Page 28 of Dirty Cops Next Door

“I don’t know, Chief. Your guess is as good as mine. He was shot, crushed, and maybe shot again. I didn’t see everything in the confusion of it all. I just know if Grant doesn’t recover, there won’t be anyone to arrest tomorrow. There’ll be a body to bury.”

I felt a burning hole of coldness growing in my chest, an aching spot I hadn’t known was there. Grant wasn’t like my brother, he was my brother. If anything happened to him, I would lose my shit. I didn’t even have to think about it. The chief knew that too and walked away without another word. The question was if I did take it out on Avery, what would the chief do about it?

I decided I didn’t give a fuck as the paramedics came back and released me. I’d torn a muscle in my shoulder but I’d live. I walked to the car I’d driven here in and headed straight for the hospital. I needed to know whether I had to kill a motherfucker tonight and the only way to know was by being at Grant’s side. That’s where I headed.

* * *

Toni

Something was wrong.It was after nine o’clock. They should have been back by now. I stared at the glowing blue numbers on my alarm clock, rubbing at the bottom of my lip again. Eric was in his room, writing a paper for school, and I’d managed to get the report done for work. Now I was staring at the numbers on the clock, dread making my heart pound.

I couldn’t explain it, but something had me on edge. Grant told me they’d be late, that maybe I wouldn’t see them for a day or two. Why was I on edge then?

I was on the verge of calling David or Grant, but stopped myself. What if they were in a situation where a ringing phone could give away their location? Or what if my phone call distracted them and they missed something? No, I couldn’t call them.

The piercing sound of emergency service vehicles filled the air and I stood up, reaching for my work phone. I knew it, I just knew it!

I wasn’t surprised when my phone lit up and started to buzz, what did surprise me was that it was Barbara.

“I’m sending you the coordinates for an address, get over there now if you can. If not, tell me. Something big is going down.” Her voice was tense but filled with excitement. She must have been reading something else as she talked to me. I’d come to know how she operated and I’d seen her do that before, talking on her phone and staring down at her tablet.

“I’ll head out there now.” I hadn’t been able to take the first big assignment she’d offered me, mainly because I was involved with that story, but I had a feeling I was going to have a personal stake in this one too. This time, though, I’d cover what I could of the story.

I pushed down my own worries for the moment and focused on the task at hand. The coordinates came through and I programmed my phone to give me directions.

“Eric, I have to go out, honey. Duty calls. I’ll be back when I can. Stay here, do you understand?” I knocked before I opened his door and he looked at me with tired eyes, and I knew he’d be asleep soon.

“Yeah, cool. I’ll see you in the morning then. I’m done with my homework. Be careful.” He closed his laptop and put it down on his bedside table. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Love you! I’ll be quiet when I come in.” I gave him a smile and he turned off his light, settling under his covers.

Sometimes he was still as predictable as the little boy he used to be.

I headed out to the car and carefully followed the directions of the British voice the app used. I wanted to throw it out of the window after he told me for the fifth time to make a u-turn and head in the other direction. That wasn’t the way I needed to go! I’d been steadily ignoring his directions for the last fifteen minutes, since he’d sent me in the wrong direction the first time and I’d realized I was heading into the wrong part of town.

“When it is convenient, please turn around and head back to Woodlawn Drive.”

I glared at it and pulled onto the grass at the side of the state highway.

“Let me see these directions. You’re not taking me anywhere near there if I go down that road!” I expanded the map and saw I needed to go another mile and then I’d be directly in the group of buildings that had been in the picture Barbara had sent to me with the directions. “You can just go back to sleep, Nigel.”

I turned the app off, got back onto the road, and headed for the site Barbara wanted me to investigate. I inhaled sharply when I drove around a steep bend only to find several tall old brick buildings and enough flashing lights to send even a non-sensitive brain into an epileptic fit.

“Oh my God. What’s happened?” Barbara hadn’t shared any details with me over the phone or in her messages since.

The blue lights told me the police were here, the red that the fire department was here, and the orange that the ambulances had arrived. I couldn’t see any smoke but the air was filled with the scent of wet, burned wood. There’d been a fire, at least.

I pulled into a parking spot in front of one of the furthest buildings and got out of my car.

“Hey, Toni?” I heard a voice call out my name and turned.

A tall gangly man in his early twenties walked up to me, a camera around his neck and a press pass pinned to his shirt.

“Take this, you’ll need it to get through the barriers, if they let us through. I’m Jack, I’ve been taking footage of all of this mess.”

“Hi, Jack, nice to meet you. What’s going on here?” I looked around, brushing my hair back from my face, searching for two familiar faces as I scanned the people gathered around an ambulance in the middle of the road ahead of me.

“Two cops were shot at, one was hit. I haven’t heard about the other. Seems they got more than they bargained for today.”