his pocket down on the table, and turns toward the exit, his limbs heavy with panic.

  “Go around the back, we’ll break in through the fire doors,” Cohen says when they reach the street, and they burst into a run, back down the road toward the precinct.

  Cohen’s legs eat up the distance faster than Daniel’s, but fear pushes him until they’re neck and neck, forcing their way through the groups of people clustered on the sidewalk. He sees a triple-speed replay of the entire morning and has no idea where he dropped the ball, where he gave this all up and let it fall apart.

  Daniel falls a few steps behind, but Cohen just keeps running, putting his shoulder into it and hitting the emergency doors with a sharp, vicious sound. They buckle and sway, and then Daniel hits them too, and they fly inward under the second attack. Cohen crashes to the ground and then struggles to his feet, shaking out his arm and swearing.

  The ground floor is empty, a sign they don’t really need pointing to how horribly wrong this afternoon is going. “Stairs?” Cohen suggests.

  “Yeah,” Daniel agrees, scanning the hall in front of them. “Elevators are probably locked down.”

  The stairwell is set further back. Cohen takes point, drawing his gun. Daniel follows at his back, gun loose at his side, and isn’t expecting it when Cohen stops suddenly.

  “Do I need a visitor’s badge?” a voice says, and Daniel’s heart hammers against his ribs as he steps out to Cohen’s left, coming face-to-face with Jake Bartlett.

  “Go,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, gun coming up until it’s trained on Jake. “Get up there and help them. I’ve got this.”

  To his credit, Cohen doesn’t hesitate. His strides are long and loping, and he doesn’t take a straight line, but it doesn’t matter. Jake doesn’t draw a gun, too busy grinning at Daniel.

  The stairwell echoes with the pounding of his feet, overlaid by the pounding of his heart in his ears. Cohen counts the flights as he goes, sweat dripping into his eyes and stinging, but he doesn’t stop to wipe it away until he hits the right landing, bracing himself against the closed door. He wipes his palms on his pants, one at a time, and leads with his gun as he pushes the door open slowly, sliding through sideways to present less of a target.

  “Oh thank fuck,” he hears, breathless and low and coming from close by. He ducks low and makes it to the outside of the reception desk, easing around the side. Kay, Tia, and Peter are huddled under the cover of the desk, and Andrew is there, pale and clutching at his arm but with his gun held steady.

  “What happened?” he demands, turning so he’s covering them with his body and keeping one eye on the space leading to the bullpen.

  “Some guy arrived, asked for Murphy,” Kay whispers. “Asked him to sign in, and he asked me to just call Murphy, so I did. Murphy and Guy came out of the office, and then a call came in so I missed what happened, but they took him back to an office.”

  “What did he look like?” Cohen breathes out slowly.

  “Tall, probably in his sixties. More salt than pepper.” Tia is visibly shaking but her words are steady. “Walked like a cop.”

  The ID photo in Pierce Osborn’s file flashes across Cohen’s mind, and he bites at the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing.

  Peter reaches out and clutches at Cohen’s shirt. “There was a woman I thought was waiting at the desk with us, but she had a badge and everything. When she saw them, she just walked right into the bullpen and disappeared.”

  “The one that walked past was Tash, from Vice,” Kay supplies. “She shouldn’t have been waiting with you, I didn’t see her waiting.”

  “She was behind us,” Tia says. Her eyes dart to Andrew.

  “Hart and I came out, but he turned back.” Andrew’s voice is low. “Lost him in the chaos when the alarms went off. Someone crashed into me and I went straight into the wall, think I busted my stitches open. Took cover here to keep these three company.”

  “Roger?” Cohen asks. His mouth dries out and he swallows, rubbing at his shoulder with his free hand.

  “There was gunfire in the office,” Andrew says grimly. “Blinds came down. Roger stuck his head out, yelled for everyone to stay down and quiet, then disappeared again.”

  “Where did Natasha go?” Cohen palms his gun and tries to smile reassuringly at Peter and Tia.

  Andrew shakes his head. “Dunno.”

  “Stay here,” Cohen says, and rises into a crouch.

  Peter holds tight to his shirt. “Where’s Daniel?” he asks, a wheeze in his voice.

  “He’s fine.” Cohen swallows again, and Kay reaches out to pull Peter’s hand free. She looks at Cohen with wide, wet eyes, and he looks away. It wasn’t a lie when he hit the stairwell, and he’s hoping like hell it isn’t a lie now.

  He’s just terrified of what he’s going to find in the office.

  “Jake,” Daniel says. He flexes his fingers around the stock of his gun. The adrenaline has faded into an icy calm. There are no civilians on the ground floor, not anymore, and he’s got a full clip. The doors are locked down. There’s nowhere for Jake to run or hide—not before Daniel could put a bullet, or three, in him.

  “You remember me.” Jake sounds pleased. “Wasn’t sure you got a good look at me through the flames, last time.”

  “I’d have been able to pick you out off the street since we put you away for Katie’s murder.” Daniel takes a step forward. “I’ve got a good memory for faces. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Jake laughs, loud and echoing off the walls, and doesn’t move. “I made that much of an impression?”

  “Cold-blooded murder generally does,” Daniel says, finger sliding around the trigger guard. “If that didn’t do the trick, your little jaunt through the city with Fairhall would have. This, though? This is your third strike, Jake.”

  “So dramatic, Danny,” Jake says, shaking his head and still smiling. He looks up at the ceiling before back at Daniel. “There are a couple of crooked cops up there with your little boyfriend, and you’re down here giving me a lecture.”

  Daniel hopes like hell the flood of fear and guilt at that doesn’t touch his face. “Those crooked cops are outnumbered twenty-to-one,” he says. “And my little boyfriend?” He smiles back. “He’s going to be over the moon when we go home tonight, and you’re either in a body bag down in the morgue, or in lockup. So, Jake.” He pats at the cuffs on his hip with one hand, and then brings it up to steady the gun. “Choice is yours.”

  He doesn’t miss the flash of surprise that passes over Jake’s face before the smug grin comes back. He knows how it’s going to go the second Jake’s weight rolls back to the balls of his fe
et and his hand twitches toward the badly concealed pistol in his pocket.

  Daniel lets Jake get his hand around the pistol and start to draw it, and then he pulls the trigger on his own and puts a bullet right between his eyes.

  Cohen is relieved to find Rhys, Harry, and Martine clustered behind the closest desk to the corridor lined by the offices.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Rhys hisses. “West and Osborn are both in there.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Where’s Brock?” Cohen asks, glancing at the closed blinds of the office. He can barely see moving shadows around the edges.

  “I thought he left?” Martine frowns. “He and Nottage were on their way out before everything went south.”

  “Didn’t make it out,” another voice says, and their heads shoot up. Natasha Rotolo is standing there, Brock cuffed and her gun digging into his side.

  Cohen’s gun is trained on her face in the space of a heartbeat. She presses her gun further into Brock’s side and raises an eyebrow.

  “She figured out that we were onto their little game,” Brock says, and his voice is calm. His lips quirk up when Cohen meets his eyes, and there’s no panic there.

  Probably a good thing, Cohen rationalizes, because he’s panicked enough for the both of them. The sight of the gun pressed against Brock and her finger hovering right over the trigger is worse than the uncertainty.

  “With me, Bailey,” Natasha snaps. “Gun down, or it’s a gut shot and he dies slow and painful.”

  “What happened to ‘serve and protect’?” Brock asks, as Cohen puts his gun down slowly. He feels a hand brush across his lower back as he turns and rises, a faint pressure and tug at his utility belt, and keeps his hands up in front of him.

  “A lie you perpetrate every day,” she hisses, jerking Brock forward and then looking at Cohen with wild eyes. “In front, Bailey. We’re going outside and I’m getting the hell out of here, or the lawyer bites it.”