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K ate watched from the doorway of a nearby office, as her stepfather was brought in to the station and taken right to an interview room. He looked at her and snorted. “Of course you hauled me in. What a joke. It’s not as if I’ll get a fair shake with you around.”

She smiled and shrugged. “Got nothing to do with me. I’m not the one who had you brought in.”

“No, of course not,” he said in a mocking tone. “You always protect your friends, don’t you?”

She eyed him for one long moment. “No, I can’t say that I do.” Then storming in right behind him and cussing him out was her mother. Kate winced. “Especially on days like today.” She stepped into the hallway and watched as both were taken to different interview rooms. Colby stepped up beside her. “I know,” she said. “I can’t go in and talk to either of them.”

“No, you can’t,” he agreed, “but I would suggest that maybe you watch from the adjoining room.”

“I would very much like to watch,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t telling me something about my brother.”

“It’s possible,” Colby replied. “Just remember I can’t have you active in this one.”

She nodded, then looked for Simon. He leaned against the door jamb, still eating the food he’d brought in. “What about Simon? Can he come and listen?” she asked her boss.

Colby considered her and then nodded. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“Good,” Then she walked over to Simon. “Do you want to sit in and watch?”

Surprised, he nodded. “The actual interview?”

“Yeah, we’ll be in the other room,” she noted. “We’ll see and hear, but they won’t see or hear us.”

“Perfect,” Simon replied. “It’ll give me a chance to see what Ken’s saying.”

With that, she led the way, realizing that his plate was now empty. Taking care of that for him, she then led him into another room.

“How do you think this will go?” Simon asked.

“No idea, and I’m not sure what Colby’s planning on doing,” she shared. “Again I’m not allowed into that aspect of it.”

“And I’m sure that’s hurting you.”

“I don’t know that it’s hurting me,” she clarified, shaking her head. “It’s frustrating to not have all the info. Yet I’m still trying to deal with the whole idea that my parents—who I’ve been away from for all these years—are both right here, sitting in the box right now,” she muttered. “You go through so much in life and think everything is good, that you’ve handled it and that you should be fine. Then, all of a sudden, you’re not fine at all, and you’re not sure why or how to handle it. So, I’m just doing what I can do. If I can’t handle it, then I guess I won’t. I’ll just find something else to do while this is all happening,” she murmured.

“You’ll be fine,” Simon reassured her. “So let’s watch and see what happens.”

“They’ll be a little bit, getting organized and started,” she explained. “Let’s grab a coffee first.”

“Do you want popcorn too?” he teased.

At that, she chuckled. “At times around here that seems like a hell of a good idea,” she admitted, with a big smile.

“I’m not against it,” Simon declared, “but I never thought to bring any.”

“You brought a ton of food, so that will do,” she said, looking at him. “I wasn’t expecting you to feed everyone.”

“Of course you weren’t,” he replied, with a smile, “and clearly neither were they.”

“No, they wouldn’t have been. However, you were right. Everybody appreciates it. We were all hungry.”

“Good.” He gave her a warm smile. “I’m glad that it will get eaten.”

“Have you taken a look lately?” she asked. “I’m not sure how much is even left now from what you brought.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “As long as it is eaten, and you got fed, it’s all good.”

She just nodded. With coffee in hand, they walked into the empty room. “Sorry, we don’t generally keep chairs in here.”

“That’s fine.” Simon stood in front of the big window. “I always knew there was a space back here just like this.”

“Yeah, there sure is. Most people think these viewing rooms are made up for the movies, but it really is a thing.”

“Interesting. I’ve learned a lot hanging out with you,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Not necessarily the greatest things to learn though,” she murmured.

“But not bad either,” he added, with a smile. “It’s knowledge, and all knowledge is helpful.”

“I keep trying to say that to people, but it doesn’t always come across the right way.”

“You just keep being you and let everybody else adjust.”

She frowned at him, then shrugged. “I’m as much me as anybody can probably handle.”

He looked at her with a big grin on his face. “That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”

Just then Rodney walked into the interview room, identified himself, and told her stepfather that the interview would be recorded. At that, her stepfather lunged across the table and was forcibly restrained, then reseated by the two uniformed policemen in the room. Rodney straightened up his clothes, then sat down, glaring at Ken. “I’ll remember that,” he stated. “Nice to know that’s how you handle being interviewed.”

“I don’t need to be here at all,” he snarled. “That bitch of a daughter of mine set this up.”

Rodney studied him. “Why would she do that?”

“She wants me back in prison and out of her life. She’s the one who sent me away in the first place.”

“Funny, I thought the jury did that,” Rodney noted.

“Based on her testimony,” he snapped. “It’s not my fucking fault she’s just a little whining bitch, but no doubt you already know that.”

Kate listened to him in disbelief. “Good God,” she muttered, a bit unnerved. “No matter what the situation is, it’s just not smart to go off and to run your mouth like that, not when you’re being interviewed by the police,” she muttered. “Jesus, it’s like these suspects need coaching.”

Simon turned to face her and asked, “Do you really want them to get coaching?”

“No, but he’s just working against himself, when he keeps opening his mouth and shoving his foot in.”

“Good,” Simon stated. “Let’s hope he has a size twelve.”

She smiled at that and then focused as her stepfather just let the poison flow from his mouth. She listened intently, hoping he would spill something that mattered, not just venting his frustration at having spent all those years in prison. But, at the end of the interview, all he ended up spouting was garbage.

It was the typical lament. Poor me. I’ve had a raw deal. Nobody appreciates what I’ve done for the world and how good I am. All a giant load of BS.

About twenty minutes later, Rodney stepped into the room where she and Simon were. “Well?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Absolutely nothing was helpful in there, not anything concerning my brother. Now that he’s spewed all that, you need to hit him up about the drugs comment that Simon recorded.”

Rodney nodded. “By the way, we just got more forensics back. His vehicle was searched, and they definitely found drugs of the exact same kind in the trunk.”

She frowned at him. “I suggest you go see what he has to say about that.”

Rodney smiled. “Yeah, will do, but I want to let him stew for a bit. So I’ll move over to your mom first.” He looked at Kate hesitantly, and she nodded.

“Great idea. Go.”

With a stiff nod, he disappeared, and she looked over at Simon. “We can go watch that as well.”

She led Simon to the second room where they could see her mom sitting there, nervously chewing on her fingernails. Kate sighed. “She’s done that for as long as I can remember.”

Simon sighed. “No matter what’s gone on in her life, I don’t imagine any of it’s been easy for her.”

“No, it sure hasn’t,” Kate agreed, crossing her arms over her chest. “But then there’s my brother, and it hasn’t exactly been easy on him either.”

As soon as Rodney walked in, her mom looked over at him and said, “I don’t want Kate in here.”

“Kate won’t be coming in here,” Rodney confirmed immediately. “She has nothing to do with this.”

Kate watched her mom physically relax. “Jesus, did you see that? Apparently I’m some hideous person to her.”

“What you are is a reminder,” Simon clarified. “A reminder that she can’t handle the truth.”

Kate nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”

Then she listened in stunned silence, hearing her mother completely meltdown over Ken and his coercions. Kate listened as her mother described how Ken had contacted her from the prison, insisting that she send a message to Kate. She didn’t want anything to do with it, so she paid a kid to deliver it to the police department. She’d known Kate was here, had followed her career over the last several years, and was fully aware that Kate had become a cop, which had alienated her even further.

“Christ,” Kate muttered, as she listened to that.

Realizing that her daughter was still trying to find her brother made Selene feel good, yet she felt Kate’s actions were more about guilt. Kate listened in stunned fury as her mother went on about how it was Kate’s fault that her brother went missing in the first place.

Rodney just let her talk most of the time. When she took a breath, he shared, “Your husband said Timmy got into a vehicle, potentially a neighbor’s vehicle.”

At that, she stopped and stared at Rodney. “What?”

“Your husband Ken said that Timmy got into a vehicle driven by a neighbor.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “If that’s the case, why in the hell didn’t he say something back then?” And then she frowned. “I didn’t even know he was there.”

“He was there. It was few days before his trial,” Rodney explained, “and he was out on bail.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how he paid for that either. Drugs most likely.”

“So, he’s busy with the drugs, huh ?”

“It’s the only way he ever got any money,” Selene noted, “and then he would keep me hooked on the drugs so I would help him.” She threw her arms down on the table, exposing the needle marks.

Selene had such a despondent look on her face and such a telling body language that Kate didn’t have anything to say.

“And what about these drugs he’s peddling now?”

“Yeah, they’re deadly,” she muttered, “and I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“And yet he’s selling them?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but he’s doing something to them first.”

Kate sucked in her breath at that. “Oh good God.”

Selene continued. “He’s the one cutting some other crap into them. He told me that it would make them go farther, so he’d get more money out of it.”

Rodney nodded. “Did you ever see him do it, cutting the drugs?”

“Yes, I… he did it at home for a while,” she shared, looking around nervously. “I mean, until Kate came by. I told him that I would tell her and that I didn’t want anything to do with it. And that’s when he stuck a needle in my arm and told me to shut the fuck up,” she shared. “He’s always been very physically violent, so when he says shut up, I better shut up,” she muttered.

“And is that why you shut up about your son all those years ago?”

She looked at him and said, “I had nothing to do with it. That was my boy who went missing,” she whispered, staring at him.

“And what about Ken’s trial?”

“I didn’t go. Honestly, Kate did me a favor. He was abusive as hell.”

“Did you believe her?”

She again stared at Rodney. “I don’t know whether I believed her or not. I didn’t care either way because, as long as she was telling that story, I was getting rid of him. And I really needed to get rid of him.”

Hearing that, Kate sucked in her breath.

Rodney asked, “So, you didn’t go to the trial then?”

“No, and I wasn’t called as a witness.”

“Do you know why?”

“I was deemed unreliable.”

Kate winced at that. “Of course. Why am I not surprised,” she muttered to herself.

Simon wrapped an arm around her, holding her close. She listened as her mother spouted more falsehoods about Kate being responsible for her brother’s disappearance.

“How is it you figure that a seven-year-old child is responsible for the loss of somebody who was probably targeted by an adult? And why is it that you never seemed to think your ex-husband could have done it?”

She frowned at him. “No, Ken wouldn’t have done that. He might have stayed quiet about it,” she conceded, “but he wouldn’t have done it,” she declared. Then she dropped a bombshell. “Ken liked girls, young girls.”

“You mean young girls, like Kate’s age when she was seven?”

She stared at him and nodded. “Yeah, Kate’s age of young girls.”

“And you never put a stop to it?”

“ She put a stop to it,” Selene declared, a bit too forcefully. “She went and called the fucking cops, which was the last thing we needed at the time. But, like I told you, I don’t hold it against her because it got rid of him, and I really needed to get rid of him.”

“And what about protecting your daughter?”

She shook her head. “She protected herself. She was always good at that. The fucking cops never looked at her for her brother, even though I kept telling everybody to take a look at her.”

“And what is it you think Kate did?”

“I don’t know what she did. Conked him over the head and dropped him in the river for all I know.”

Rodney sat back, struggling to keep a neutral expression on his face.

Kate understood how he felt. This was so not the kind of childhood Rodney would want for anybody, and to hear her mother say those things was difficult for them all.

Rodney continued the questioning for a little bit longer. “So, in terms of your ex and the drugs…”

“What about it?” she asked. “I want to get as far away from that man as I can.”

“But you’ve seen him adding something to the drugs?”

“Yes, I told you that,” she snapped.

“And will you testify to that in court?”

“Hell no,” she stated instantly. “No way, and your people will ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Why is that?”

“Because if you try to make me, I’ll go up there and testify about your bloody cop buddy doing something to her brother to get rid of him instead.”

Kate didn’t know when the shakes started, but, somewhere along the line, she realized Simon had his arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her and whispering, “It’s okay. It’s okay. She can’t touch you anymore.”

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I was seven.”

“I know,” he whispered. “And this is her way of coping, because if she can keep blaming you, she doesn’t take on the responsibility herself.”

“I didn’t do anything to him. I didn’t.”

Simon nodded, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Honey, I know that. Everybody knows that. And we will find answers, somehow, somewhere. We’ll figure it out, though it doesn’t seem as if we’ll get much for answers here.”

“Except for the vehicle,” she said. “I need to sort that out.”

“And we will,” he confirmed immediately, “just maybe not right now.”

She faced him and let her breath out. “No, not right now. Dear God,” she muttered. “Who knows how many people my stepfather has killed with his drug dealing.”

“That’s another thing,” Simon noted. “If it’s a homicide, it comes to you, right?”

“Yes, to our unit,” she agreed, “but everything doesn’t get flagged as a potential homicide. Overdoses and unattended deaths wouldn’t normally get flagged, especially for known drug users. Now we’ll have to run a check and see if there are any other potential cases,” she explained, “and that’ll be a whole different scenario.”

“Understood, but the thing to remember is how this wasn’t about you. In many ways, you’ve solved other problems and prevented other deaths.”

She snorted. “I don’t know about that, but I’ll take any good news right now.”

*

Kate headed to her desk, seeing Colby was here with them.

He looked up and frowned when he saw her.

“I’m fine,” Kate declared. “However, it appears that my stepfather is the one who’s been mixing up these designer drugs that likely killed the little boy, the teenager, plus God-only-knows who else. What we don’t know is where he got them from.” She turned to Lilliana and said, “We need to find out from my stepfather if he recognizes the teen victim and the five-year-old’s uncle.”

Lilliana quickly printed copies of the photos and walked back into the interview room. She came out a few minutes later, her face grim. “Yeah, Ken’s apparently been dealing with Sammy, the brother-in-law, for years, running a small operation from prison and now bigger since getting out—maybe even before he went in prison, although the brother-in-law would have been pretty young at that point. Anyway, Ken said Sammy knew the teenager. Told him that it would help him do better in school, all that BS they tell kids to get them started using. So, it wasn’t suicide, but it was self-administered,… thinking it would help him.”

“But instead it ended his life,” Kate muttered, shaking her head.

“Yes,” Lilliana agreed. “Ken doesn’t seem to understand that two people are dead from it or that he has any culpability. He’s just pissed that he might wind up back in prison on a drug-dealing charge.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t know the half of it. How about the other charges, considering the fact that this concoction he’s been mixing up is a very potent killing machine?”

“It will be up to the DA to sort out the charges, but Ken won’t see the light of day again,” Lilliana vowed. “So, good job on that one.”

“I’m sure my mother would agree, but she refuses to testify against him. She’s probably still in there, spouting all kinds of poison.”

Lilliana nodded. “I stopped in there for a few minutes to see if she knew either of them. She recognized Sammy, the brother-in-law. She apparently saw him when he came to pick up drugs just this last week.”

Kate shook her head. “Christ. Talk about deaths that didn’t need to be deaths.”

“And yet nothing about your brother, except that your stepfather still says that Timmy got into a vehicle. He thought it was the neighbor’s, but maybe it wasn’t the neighbor’s. He said it looked like the neighbor’s. And, when we asked him what kind of vehicle, he said whatever vehicle that Larry dude was driving, it was that one.”

Kate stopped and stared. “Larry? I’ve heard that name before, but I don’t know where.” She walked over to the case files, pulled it up, and said, “Larry was the neighbor that people said was driving the car, but he was home, with his own kids, having picked them up at school. He was driving a Ford Escort. And it was”—she flipped through the file—“red, a red Ford Escort. So, maybe somebody else also drives a red Ford Escort. How many of those would have been at that school at that time?” Kate asked, staring at Lilliana.

“I don’t know, but we can ask Reese to have her assistants pull those records. What do you want to do?” Lilliana asked.

Kate shook her head. “I kind of want to tear apart the neighborhood.”

“We’ve already cleared Larry,” Lilliana noted, “and we’ve talked to him since, and we’ve talked to the kids. Nothing. They didn’t see that child at all.”

“So, we have another vehicle to run down, but from many years ago.”

“Right,” Lilliana agreed, “but we can, and we will. Obviously we’ll follow up to see if there is anything to be found.… The only thing I can tell you is that, after such a long time—”

“I know,” Kate whispered. “I know exactly what that means. This might be over for Timmy, but it doesn’t mean it’s over for my mother and my stepfather,” she muttered. “Make sure you charge them with whatever you can.”

“In your mother’s case, I don’t think there’ll be any charges,” she suggested.

Kate hated the sense of relief that washed over her when she heard that. She looked over at Lilliana. “Any particular reason?”

“I think, with the stepfather and all, Selene may have been as much a victim as anybody.”

“Maybe,” She shook her head. “Whatever. I’ll leave it up to the DA to make those determinations.”

“Good,” Lilliana said. “It looks as if we pretty well have these current deaths dealt with.”

“Maybe, but not my brother.”

Lilliana sighed and nodded. “No, that was your stepfather forcing your mother to drop off the message at the station, setting all this in motion.”

“The same asshole who made things so miserable for—”

“That’s because he knew what chain to yank,” Lilliana reminded her. “And he’s still trying for it now.”

Rodney stepped into the bullpen. “He wants to make a deal, he says.” Rodney looked at Kate. “He’s trying to make a deal.”

“Yeah, and what’s the deal?” she asked, frowning.

“He says he has more information on what happened to your brother.”

She took in a deep breath, then forced it out. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s lying,” Rodney declared. “I think he’s finally realized that the charges this time will be a whole lot more serious than just selling drugs and that he probably won’t ever get out of jail.” He looked back at the room where Ken was sequestered. “That’s a hell of a stepfather you had there.”

“No,” she argued, “he’s a hell of an asshole. There’s never been any fathering involved. My mom sure knew how to pick ’em.”

“Makes you wonder why she married him.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I’ve wondered if she ever did or not. Was it a legal marriage, a common law situation, or just another one of the little things that they lied about?”

“I don’t know if it matters to you either way.”

“It does not,” she confirmed. “He never adopted me, so it’s not part of my world. As far as I’m concerned, he can just go back to prison and rot there.”

Rodney nodded and turned to leave. “We’re taking him downstairs now and will escort him to the jail and get him booked in.”

“Good. I want to be in the hallway when he passes through.” Kate was already headed into the main hallway.

Rodney hesitated and added, “It might set him off.”

She shrugged. “I’m not too bothered about that, are you?”

“No, not particularly,” he said, “but I’m not sure that the boss man will like it.”

She winced at that. “You’re right. Colby wouldn’t like it. Fine.” But, just as she said that, the door to the interview room opened, and Ken was led out and walked right by her anyway.

She smiled at him and waved. “Have a nice life.”

He lost it then and threw himself at her, his hands going around her neck in a quick movement that surprised everybody except Kate because she’d been waiting for this. In fact, she had been training for this for decades. She immediately picked him up backward, flipped him over her head, and slammed him to the ground. As he bounced back to his feet, Kate slammed her knee into his groin. Then, as he started to fall, she went in with an undercut that dropped him faster than anything.

Out cold.

She stepped back, looked down at him, and nodded. “You have no idea how happy I am that you decided to go after me.”

Colby stood there, his hands on his hips.

Kate beamed with joy. “It was self-defense, completely self-defense.”

Colby rolled his eyes and nodded. “Absolutely. I saw him attack you with my own eyes.”

She looked over at the cops escorting Ken and asked them, “Think you can hang on to him this time?”

“Uh, yeah. Looks as if he might need medical attention,” said one of the cops.

Colby snorted. “That’s not happening. If nothing’s broken, he’s going right back to a jail cell. Get him out of here.” And, with that, they quickly picked him up and took him away.

Kate sat down at her desk, feeling like a huge load was off her chest. “I know that nothing is sorted and that nothing is over,” she said, “and I don’t know why I feel so much better, but I do. That guy has been a boogeyman from my past since forever, and honestly discovering he was out had me rattled more than I realized,” she admitted, with a shrug. “Just knowing that he’s headed back to prison to stay this time is huge.”

“Not to mention he won’t be tainting the drugs and killing people with them,” Lilliana added.

Kate nodded. “That’ll be a rough one. I’m sure we’ll find out many more have died from his drugs.”

“What about Andrew’s case against Adam and Sammy?” Lilliana asked Colby.

“The brother-in-law has just been brought into the interview room C,” Colby noted, as he looked down at his watch and winced. “It’ll be a late night.”

“Yes, it’ll be a late night, but we can wrap this one up too,” Lilliana declared, and just then she walked to the holding cell to speak to the corrections officer stationed there. “Bring up both the parents too.”

“I already let the mom go home,” Kate shared. “I’ll call her when this is over.”

Sammy was brought into the same interview room her stepfather had been in. And, with Lilliana at her side, Kate walked in and held up a picture of her stepfather. “Do you know him?”

He looked at it, winced, then nodded. “Yeah, he’s a dealer.”

“Yeah? He was taking the drugs you were buying and cutting them with something else that was killing people,” she explained, staring him down. “The problem with that is, you left the drugs out, and your little nephew licked it up, didn’t he?”

He closed his eyes, and the tears leaked out and trickled down his face. He nodded slowly. “Yes, God help me,… yes.”

“And then what? You just put him in his bed?”

“I did. I did,” And he started to sob. “I didn’t know what he’d done, and I still don’t know why he did that,” he cried out. “I can’t believe it. I’m not around little kids very much,” he said between gulping back his tears. “It never occurred to me that he would touch it.”

“He’s a little kid, and it looks like sugar,” Kate explained. “That is absolutely something a kid will touch.”

He nodded, wiping the snot off his nose with his sleeve. “What’ll happen now?”

She shrugged. “A child is dead, and somebody will be held accountable for that. Ultimately the DA looks at the information we collect and makes a decision on charges. Yet I don’t understand one thing. You had the drugs there at your brother’s house, but, when we tested you, we didn’t find any in your system. How do you explain that?”

“No, I was just setting it up. Then honest to God, my girlfriend called, and we had a hell of a fight on the phone. When I turned back around, they were everywhere, and the kid was on the floor.”

She nodded. “And that’s why you’re alive today,” she declared. “We have another young man who also died from this, a young man you sold drugs to.” She brought up the picture of the teen.

Sammy stared at the photo. “Jesus, what do you mean, I sold?”

She stopped him. “We already know you sold him the drugs.”

He sank to the floor. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he muttered. “My life is over.”

She stared at him. “Nice of you to be worried about your life after not giving a shit about everybody else.”

He stared at her. “But I didn’t mean to kill him.”

She shrugged. “No, maybe not, but he’s still dead. And his mother took the rest of the drugs he had and deliberately overdosed because she couldn’t stand the idea of living without her son. There are definitely consequences here. The DA will have the final say on the charges, and we’ll go from there.” Then she smiled at Lilliana. “Unless you want to lay it out so Sammy knows what to expect.”

“Oh it’s likely to be manslaughter, child abuse, child endangerment. There’s possession and dealing, plus dealing a potentially lethal substance,” Lilliana explained, looking over at Sammy.

He just stared at her, and his facial expression was void of any emotions. It was as if he had completely checked out of life.

Kate sighed. “Wait until your sister-in-law finds you.”

He looked at her, wild-eyed. “Jesus, keep her away from me.”

“Why?” she asked bitterly. “Doesn’t she deserve to know what happened to her son? The son you were supposed to be looking after? All you had to do was watch him for a few hours, without any drugs around.”

“I know. I know. I just didn’t think. I didn’t realize he would get into it.”

“Guess what?” Kate said, as she stood up. “Now you’ll have plenty of time to think.” And, with that, she got up and walked out.

*

For whatever reason, Simon wasn’t quite sure, Kate insisted on going back to her place. Yet when Simon got her there, she sat down on the edge of her bed, silent, unmoving.

“Are you sure you want to stay here tonight?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. I don’t really know why, but, yes, I do.”

“Fine.” He didn’t think much of the idea, but, if it was something she wanted or needed somehow, he wouldn’t argue. She had a quick shower and crawled into bed, where he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. It was obvious her mind was still focused, still tormented, by all the events of the day. “You did good,” he whispered.

“We got somewhere, somehow,” she conceded. “We have a vehicle to track down on my brother’s case, which obviously won’t be a quick fix now. My stepfather is well on his way back to prison, which I’m stoked about.”

“Plus, you got a chance to punch his face in too,” he added, with a chuckle.

She twisted to look up at him and smiled. “I did,” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “I kind of hate to say it because I’m never really one who believes in violence, but, man, that felt good today.”

“You did great,” he added.

When the doorbell rang, he looked down at her and asked, “Are you expecting anything?”

“No, I’m sure not.” She shook her head, slipped out of bed, and quickly pulled on a few pieces of clothing.

He watched as she pulled out her service revolver too. “Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered.

She held up her fingers. “This time I don’t need your warning.”

He immediately saw pictures of her falling down, bullets riddling her body. He bolted from bed and raced to the door, catching her just as she went to open it. He slammed her to the ground, as the bullets traveled through the door and across the apartment. Then the shooter ran, his footsteps noisy.