LCC 12 Doing The Best I Can

12. Doing The Best I Can

If life was like the movies, Mike would have driven by Amber’s house when the shit hit the fan. He would have gotten to Amber before the assault, he would have taken the heat off Dom by being the one to kick Alan’s ass in the dirt driveway. He would have gotten to be the hero, and redeemed himself beautifully. Everyone in the audience would have felt their hearts lift, their own inner demons placated by a flawed character given a chance to do right.

Life isn’t anything like the movies. Not that Mike didn’t make the effort; it just wasn’t in the cards. He had driven by the house twice more after his first attempt, but all was quiet. Brightman was his target now; if he could find a way to take out Brightman, his ex-wife wouldn’t need to be worried. It was a neat and tidy way to resolve a problem. There was something to be said for going right to the source, even if it left you out in the cold when everything went off the rails.

Mike had always known that Brightman would be a problem, would be someone to watch. Had known from the first day that he had sat across the desk from him, the anger reined in by clenched fist and tightly controlled voice.

Brightman was always going to be trouble; it was just a matter of scale, and which way the wind was blowing when the fallout started. So of course Mike had begun to look into the ex-husband from the very beginning, which is how the disturbing revelations about the first wife, now vanished, had come about.

Mike drove past Amber’s house one last time. He didn’t really expect to see anything this time either; it was more a way to ease his conscience. That, and to kill time, waiting for full dark. It seemed only fair to return Brightman’s favor.

The business district was small but clearly delineated, done purposefully. Drawing a line across the street keeping all those not properly clad in expensive suits on their own side of the line. That too suited Mike’s purposes and he parked on a side street next to an abandoned warehouse, waiting in his car, ready to pull out at the slightest whiff that his car was watched.

The day had quickly crept on into night. A small group of teenaged boys eyed him warily as they strolled down the opposite sidewalk, all bravado and over-baggy pants. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in his side mirror, Mike figured they were justified. He looked like either a mob enforcer, or a hustler. Both of which would make any passerby nervous. Mike wasn’t sure which was worse, but he was willing to use it to his advantage.

He slipped a set of lock picks into the inside pocket of his jacket, carefully draping it over his arm. It was dark enough that the spots of blood on his shirt wouldn’t show, at least not as blood. Black jacket, white shirt, black slacks; there were times when his monochromatic style of dress made things easier. To anyone that observed, he would look like a slightly rumpled businessman heading home. Maybe with a drink too many under his belt. Fine enough to walk unaided, dangerous enough to be left alone. Ambiguous at best. It would do, at least for now.

Brightman lived close to work, close enough to walk if he needed. Mike had the feeling that Brightman would never do that; he would drive everywhere, his car a status symbol, a bit of glitter on the outside. Mike walked past the imposing edifice that squatted at the corner of Water and Rankin. In another place, it would have looked respectable, dignified even. But here, on the outskirts of the business district as the offices and fine restaurants trailed into warehouses and abandoned storefronts, it painted another picture.

International Trade. It wasn’t a large plaque, but it imposed its will on the rest of the façade. Smaller text beneath; Import/Export. Nothing else. Mike didn’t look around, didn’t stop. He took it all in as he swept past; a busy man with a plan, going somewhere else.

Whatever security existed on the outside of the building would track yet another nondescript businessman. Mike didn’t look up; nothing about him stood out. It never did, that’s what made him good at what he did.

The location of the building was noted, and then Mike moved on. He had wanted to see where Brightman worked, more as a way to fill in the pieces than anything else. There would be security and any number of risks that Mike wasn’t willing to take. Yet. The company would be part of Brightman’s disguise and wouldn’t tell Mike much about who he was, or what he did. There were better ways to find out information about the company, ways that were safer, quieter.

Moving further down the street, taking a circuitous route past Brightman’s building and around the block. There was no way to know that Brightman hadn’t parked somewhere else; that was entirely possible, even if Mike doubted it. It would have come as more of a relief to see the black car there; at least Mike would know where Brightman was. Too late to pull back now.

The jacket draped over his arm, Mike looked like a man fumbling with his keys. In truth, he was quickly, expertly, using his set of lock picks to activate the tumblers in a lock at the back door. He palmed his set of keys, in case anyone came by, but it wasn’t necessary. The set of lock picks was secreted back into the inside pocket of his jacket; his keys he left in his hands, for cover.

That it wasn’t needed didn’t change the routine. It was amazing how the eye would pick out details that didn’t belong. A man getting into a building without a set of keys in his hand would stand out; people would remember. They wouldn’t think twice about a man entering an apartment with keys; that would fade into the background.

Hallways silent, he moved quietly to the opposite side of the building, to Brightman’s apartment where he repeated the procedure. There was a moment of unease when he loided the lock and slowly opened the door. Brightman could have been home. His car could be somewhere else. He could be hosting a surprise birthday party in there. Anything could happen. It was a heart lurching rush; it was part of the draw.

Mike listened at the doorway for as long as he could pull it off as a natural act. No one was home. Again, it made Mike uneasy to wonder where Brightman was, what he was doing. He pushed it aside and got on with it; there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it, until he knew more about Brightman.

The place was stale, dark. Mike opened up and absorbed, soaking up the feel of the place; that would tell him as much as anything else would. Maybe more. The single life didn’t suit Brightman.

Artificial light from the street outside filtered through nearly closed blinds at the front of the apartment, enough to see by. Mike left the lights off; he didn’t need the light for this job; he was used to the dark. Garbage overflowed in the kitchen; there was a dull buzz of flies around a cluster of beer bottles on the counter.

The rest of the apartment was a shambles. At first, it could be passed off as the average bachelor pad. Maybe it had started that way. Mike had been in a few places that had been tossed, had even done the deed a few times himself. On the surface, that’s what this looked like.

Except that nobody had tossed the place, unless you counted Brightman himself. The mess had built up over weeks, maybe months. Mike could easily imagine that nothing had been cleaned since Amber left. The décor was expensive and it wasn’t hard to see that it had been well cared for until recently; all part of Brightman’s carefully constructed image.

The mess didn’t bother Mike. The obvious signs of escalating violence did. Holes punched in the walls. The blade of an expensive steak knife pinned a picture of Amber to the wall. Apparently Brightman had used it for target practice. People often hated their exes, Mike knew. He had made his living on the anger of others for a long time.

This was different; this bothered him. Aside from the mess and destruction, not much could be gleaned from the living area of the apartment. Brightman was still able to compartmentalize, to separate the chaos in his life from the outside world. He would still feel the need to hide. At least for now, although it looked like his control was slipping.

Carefully, Mike padded silently to the bedroom door, pushing it open with his toe. Waiting, just in case. Silence. He was alone. The bedroom hadn’t escaped Brightman’s wrath. Amber had left a lot of things behind when she left, either by accident or by design, and her ex had taken out his violence on what traces were left of her. Clothes and pictures, pretty women’s things, all were cut and torn to ribbons like so much confetti.

Brightman was fond of cutting. It was an image that dropped the temperature in the room by a few degrees. For not the first time, Mike wondered how the first Mrs. Brightman died. The irony of helping the current ex wife by discovering what happened to the previous one wasn’t lost on him. Life worked like that.

In a pile of dirty clothes that lay neglected in a corner of the room, Mike found a set of keys. He contemplated pocketing them but didn’t want to tip his hand so soon. It was a shame that he couldn’t pay back Brightman for the knock on the head; maybe he’d be granted that pleasure before it was all over. But not yet.

Mike looked in the drawer of the bedside table, moved a few things around on the dresser. It’s not where people kept things, he knew, not the things that really mattered to them. Turning towards the mirrored closet, Mike stepped over a small pile of Amber’s shredded things, crossing the room.

It was in a box on the top shelf of the closet. The hiding place looked recent . Mike believed that at some point, its contents would have been better hidden. Now, with Amber gone, Brightman felt free to bring out his collection again.

Mike pushed the tip of a pen through the contents. It would be easier for him if the box contained some sort of glaring evidence. Like a severed body part, or a rambling diary entry confessing to a murder. Nice and neat. Of course, if Mike did anything with such a find, he would have to explain what he was doing in Brightman’s apartment. Which only proved that nothing was ever as easy as it should be.

There were several photos of women, and some pieces of jewelery. Mike turned over some of the pictures with the tip of a pen. Blondes, women with light brown hair; nothing darker, nothing bolder. The one feature that tied all of the pictures together was a certain delicacy in the facial features, an innocence. It wasn’t a hard stretch to imagine them as virgins, or close to it. Brightman would have sought out women like that, women that wouldn’t contravene his deep need for control, for dominance.

There was no way to know if the bracelets were the only piece of jewelery that Brightman had given the women, or if the bracelets held some sort of value for him, and that’s why he kept them. All of them were the same though. There were five in the box; it made Mike feel ice cold; every one of those was a woman. He imagined Amber, and the first wife, Janet Arlington. Felt an empty hole in him at the thought of the others, women that he had no idea what, if anything, had happened to them. Mementos? Or trophies?

Mike wished it was more. There was no proof of anything in the box. Nothing that would matter to anyone that looked at it on its own. Turning over a picture of Janet Arlington, Mike studied the face. He couldn’t take the picture with him; Brightman would definitely miss that, no matter if his life was unraveling.

Committing her image once again to memory, he retraced his steps carefully to make sure that he hadn’t left evidence of his passing. Mike went to the bathroom, looked underneath the sink, and pulled out a bar of soap that he found there, quickly pressing the key that had caught his eye into the soft surface, noting the locker number on the plastic tab so that he could return the keys back to the bedroom. Brightman would never know he was there.

The door locked automatically behind Mike as he slipped out of the apartment and down the hall; a security feature that made his job of breaking and entering so much easier. Getting back to his car, he took the bar of soap with its imprint of the locker key and put it on his dash. What he expected it to tell him, he didn’t know. “That soap isn’t going to say a word to you, no matter how hard you stare at it.” He was making light of the situation; that he knew it didn’t change it.

It was around eleven at night, and still no Brightman. Mike’s gut roiled. Tomorrow he would have one of his informants make a copy of the key. That was just a start. Then there was finding what the key opened. Finding someone that would listen. Tomorrow seemed so far away when he wanted to act now. Sighing, Mike turned the engine over and took the back roads out of town. To drive by Amber’s house once more.
—

“Maybe I should go after them.” Amber nervously looked around. Down at her feet, at the house behind her, at her car; gathering the steps together that she believed were necessary to get her from the porch, inside to get her shoes, and into her car. She wanted to go follow the sheriff. “I don’t want Dom getting into any trouble…”

Mia crowded Amber, taking her by the arm and guiding her back into the house. For the moment, Dom was left, forgotten, in the front yard. Not nearly done being angry, Mia followed Amber through the broken front door. “Don’t blame yourself; Dom is more than capable of getting into, and out of, trouble all by himself. This isn’t your fault, Amber.”

Blood always won out. That Mia was a woman, that she was Dom’s little sister, a slew of cultural stereotypes about what she should have been, or not been; didn’t matter. Mia looked around the living room, at the destruction, the shattered glass, the obvious signs of a serious fight, and she saw red. The difference between her and Dom was in how that anger was handled. Mia was pissed off, without a doubt, but she intended to DO something real about it.

The hard, determined line came back between Amber’s eyes as she looked around at the destruction. Of her house. HER house. And the damage created in her life beyond; for her, for others. Spotting the blanket that Dom had covered her with the night before, Amber’s lips thinned. It had built slowly; she had been angry for a long time, years in fact. “This isn’t Dom’s fault; he doesn’t deserve to get hurt by ANY of this, not for trying to defend me….” The voice was hard, clipped, strained.

“You didn’t do anything to deserve it either,” Mia snapped, unable to hold her anger back as she crossed the room to get a pair of Amber’s sneakers that she spotted beside the couch. “And Dom wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe to finish what he started.”

Amber bit down on her lip and winced as the cut split open again. “Fuck.” Huffing a hard sigh, she carefully crossed the living room, meeting Mia halfway. “No, I didn’t deserve it.” Restrained anger hardened Amber’s voice; her actions jerky as she sat on the couch and put her shoes on over her bandaged feet. “I didn’t deserve any of it,” she spat.

The anger swirled through her but she didn’t really know what to do with it now that the object of her rage was gone. Her eyebrows pinched together as she stood and turned to face Mia again, looking around at the destruction. “Why the fuck…” Her voice broke and she couldn’t continue, but she wouldn’t stand there and cry there either. So she bottled it up, pressing her lips together until they bled again.

Like Dom, Mia realized that her anger wasn’t going to do a damned bit of good. Anger just hurt more. Sighing, Mia crossed the room towards Amber, pulling her down to sit on the couch. Amber was all angles and unease, unaccustomed to being hugged; she wanted to be angry, but couldn’t do it. It wasn’t really who she was.

The tears came in a sudden flood, scouring through her, leaving her exhausted, empty. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling. Mia couldn’t escape the tears either; it was the way of women. Men yelled, fought, made a mark on the things that hurt them, and moved on. Or not. Mia held Amber through the sudden squall of tears. Over as soon as it started.

Shakily, Amber pulled back, gingerly wiping her eyes. “Damn it, I’ve cried enough.” She was sick of crying, sick of hurt. The anger was a wildfire that raced through her, but it couldn’t sustain her. It wasn’t who she was; it wasn’t what she wanted, that was why she had left, because she was sick of the anger. Squeezing Mia’s arm, she leaned in. “Are you going to be okay, Mia, I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, don’t you start again,” Mia said good-naturedly, her voice catching, unsure whether she would laugh or cry. Wiping her tears, she got composed, took a sigh. “I need to open up in a couple of minutes.” Mia looked down at her watch and cursed. “Damn. I was supposed to open about five minutes ago.” Looking up at Amber and around at the living room, she continued. “You’ve had a hell of a day. I know you wanted to start today, but…”

“I need to do this. If I stay in here, I might never leave again,” Amber stood abruptly, looking out her front window. “He’s not going to take any more from me.”

Mia stood, tentatively putting her hand on Amber’s back. “You’re sure? Because some of these guys would help with a lot of this stuff?”

A determined sigh, as Amber looked at Mia, and past her, to the glass, a hole in the wall where Alan had driven her the night before. And the door. “The glass I can clean up, but the rest I might need some help with.” Trailing off to uncertainty; Amber wasn’t used to asking for help. Wasn’t used to it being so honestly offered.

Taking another quick look at her watch, Mia stepped over some broken glass. “The diner can wait a few minutes. Let’s take care of this glass; the guys will take care of everything else.”

Amber didn’t want to cry again. She had very few friends, she realized. Shirley and Stephens the security guard. Those she had discovered only recently, since leaving Alan. She would have to call them later today; she had promised. Dom had been gruff and unfriendly, but he had never been cruel, and he had run in to help her. Took care of her. Stayed with her. And Mia was here now. A deep inhale, blinking to fight the tears, “I’ll go get the broom.”

The glass was cleaned up quickly and easily, the broken shards swept into a pail and left out under cover of the back porch. Jim knocked on the door jamb before he came in, Dom right behind him. With a clinical eye, Jim hmm’ed and nodded, his hand running over the door.

“Can you fix it?” Thumbs in his pockets, Dom stood behind Jim and asked, looking at the door self-consciously, his boot print where he had kicked the door in plain to be seen in the light of day.

Taking a look behind the door at where the hinges had been pushed inward and twisted, Jim hummed some more, his cigarette switching from one side of his mouth to the other. The two women came forward, Amber looking hopefully between Jim and Dom.

Jim had been around a long time. He had been married once, a long time ago, so the hopeful, longing look from Amber was one he recognized immediately. She needed him to fix it, to make it right, not just replace it. A woman needed her home to be her home, he knew, and part of that was in putting things right. Dom needed it too, that much also went unsaid; from the guilty look. He had had to kick the door in, but he didn’t feel good about destroying it.

“I’ll need to pick up another set of hinges, rebuild the jamb… Probably be more solid than before it got kicked in.” Jim added the last over his shoulder as he walked over to look at the busted cabinets. “Shame ‘bout this. I got a friend that owes me a favor. See if it can’t get done.”

“Thank you… Should I…” Amber was about to ask about money; she didn’t have a lot but she had money to pay for whatever was needed, but Dom caught her eye and shook his head no. Which had Amber tear up again; she got it under control quickly after a quiet nod at him. “Thank you,” she repeated, the sincerity evident.

There were a couple of people sitting outside on the steps of the diner when Mia walked out into the yard; she waved at them, shouting that it would be a minute. Nobody seemed concerned about the wait; they nodded, tipped their hats, eying Amber carefully. Used to those sort of looks, Amber put her head down and followed Mia into the back of the diner.

“You’ll have to tell me what to do; I’ve really never done anything like this before.” Amber felt self-conscious again as Mia came back into the kitchen after letting in the people that had waited out front.

Smiling, Mia turned on the grills and the toasters, the coffee makers. “Nothing to it really, especially in the morning. Coffee, toast, eggs, bacon, it’s pretty simple.” Soon set up in front of the pass through, Amber was setting up plates and buttering toast. It really was pretty easy, a lot easier than her desk job. Amber shut off the yammering in her brain and just let her movements be ruled by the wheel of orders.

Soon, the orders for breakfast dwindled away to nothing, with coffee refills being the order of the day. Mia cast a hard glance at Heather across the pass through before smiling at Amber and taking off her apron. “I need to make a quick call and then we usually take a quick break for something to eat, then make up some supplies to get us through the lunch rush. Are you sure you’re…”

“I really liked it,” Amber smiled easily as she cut in. She had, too. It was different than anything she had ever done before, at least as paid work, but she had buttered toast and made meals before so it wasn’t so different. And she didn’t have to deal with the people, that was new too.

One last warning look at Heather, and Mia slipped back to her office. Out of sight of the kitchen, her anger was back. “Bri?”

“What happened?” Brian knew immediately that something was wrong and put down the stack of paperwork he had been working on.

Quickly, Mia ran down what had happened, getting angrier by the moment, until half of her sentences were in spluttered Spanish. She had kicked the door closed, having to stand in the tiny space and fought to keep her voice down.

The entire time, Brian took quick notes, getting his questions in between Mia’s angry statements, making note of her answers. She hadn’t just called to vent; Brian had taken a job many former FBI, CIA and other intelligence agents that found themselves on the wrong side of a case ended up taking. He was a security consultant, doing for a tidy fee what he had once done at government pay.

Brian had looked into Amber of course, it was part of what had caused the woman so much trouble in the first place. He had also taken a brief, cursory glance at the ex-husband, although he had to admit that he found where Mr. Brightman worked to be of more interest than the man himself. That would clearly have to change. “Let me guess, Dom is blaming himself, right?”

Brian and Mia talked about everything. Well, Mia talked about everything, Brian thought, smirking on his end of the line. Often he would hold up a finger, trying to get a word in edgewise; that was easier said than done. So he had learned to listen to her, to let her talk it out. She’d tell you everything about her and her world if you listened, he knew.

“I’m really worried he’s going to do something stupid and go after him…” Mia rattled on for a few more minutes. She was concerned for Dom, but Brian didn’t think Dom would go out of his way to hunt down Amber’s ex-husband. There was a worry if the ex came back to the garage, or if there was a random meet up somewhere. Brian knew Dom pretty well, in some ways even better than Mia, because they were both guys; they both felt the same way about a lot of things and had from minute one. Brian let Mia continue until she started to repeat herself, her energy spent. Another tactic that he had learned.

“I can come by and wire up her house, security wise. Put in a few sensors.” ‘Talk to Dom‘ went unspoken there. “I can look into the ex-husband as well.” Brian deliberately left it out there as a question, knowing the effect that it would have on Mia.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, honey!…” Brian grinned on his side of the phone as she went on for a few more minutes; thoroughly pleased to know that something, anything, would be done.

In the kitchen, Heather leaned through the pass through, a sympathetic look on her face. Cooing over Amber. As Mia came out of her tiny office, she came across the scene, but stood back for a moment. Amber didn’t look like she believed Heather at all; the smile never reached her eyes.

It made Mia a little sad; she wondered how often Amber had heard fake sympathy. It was clearly often enough that she knew it when she heard it. Finally when Mia had heard enough, she walked across the kitchen quickly, putting a hand on Amber’s shoulder. “It’s pretty quiet, Heather. Did you want to clock off early?” Heather wasn’t the only person that could put on fake emotions.

Anger flitted over Heather’s features. Lips thinned, eyes narrowed. It passed just as quickly, at least on the surface. When Mia had bought the diner, Heather had stayed on, been given the run of the place. She knew the customers, what they liked. In a lot of ways. She had never been sent home early, but that was clearly what was going on now. A false smile spread on her face as she put down the coffee pot and took off her apron. “Fine! It’s always good to have a day off. Maybe I’ll go have a facial.” The false sympathy was back, as she realized that what was said sounded heartless. “Oh, I’m sorry, that was mean.”

Amber just smiled back; she had dealt with far worse than Heather before. The smile grew, but Amber bit back the sarcastic comments that were dying to fly out of her mouth. She had taken enough of a beating. That, and Heather would always have the upper hand; it was pretty easy for Heather to insult her, at least for now. The smile was enough.

“Well, that went well,” Mia quipped as Heather got into her car and pulled out into the street, gone in a cloud of road-dust.

“Is it going to be okay? Can I help?…Maybe everyone will eat toast.” Amber laughed, she knew that she wasn’t much help, but she’d do anything she could to help. There was that, and she really liked how her morning went; she felt good, useful.

“It won’t be too busy, and we can do a lot of stuff to make it easier.” Mia chuckled under her breath as she pulled together a couple of heaped plates of food together. “And I can get Dom to help out.”

Laughing out loud at Amber’s shocked expression. “Oh yeah, nobody gives him shit when he’s out there taking orders.”

Covering her mouth with her hand, Amber burst out laughing; it was hard to imagine Dom out in the front of the diner serving customers. “You’re kidding, right?” She could see him in the back, over the grill, but not out front.

“He doesn’t do it that often, but sometimes I need help and there’s no way he’s coming back here. Everything just gets barbecued. To death.” Mia was laughing right along with Amber. She saw it often enough, had been around her brother enough, that she didn’t often stand back and see it the way that other people might see it. It was pretty funny. Dominic Toretto, king of the street racers, taking orders.

It was around eleven, the blazing autumn sun merciless, when they went outside holding several plates which were left on the picnic table. If not for the big umbrella, it would be unbearable.

Brian’s car was pulled up close to Amber’s front door, the trunk open and a cardboard box of supplies sitting on the roof. Jim had taken the door off its shattered hinges and, with Eddie’s help, they had built a trestle on the front porch, where Jim worked on it. Eddie didn’t really know what he was doing but listened to Jim anyway. There were times to cause shit and push buttons and times when it was about the dumbest thing you could do. Aggression crackled off Dom as he walked around the house with Brian. Eddie wasn’t going to give him any excuse; he wasn’t entirely sure that Dom would be able to stop, once he started. He had come too far to get stupid now.

Smelling food, the men slowly put down their tools and boxes of wire, drifting over to the picnic table. It was something that made Mia smirk every time. They were like little kids, dropping everything where it lay, to get fed.

Amber put her head down at first, paying attention to her toast. That she was beaten to hell was painfully obvious, an elephant in the room that no one wanted to notice. If it was noticed, it would have to be dealt with, and Amber was just plain fed up with the whole thing. Mia sat on one side of her, with Dom on her other side, like two bookends. They probably hadn’t even realized that they did so, but they sought to protect her, even among friends.

Jim sat across from Amber, after a good long look at her sitting there. Leaning forward, he forced her, by mere presence alone, to look up away from her plate. “Your door’s almost fixed. Probably better than before. Got that rattle out, the squeak too.” It wouldn’t have mattered what he had started out with, he could have just as easily have talked about the sunshine, or the food that the two women had brought out. Getting her to look up was the goal. Cracking a grin that showed the gold fillings at the back, he pointed a piece of toast at her. “I could probably get that squeak back, if you wanted.”

Mia and even Dom tensed at the double meaning in his words, even if it was a little tame, unsure about Amber’s reaction. Amber blinked, looking up fully for the first time. These people were still pretty new to her but she had never known people for long periods of time, always moving away before solid friendships were formed. Jim’s eyes twinkled at her.

Even Brian froze, before he sat at the table next to Jim and Eddie. From conversations at home with Mia about Amber, Brian feared that she might fall apart. Too sensitive, even if she had every good reason to be. Brian knew that Mia was protective of her and, having never met Amber beyond a wave at the end of the driveway, he had no idea how much merit to give that.

Putting her toast down, Amber pursed her lips together, fighting back her laughter. She had no idea why she found it so funny. Maybe it was just the seriousness of everything that had come before it. Amber hated being serious, being quiet. It didn’t suit who she really was, what she really wanted to be. What she had left her husband for. She leaned back and burst out laughing, the sound echoing across the yard. It wasn’t long before the rest of the table joined in, until tears streamed down their faces, the tension broken.

Amber wiped her eyes carefully as her laughter died down, still bursting out in fits and starts. Reaching across the picnic table, Amber rested her hand fleetingly over Jim’s in a gesture unfamiliar to her. She didn’t go around just touching people. There was a time when a simple casual hug, spotted by her ex-husband, would have disastrous consequences. There WAS a time; that was in the past. “I like that squeaky door just fine,” Amber choked out between snorts of laughter.

It broke the tension at the table and Brian relaxed on the other side of Jim, across from Mia, kicking her softly under the table. Dom shook his head, giving Brian a dirty look. “Knock it off you two.” He folded a piece of toast around a last piece of sausage and egg and jammed it in his mouth in one bite, ready to start again. “Let’s finish this up.”

Dom just needed to DO something, anything. Just to do something. Brian tilted his head at Mia, sharing a look; they both knew what Dom was like when he was angry. When he didn’t have an outlet for it, he seethed quietly. It worried them both even if Brian was still pretty sure that Dom wasn’t about to act on it. At least towards Brightman. Eddie might be another matter, but the undercover agent looked like he has wised up, at least for the day.

In the kitchen all morning, Amber didn’t know what they were talking about. “Finish what up?” she asked, noticing a coil of wire that Brian still had over his shoulder.

Mia quickly made an official introduction and Amber reached across to shake Brian’s hand; she had waved to him before and knew of him from Mia, but had never met him in person before. “He’s a ..”

“…Security consultant.” Brian finished for Mia; he still didn’t like to talk too much about what he did around Eddie. That Eddie could likely discover the information on his own through his FBI sources, didn’t change anything. “After what happened,” he paused, taking in the damage to Amber’s face. “I figured it might be a good idea to do a security check of your house.”

Alarm came up in Amber’s eyes. She knew that she should be thanking him but she was tired of being watched. Alan had had someone spy on her at work before; it had left her feeling violated and angry. “Not in the house…? I don’t really…”

Brian had seen this before. Even people who were okay with surveillance often found that it was another story altogether when those cameras were inside. A woman who had been subjected to abuse would feel very strongly about having anyone watch her; wouldn’t believe that it was all aboveboard. “Just outside,” he added quickly. Dom eyed Brian carefully; they had just put up cameras and had been about to wire the inside of the house, so he knew that Brian was lying. He didn’t understand why but stayed quiet, waiting.

“We’ll put up surveillance cameras on the outside, and a few alarms for the outside of the windows and doors so no one can break in,” Brian’s reasonable voice soothed, putting Amber at ease. He knew that he’d probably catch hell from Mia later, for not working harder to convince her to have the inside of her house wired as well. Maybe he’d be able to explain it later, maybe not. The hard, determined line between Amber’s eyes wasn’t lost on Brian, just as it hadn’t been lost on Mike. There was only so much pushing that she would take. “Dom?” Brian stood, tipping his head in Mia and Amber’s direction.

Dom waited until they were clear of the picnic table, until he watched Amber following Mia back into the diner, helping with the plates from their lunch. “What the fuck was that? We’ve already got stuff inside the house.”

“It comes out,” Brian said simply as he grabbed a box and entered the house to do just that.

Following, Dom glared, his arms crossing over his chest. Brian didn’t even need to see the gesture to know that Dom was doing it. “How the hell are we supposed to protect her if we take everything out again?”

“You want to be the one to tell her that she better just do what you say?” Brian had stopped by the ladder he had put up to anchor in the alarm system. “Or else?”

“Fuck.” Putting it like that changed things a lot. Dom didn’t want to be the person telling Amber that she had better listen to him. Even if he knew he was right.

“Pretty much.” Brian took down the miniature camera and placed it carefully in the box, coming down off the ladder to move to the next spot.

“That stuff’s small enough that she wouldn’t even see it in the house.” Dom didn’t like it the moment that he said it, but he also remembered what Amber looked like covered in blood. So it got said.

“Won’t do it. If she doesn’t want it in the house, then it stays outside.” Nothing Dom could say would change Brian’s mind, but Brian noticed nonetheless that Dom wasn’t jumping all over him to convince him either.

“You can cover the house just as well from the outside though,” Dom suggested. Some of the anger had gone out of him as Dom followed Brian through the house, removing the rest of the devices.

“Probably better. I had wanted to avoid big cameras outside.” Brian didn’t want to tip his hand. A surveillance system that drove away what you wanted to watch wasn’t a great system either. It was better to catch activity on film, where you could do something with it. Hefting one of the cameras in his hand, Brian turned towards Dom. “These are pretty small, but they’re powerful enough to capture everything up to the road clearly.”

“And not be noticed at all, in case the fucker comes back.”

Brian noticed that Dom’s hands were in fists and that he was fighting his anger. The destruction in the room was evident and both Mia and Dom had told him what had happened. Mia had sounded pretty pissed off about Dom losing his temper, but Brian saw things a little differently. That Amber’s ex-husband had lived to walk away from it was testament to Dom’s self-control. Such as it was. Given what had been done to Amber, he was lucky to be alive. “Yeah. Few sensors on the windows…”

“…And an alarm to the garage.” Dom finished for Brian. There was no give in the request. Amber may not want surveillance cameras in her house, but she’d just have to accept an alarm to Dom’s place above the garage; he wouldn’t accept no for an answer.

Brian knew that the bargaining stage was done. The place would be secure, and all those involved would get what they needed. That was his job. Reading those wishes and delivering on them. “Fair ‘nough. Here,” he handed a roll of wire to Dom, and got started on the outside of the house.
—

Mike had fallen asleep on his desk again, waking with a start. Alert. Too alert, nerves jangling. There wasn’t any reason for it; it’s how he woke every morning, as though the things from his dreams had chased him right up to the door of wakefulness. He was never quite sure if he had left them behind, or if they would jump out at him in his waking state. Disorientation.

It would pass, he knew. It always did given enough time. Time was something he didn’t have. It was just shy of nine thirty by the time he had taken a shower in the office’s coffin-sized stall. A clean shirt, a shave. He still felt like shit, and would for another day until the alcohol was completely out of his system. But at least he didn’t look like shit.

He was about to do something that he preferred to avoid. Not much choice now. Mike didn’t bother calling first. If he left an answer on the machine, it would just give whoever was at the station a chance to do some homework before he got there. A half hour later, he pulled into the near-deserted lot, to talk to the Sheriff for Desolation.

next…