::ELEVEN::
Alvarez is looking at me, asking me something. I look down, watching his hand on my arm, pulling me away from the drivers side door. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. The high pitched whine fills my head, a white noise, drowning out everything. I watch him for a second to try to figure it out, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. All I can hear is Jeanette. Crying. She was crying. Someone had made her cry, had hurt her.
I don’t remember how we got to the car from the office. I don’t remember Alvarez pulling me to the passenger side of the car, and buckling the seatbelt. I don’t remember the drive to the bookstore, other than thinking it was taking too fucking long, and why couldn’t he drive faster. Even the siren he’s put on the roof, to cut through traffic, seems to be going in slow motion.
I can see the cop cars, and the ambulances, from three streets away. People stopping to look, slowing down traffic. The button release on the seatbelt is too small, too hard to see, and won’t come loose, leaving me stuck in this fucking car. Alvarez is gripping my arm, saying something, but I can’t hear him. Keeping me here, while all these fucking people stop and look and we’re stuck here behind them. Fucking stuck here.
“Let me fucking go, Alvarez!” The tiny rational part of me that’s left is telling me I’m screaming at him, that he’s here to help me. That part of me disappears, lost, as I scream and fight with him to get out of the car. Wanting to get past all these fucking people. Wanting to get my hands on whoever’s hurt her. Wanting to kill whoever’s hurt her.
Some small part of me kept me from hitting him. How he held onto me, I don’t know. Laying on the horn, drowning out my screaming. Pushing cars out of the way with the front of the car, eventually making a path through the stopped cars, to the street in front of the bookstore.
“No…no, please, not again…” The street is littered with broken glass, the big front window of the bookstore and the store beside it laying in glittering pools all over the sidewalk. Two medics wheeling a stretcher out across the sidewalk, to the back of the ambulance. The sheet draped over the body. Covering it completely. They don’t do that unless you’re already dead.
“….called you.”
“What?” He’s saying something, but I can’t quite make it out, the high pitched whine in my head, the urge to kill something, keeping me from hearing him.
“She called you, less than…three minutes ago. That’s not her. She called you, Sean.”
He’s talking in a calm, rational voice, and what he’s saying should make sense to me, but I can’t get the words to line up right. If she’s gone. The siren sounds strange, deep, quieter, like it’s winding down.
“Sean, it’s not her.”
The sound isn’t the siren, it’s me. If she’s gone. Gone. The rage, the confusion, vanish, leaving me shaking, leaving nothing but pain in their wake. Just this horrible emptiness, this searing black hole, swallowing everything, a stab wound in the chest making it hard to breathe. The car is slowing down again, and I manage to get the seatbelt undone, open the car door. Alvarez slams on the brakes, as I throw myself out of the car.
“You can’t cross…” A hand on my shoulder as the cop tries to stop me from crossing the yellow caution tape. The loud metallic click of metal on metal, as the cuffs on his belt slam into the car, as I throw him across the hood. Alvarez stays, probably to explain. I don’t notice anymore, I don’t care anymore. All I know is that I have to find her, I have to see her, no matter what’s happened to her. I have to know.
Alvarez catches me before I reach the first ambulance, the cop on my other side. If either of them thinks they’re going to stop me, they’re mistaken.
“She’s in the second one, she’s all right…” I don’t hear the rest, running for the second ambulance.
Blood. Oh god, there’s so much blood. She had changed, when she got home. The pale cream of her clothes now soaked in blood. A medic is bandaging her arm, her other arm held close to her chest, hugging herself with one arm, as her breath hitches, in a sob.
“Sean…” Her voice is shaky, and raw from crying, her eyes wide in fear. She tries to stand, but the medic won’t let her, telling her to take it easy. Asking me my name. The question doesn’t make any sense to me, why should my name matter? How could that be important?
“‘Nette? Please, baby, are you hurt?” My hands running over her bloodstained clothes. Pulling her sticky shirt free, terrified to look and having to look at the same time. Seeing in my mind her beautiful body ripped apart. Some part of my brain telling me that that couldn’t be, or she wouldn’t be here, right now, crying. Having to see for myself. Her skin sticky from blood, but not her blood. It’s not hers. My hand sweeps over her belly, her chest, not trusting my eyes.
“Sean..” Pulling her close to me, her body wracked with sobs. “I was so scared.” A wave of light headedness, that high whine in my head evening out to a background white noise, everything going grey. I sit down next to her, shaky. My shirt quickly soaked with her tears. Stroking her back, her hair, telling her it’s all right, that everything will be okay.
The medic is talking to me again, it takes me a second to focus. His voice is clear and loud, shaking my arm. “I’d like to give her a sedative. Are you going to be able to take care of her? If not, she has to go to the hospital.” I have to take care of her, I can’t fall apart. I nod, helping untangle her arm, so he can give her a shot. It takes a minute, before she relaxes, her sobs slowing, and then silence. Leaning hard against my chest, still crying, just no energy left, and soon even the crying eases.
“What happened.”
“Drive by shooting.” He answers in short brutal sentences, no embellishment, as he packs up, disposing of blood soaked gauze. “Shot a guy out in front of the bookstore. She came out to help him, try to stop the bleeding. He ended up dying in her lap. Sorry, I have to go.” He’s holding my arm, moving me out of the way so he can close the back doors. “What happened to her arm?” He stops before getting into the drivers seat. “Flying glass. She was in front of the window when it happened. Really, I’m sorry, but I have to go, I have someone else in the back.”
Jeanette is limp and pliant in my arms, most likely a combination of the sedative, fear, and exhaustion. I lean against the side of a car, holding her, talking softly to her, stroking her back. Trying hard to settle my own nerves, so that I can take care of her. She could have been shot, she was standing right in the window when it happened. And still she ran out, to try to help. A lot of people wouldn’t.
“Come on, Vetter, we need to get her home.” Alvarez, approaching me carefully, as though he isn’t entirely sure I won’t hit him anyway. It’s too close to everything right now, but I’m going to have to take care of that too. The cop I threw over the hood is right behind him, and making a point of staying behind him. It’s not even been fifteen minutes since her call to me. It feels like a hundred years.
“She is home, Alvarez, she lives above the bookstore.” My voice sounds strange to me, hardly more than a whisper.
“We don’t want anyone in the building. In case whoever did this comes back. She’ll have to stay somewhere else. Does she have family in the area?”
“I’ll take care of her.” The cop looks a little doubtful, he didn’t exactly get a good first impression of me, so I can’t blame him. “She’ll need to get some clean clothes first.” She doesn’t have any pockets, so her keys aren’t here. “Alvarez? Her keys would probably be in her coat, she keeps it in the back room of the bookstore, I can’t lea…”
“I got it, Vetter.” His hand is on her back now. She’s important to him too. Not in the same way she is to me, but important anyway. His wife and kids like her. Sandro adores her.
“I’m sorry for…”
“Don’t, Sean. Don’t you dare apologize to me. If it was Adr… No. Just don’t.” His hand rests on my shoulder for a second, before he turns and makes his way past the broken glass, the cop behind him all the way, into the bookstore. It doesn’t take him long to come back with a small plastic bag with some clothes, and stuff from her bathroom. It dawns on me that I’ve never been in her apartment.
Alvarez pulls the car up, and I ride in the back with her, not wanting to let her go. She’s still and calm in my lap, her fist knotted in my shirt, her face buried in my neck. I keep my hands caressing over her hair, her back, not wanting to touch the blood, knowing it will make me panic again. Trying not to think of her, cut, terrified and crying, holding someone as they died, trying to help him and not being able to do a damned thing for him. My chest tightens painfully, thinking of Stacy. Blood, so much blood. I close my eyes, resting my hand on her chest, over her heart, her heartbeat steady and even. My own racing in my chest, my breath hitching as I pull her hard to my chest, burying my face in her hair. Her hand reaches up to rest on the side of my neck, as I cried into her hair, stopping only when I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. I have to take care of her. I can’t fall apart, she’s here with me, and she needs me. She’s here.
Alvarez helps me inside, dropping her bag of clothes in the bathroom. I’m going to have to get her cleaned up. “Can you handle this, Sean? I can call for Adriana, if you need help.” He hasn’t let go of my arm, sitting on the toilet seat, with me sitting on the edge of the tub with Jeanette in my lap. I don’t trust myself to speak, knowing how close I am to crying again, so I just nod. He reaches down, taking Jeanette’s hand. “I already spoke to the boss, you don’t come in tomorrow. I’ll be back in about a half hour, I’m going to go pick you up some dinner. You sure you’re going to be okay, Sean?”
I kiss her hair, she presses her nose into my neck, sighing softly. “She’s okay, I’ll be okay. Thanks, Alvarez. I don’t know if I could have handled this myself.”
“Wait.” I stop him as he’s getting up to leave, handing him my house keys. “I’ve been meaning to get you a key.”
“And here I was thinking you liked me having to jump over the back fence.”
Nerves are catching up with me, the tension breaking, as I laugh with him. Not exactly a healthy laugh, more like barely contained hysteria. He watches me carefully for a moment, before leaving to pick up dinner.
“Are you okay, ‘Nette?”
She’s so quiet that I almost didn’t hear her. “I’m sorry I scared you, Sean.” Her pupils are a little dilated, from whatever sedative the medic gave her, but the terror is gone.
“You’re here now, so it’s okay.” I wet the end of a towel, to wipe her tear streaked face. Pulling her blood stained clothes off. Looking at her a moment before dropping them in the garbage can in the bathroom. It’s never going to come out, and I don’t want the ghost of a bloodstain to ever remind me that I almost lost her. The blood, still wet, washes off easily. I stop for a moment, realizing this is the first time I’ve ever seen her completely naked, her body beautiful, the tiny stretchmarks at her sides, and by her bellybutton, from her daughter. Holding the image of her a moment longer, before I help her get changed into the pajama bottoms and tank top Alvarez brought from her apartment.
“Do you need to sleep?”
Her smile hits me in a way seeing her naked couldn’t come close to doing, something deeper. “Not yet, I’m just a little tired. Curl up and watch TV with me?”
“I’ll see if I have something scary to watch, just for you.” I help her get settled as Alvarez comes back, letting himself in with his new key.
“How is she?” He waits until we’re on the back porch to ask. I don’t have an answer for him, I want her so badly to be okay. He watches me for a minute, shaking his head, before he sits down, waiting until I do the same, before beginning again.
“The guy they shot was Frank Anderson. The third DEA agent, the only one left alive. He was supposed to meet up with one of Vega’s men, about what to do about Brubaker. The meeting place was a fluke, it just happened to be close to the university. I guess someone caught wind of it. This is Brubaker’s payback.”
The anger in me is hollow. I don’t have the strength for it anymore, the last of what I had cried out into Jeanette’s hair, in the ride back to the house. “How do you know this, Alvarez.”
“Vega’s man was the one that called for help, that called 911, stayed out of sight until help arrived. He saw what happened with Jeanette, he couldn’t help or whoever shot Anderson probably would have come back to finish it. He wanted to tell you that Vega would never have done that, a drive by, not here. He said to leave Brubaker to him, that he would have killed him anyway, but this clinches it. He asked if you wanted to meet him.” Alvarez doesn’t look at me while he’s saying it, looking out across the yard, his hands knotted across his knees. It wasn’t a question he asked, he’s relaying what he’s heard, and what he knows. Waiting to see what I’ll say, maybe waiting to see how far I’d be willing to go. All I feel is empty.
“You have the right idea, Alvarez. Never bringing your work home with you, never letting it touch the people you love.” He doesn’t interrupt. We both sit side by side on the stairs of the back porch, our knees nearly touching. My voice doesn’t carry far, I don’t have the strength. “I brought my work home with me all the time. My wife knew who I worked with, knew what I did, knew what I was working on. She knew everything. I thought, then, that it was the right thing to do.” I swallow hard, reliving it. I don’t know if I’m talking to Alvarez, or talking to myself. “I lived the job, Ramon. I lived it. When that fucker came into my house, to shoot at us in our sleep, I went after him. Part of me never thought that anything I did would touch Stacy. So I put it aside, and I did my fucking job. I mean, I had to stop him, right? Can’t let some damned drug dealer…” I take a deep breath, trying to stop crying. Alvarez doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tell me to stop. “While I was outside, doing my fucking job, something I wouldn’t have had to do if I didn’t bring my work home with me, Stacy was bleeding to death on the floor. If I had stayed with her, maybe I could have stopped the bleeding, or slowed it down. Maybe I could have called for help just that much sooner. Maybe, if I didn’t get shot, running outside, I could have helped her. Maybe I just could have been there when they buried her. I wasn’t there, Ramon. I put my job first, my fucking pride in the job.” I drop my head between my knees, trying to pull myself together. “I don’t want to meet this guy, what the fuck is he going to tell me, that he’s sorry my girlfriend got hurt? It’s not enough. It’s not enough. Let them kill Brubaker. You had it right, he belongs to them now. We watch, and we do what we can.”
“Good. I would have gone with you, I would have had your back, no matter what you decided, but I’m glad you’re not going.” He pulled me up, probably just as well, I don’t know if I could have got up on my own, hugging me for a second, once I’m back on my feet. He hugs Jeanette, kissing her on the forehead, before leaving.
I sit with her, for a few minutes, just holding her, needing to touch her, and feel her heartbeat, her pulse. Needing to smell her hair. Just needing to be close to her.
I make her dinner, puzzled by the other bag that he brought in with him, knowing that I had gone shopping earlier today, it just seemed so far away now. Cookies. She likes cookies, but I wasn’t sure what kind, so I got a bunch. The rest I put in the drawer of my bedside table, the farthest thing from my mind right now. I curled up with her on the couch, watching whatever scary movies I could find, until she fell asleep. Carrying her to bed, and curling up with her, telling her again that I loved her.
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