The gates to Whispering Pines were barely open when Cady jammed the shifter into first and floored it. The tachometer leapt around the dial, the engine revving before she downshifted and pulled out onto the highway.
Twin streams of fury seared down her throat, into her stomach. Conn, who should have known better, installed security cameras on her property without her knowledge or permission. His high-handedness enraged her, but it was nothing compared to the hell she was about to rain on Emily’s head.
Her sister was home, using the two days the school provided seniors to study for finals. Cady braked to a halt outside her mother’s house, slammed the car door hard enough to rock the frame on the axles, and stormed up the walk. Her hands were shaking too much to get the key in the lock, so she banged on the door with her fist.
Emily opened the door, a lollipop in one hand. “Cady! What are you doing here?” She peered over Cady’s head. “Where’s your big lug of a shadow?”
She was going to brazen this out? No. Hell, no. “Give me my notebook.”
The words flew out like a slap, freezing Emily’s face midquestion. For a minute she thought about lying; Cady could see the deception cross her face, then crumple under the weight of Cady’s fuming thundercloud of anger.
“I can—”
“Don’t even.” Cady pushed past Emily, into the house. The television was paused in the middle of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rerun. “Don’t you even start with me. Get me my notebook, and my bracelet. Now.”
Emily whirled and ran for her bedroom. Cady heard her dresser drawer open and close. Then Emily returned, tugging the black, spiral-bound notebook and the bracelet from a tattered tote bag bearing the public library’s logo. She all but shoved them at Cady, like they would burn her hands if she held them too long. Cady snatched them, slid the bracelet onto her wrist, then riffled through the pages, afraid Emily’s insanity had extended to damaging them. But the journal was intact, untouched. Even the waxed paper she’d put over her watercolor pages was in place.
Cady closed the notebook and clutched it to her chest. “What about my website? Did you do that, too?”
Tears trickled down Emily’s cheeks. She nodded.
“How?”
“A couple of guys in my programming class were messing around with DDoS attacks. They helped me set it up.”
“Tell them to call it off. Now. Bryan’s closing in on them, and if he finds them, he’ll show no mercy.”
Emily’s laptop, the top-of-the-line MacBook Cady bought for her birthday because Em needed it for her design work, was open on the coffee table. She sat down, swiping at her cheeks as she opened iMessage and typed out a fast message. “Okay, they’re shutting it down.”
Clutching her notebook and bracelet to her chest, Cady scrolled down to Bryan’s name in her texts. I figured out who’s behind the DDoS attacks. They’ll stop.
Three dots appeared immediately, then WTF? Who?
I’ll explain later.
She powered down her phone, shoved it in her back pocket, and stared at Emily. Was this how Conn felt all the time, this sick, seething betrayal by the people who were supposed to love you the most, protect you, keep you safe, that left him angry, powerless? For a soaring, heady moment she let the tumult roil inside her, the rage, the frustration, the fear that nearly derailed her professional life. It coursed under her skin until every nerve ending was lit up.
Then a detail registered. Emily’s Hello Kitty flannel pajama bottoms, faded and pilled, way too short for her, even before she rolled them at the waist and turned them into capris. She’d bought those pajamas for Emily five years ago, before she made it and Hello Kitty was a treat, not a fashion icon to study, back when Emily was just beginning to transition from tween to teen.
Her sister. No longer a little girl, not yet a woman, but always, always family. Crying like her heart was broken.
Cady stalked into the kitchen and snagged the box of tissues from the little desk where her mother paid bills and organized her calendar. Back in the family room, she tossed the box on the sofa. “I’m so mad at you right now.”
Emily plucked tissues from the box, buried her face in them, and sobbed.
“I had something. For a new song. I had something.” Words, as always, failed her when trying to describe the ineffable creative process. “I went into my studio to work, to start playing with it, using a melody I’d written down months ago, and my notebook wasn’t there! What the hell, Emily?”
Emily’s tear-streaked face lifted from the soggy tissues. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be me! I’m just Queen Maud’s little sister, stuck in Lancaster while you go off and tour the world and pose on the red carpet and date famous guys. You don’t know what it’s like to be a nobody!”
“Emily, what the hell are you talking about? I do know what that’s like,” Cady said, bewildered. “You know I do. You were there when I was a nobody!”
“But we were nobodies together!” Emily wailed. “Now you’re famous and I’m just a stupid high school kid who can’t even get followers on Instagram. Every time Ella Bergstrom gets chosen for another fashion show or gets another profile, she tells me how great she’s doing all on her own, without her famous big sister’s help. Why don’t you go to premieres with Maud? Why isn’t Maud wearing your designs? I’m a failure. I’m not going to get into Parsons.”
Forget about maintaining equanimity in the face of a rival’s greater success; Cady would have cheerfully splashed bleach all over Ella Bergstrom’s workshop. “But why did you steal Nana’s bracelet, and my notebook?”
Emily blew her nose. “Because I thought if you got frightened, you’d move home again.”
“Oh, Em,” Cady said.
More sobs. “You’re leaving again, so soon!”
Notebook still clutched protectively to her chest, Cady sat down on the wingback recliner and watched Emily’s shoulders shudder like her heart was breaking. Cady raised her voice a little. “Emily, that’s crazy. There’s no room for me here. You need that space in my old room to work on your portfolio. You had to know that. You’ve been acting weird ever since the concert. What’s really going on?”
She plucked another tissue from the box and handed it to Emily, who immediately twisted it around her finger. Her voice was small, when she spoke. “My portfolio is crap. I thought … it’s stupid … but I thought if I had your ideas, your bracelet, I’d make something amazing. That’s why I stole your things.”
That made sense. That actually made a lot of sense. “It’s not stupid,” Cady said. “That’s why I wear the bracelet. When I didn’t have much faith in myself, I’d look at it and know I came from a line of smart, talented women who didn’t give up.”
“I know. I’ve heard you talk about it for so long. It was the most meaningful thing in your creative process.”
“Why didn’t you just ask if you could have it?”
Emily wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t want you to know I was scared. You seem so fearless now.”
Cady recognized the fear, the shame that came with struggling to make something, wondering how the world would receive it, whether or not you had what it took to be successful. “I know how you feel, honey. Trust me, I know.” She worked the bracelet off her wrist and held it out to Emily. “It’s time to pass it on.”
Emily started to cry again. “No. It’s yours. I don’t deserve it, after what I did.”
“It’s not a question of deserving it. You’re a Ward. It’s all of ours. It belonged to Nana. She gave it to Mom after Dad left. Mom gave it to me when I moved out. Now I’m giving it to you. For courage.”
Emily swiped the heel of her hand over her cheekbones and stared at Cady’s outstretched hand. Her watery eyes held a mixture of surprise, longing, hope. “Are you sure?”
Cady didn’t move. “You’re one of us, Em. You’re a Ward. You come from strong women. You’ve got our blood in your veins. You can’t fail, because you can’t ever not be one of us.”
Emily reached out and took the bracelet. “I feel bad, getting it like this.”
“Don’t,” Cady said. “Mom practically threw it at me when she dropped me off at the bus station because I was going to need all the luck I could get. Now it’s a family tradition.”
Emily gave a watery giggle. “I miss you. I’m scared when you’re not here.”
She leaned forward and gripped Emily’s hand. “I know, honey. I miss you, too. All the time.”
Tears rolled down Emily’s face. “It’s Christmas. You’re supposed to be hanging out with me, but you were with Conn, all the time. I could tell you didn’t want me at the sleepover. And I see all the pictures of you at the drag races when you’re not supposed to be outside, looking up at him, and he’s at sushi brunch, and picking out a tree with us … I hate that he’s around so much.”
Cady’s eyes widened in shock. She’d known Emily wavered between pride and envy over Cady’s career, but complications from a man in her life never occurred to her. “Conn? You never minded my bodyguards before.”
“Because they annoyed you. He doesn’t annoy you. You like him.” She cut Cady a teary glare.
Cady grabbed her hair and coiled it to get it out of her face. “Emily, you’re not the only person who gets scared. The last few months have been so hard. I’ve felt so alone, so uncertain about whether to drop the album or ditch it for something that might bellyflop. Conn was there for me. Not because I’m Queen Maud and I could introduce him to someone who might give him an acting job. He was there for me. People hang around all the time when things are easy, but when they’re hard? Stressful? Uncertain? They fade away. Conn didn’t disappear.”
She wouldn’t disappear for him. No matter what happened with the investigation, or with her album. He was hers.
That’s what the song is about, being there for someone when things aren’t easy. The words and the melody and the bridge fell into place. She opened the notebook and scrabbled around in the mess of chip bags and soda cans and tissues on the coffee table for a pen.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked, bewildered.
“I need a pen.”
Em dug in the sofa cushions and came up with one. “You know, if you kept everything online like a normal human being, I wouldn’t have been able to steal your notebook.”
“Not funny, Em.” She was barely aware of what she was saying, just getting down the notes, fragments of lyrics, yes, that’s how the verse should turn, leading to the bridge. Yes. It all came back to her, what she’d lost when she couldn’t find her notebook, as well as the new material. As she scribbled, drawing arcs from thoughts, folding corners of months-old pages, gathering the song together, knowledge bloomed sure and certain in her soul. This was coming together because she’d fallen in love with Conn.
When she sat back and blew out her breath, she felt weightless, as light as air, capable of soaring into the sky like a bunch of balloons. Her heart was pounding, exhilaration coursing through her veins. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
Emily watched her warily. “Did you get it?”
“I got it.”
“Even the stuff you forgot?”
“Even that.” She skimmed through a couple of pages in her notebook, felt a couple more puzzle pieces slot into place. The block was gone. It was all there, waiting for her to open to it.
“Good. I’m sorry.” Emily’s voice was small, her shoulders hunched inside the fleece sweatshirt. “I’m just really, really scared.”
“Of what?”
Em huffed, then reached for a tissue to blow her nose. “Of sending in something that sucks. Just the application is intimidating. What if they laugh at it? What if I get in and I’m the worst student they’ve ever had and everyone laughs at me?”
“Sweetie, just do what you do. They’re not going to laugh at your application. I’m getting texts from all my friends asking how they can get one of your coats.”
“Really?”
“Yes, because they’re fashion-savvy people who know when something’s going to go big. You should stop watching Buffy reruns you’ve seen a dozen times and start figuring out who you want wearing one of your coats next fall, when you’re in New York City, at Parsons.”
“I’m afraid I’m always going to be in your shadow.” She sniffed again, but the worst of the crying seemed to have passed. “You even got the cool stage name. Maud.”
“I’m not sure how much longer Maud will exist. Even if she sticks around, I’m just your sister.” Cady stroked her hair, gathering the strands away from Emily’s face. “I’m just mom’s daughter. That’s what being Cady means to me. Being Maud is great, but my family defines who I am, not stage names or hit counts or chart rankings. That hasn’t changed because I’m more famous than I was last year, and I hope it won’t change when the inevitable happens and people move on to another sound, another musician. Maybe you’ll be the famous one then.”
“Ha.” Emily tossed the tissue on the floor and reached for another. “Like I’ll ever be more famous than you.”
“You could be. If I don’t drop the label’s record, I could fade away into obscurity. I’ll be a thirty-second cut on some Where Are They Now? show, working at Ruby Tuesdays and singing on street corners again.”
“That will never happen,” Emily said with the assurance of a teenage girl.
“It could.” Cady spoke with the assurance of a woman who’d lain awake nights, worrying about it. “Em, everyone’s got me on the up-and-coming superstar pedestal right now. Please don’t put me up there, too. It’s a long way down when I fall, and I need somewhere soft to land.”
Emily toyed with the bracelet. “You’re working on new material. I’m working on my application. We both need this right now.”
“We can trade it back and forth. But I really think I’m going to be fine without it.”
Emily’s face crumpled, and her chin quivered before collapsing into tears again. Cady sighed. “Stop crying. Put your Uggs on. We’re going back to the house for my guitar, and then we’re getting hot fudge sundaes at DQ. How about if I spend the night, and we can work on your application and my song?”
Emily smiled. “Sounds great.”
Cady sent her into the bathroom to wash her face. Emily sat quietly in the passenger seat during the drive, her phone in her hand as she stared out the window. Cady didn’t push things. It would take time to repair the damage she’d caused, but sisters were forever.
The driveway was empty when they arrived, the sound of their car doors closing echoing in the garage. “Hello?” Cady called.
She toed out of her boots in the mudroom, ears cocked for a response. The house was suspiciously quiet as she padded past the dining room table to the kitchen. The only light on was the stove light. “Conn?”
“I don’t think he’s here,” Emily said.
Cady peered into his bedroom. His duffle bag was gone from the floor, the bed neatly made, the drawers closed, the hangers in the closet pushed to the side.
“There’s a note taped to your steamer,” Em yelled from the kitchen. She held it out to Cady as she approached.
I took down the cameras. Sorry. Conn
Cady’s jaw dropped open.
“What cameras?” Emily said.
“He installed security cameras. That’s how I knew it was you.”
Emily’s brow wrinkled. “You said you didn’t want security cameras. That’s why we didn’t have the contractor install them when the house was being built.”
“I know. Conn did it anyway.” Because it was the right thing to do. The safe thing to do. He would protect her from anything, even from her sister’s anger. And because he’d done that, she’d had her breakthrough. Of all the people around her saying they’d do whatever it took to support her creatively, Conn was the only one who did what had to be done. Even though he thought it would cost him her friendship. Her love.
“He left?” Emily’s voice was small, her shoulders hunched as she tallied up the damage she’d caused. “Or did you send him away?”
“Of course I didn’t send him away.” But Conn hadn’t waited around for her to kick him to the curb. He’d done what he’d been taught to do: move on when he made a mistake, angered someone, hurt their feelings. He’d gotten into the habit of living light, making it easy to leave before someone else could hurt him. “But I didn’t tell him to stay, either.”
Remembering the way she’d slammed out of the house, she rubbed her forehead with regret. She knew how Conn felt about making mistakes with people he cared about. She should have taken the time to reassure him, but she’d been so blindingly angry with him, and with Emily, she’d just bolted for the Audi.
“You should go after him,” Emily said. “I have to study anyway.”
She looked at Emily. “I said I’d stay the night tonight, and I will.” But finals started on Monday, and then Cady would tell Connor McCormick exactly how she felt. She was her mother’s daughter. She didn’t give up what was hers, and Conn was hers, now and forever.
* * *
Late on Monday afternoon, Cady parked in a visitor spot in front of Conn’s apartment building, relieved to see the flicker of a television in his apartment. It wasn’t quite five o’clock yet, but already the skies were dark, a few stars twinkling through the light pollution. Conn wouldn’t leave lights on when he went out, so he must be home. Maybe he’d gotten a few days off after guarding Cady around the clock.
Several of his neighbors were feeling festive, their little balconies sporting Christmas lights, a flashing Rudolph, even a small inflatable Santa, but Conn’s balcony was empty. Snow had drifted onto the lawn chair folded up against the railing, giving it a rather bereft look. But she knew how to fix that.
She opened her door and popped the trunk, then hauled out a moving box. It wasn’t heavy, just awkward, so the climb to the third floor didn’t take long. A young couple clattered down the stairs, flashing her a smile as they passed her, but neither one recognized her. She was grateful for the anonymity as she made her way down the hall to Conn’s door and knocked.
“Hi,” she said when the door opened. “I hope you don’t mind me coming by unannounced.”
He was dressed in a soft gray T-shirt and faded jeans, looking even more like a granite mountain with bleak eyes. His feet were bare. Surprise, perhaps even hope flickered on his face before he schooled his expression to nod at the box. “I know I didn’t leave anything behind. What are you doing here?”
This wasn’t going like she’d thought it would go, but she was tough. “Can I come in?”
After a second he stepped to the side to make way for her. She walked in. The apartment had been cleaned since her last visit; there was room on the dinette set for the box. She set it down, pushed back her hood, and pulled off her gloves. The Monday night game was on the television, a pizza box and a beer on the coffee table. She perched on the arm of the sofa and glanced at the TV. “Who’s winning?”
“Pittsburgh. What do you want, Cady?”
“Two things,” she said. “First, I want to offer you a job.”
He laughed. “A job. What kind of job?”
“Chief of security.”
“I’m not interested in being your kept man.”
“You are seriously the most obtuse human being on the planet,” she said. “After the last couple of weeks, you think you’d be a kept man? Imagine doing all of that, plus my tour security. A different city, night after night, different venues, different publicity stops, different hotels. I need someone who can handle all of that so I don’t have to. It’s the most important thing someone can to do support me creatively. Kept man,” she muttered.
“You want me to come work for you.”
“Well. Not exactly. I want you to be with me forever, but that’s kind of a big, scary thing to lead with, and I figured you’d get bored in about four seconds without something productive to do, so I thought a job would sweeten the pot a little.”
Conn stared at her, obviously flattened by this offer.
“You want me with you forever.”
“Yes.” Her heart was pounding as she gave a shrug far more casual than she actually felt.”I know it’s fast. I know it’s crazy. I know it means leaving Lancaster and the McCools, and your job. If it’s too much, I understand. But I’m asking, because I want you. Now. Forever.”
“Even though I installed the cameras when you asked me not to. Even though I threw a hand grenade into your family and your relationship with your manager.”
“I wish that hadn’t gone down the way it did. But blaming you for finding out what Emily and Chris were doing is just blaming the messenger. Emily is responsible for her actions, not you. So is Chris. And you were right to install the cameras.”
His eyes widened ever so slightly. “I was.”
“I was stuck,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out how to move forward, whether or not to drop the pop album. I kept avoiding the things I knew would hurt but help, so things kept happening to me. I was angry with you when I saw the cameras and the footage, but when I settled down, I remembered that whether I make the right decision or the wrong one, I’m happiest when I’m in control of my life and my career. The cameras gave me that control.”
Something odd happened to his eyes. Cady realized they’d filled with hope. “You’re not mad at me,” he said.
“Maybe a little.” She smiled at him. “I try to be reasonable. Mostly I’m putting it behind me, because I’m writing again, thanks to you. Two new songs in the last couple of days. It’s hard to think straight with Emily bursting in every five minutes to show me a new sketch, but they’re coming.” She decided not to tell him she’d written about him. About them.
“Are you staying at your mom’s now?”
“I was, while Emily and I worked out some things. I’m on my way home now. Em and Mom are coming over on Sunday to decorate the tree and make cookies. Emily still needs me, but I need my own space,” she said. “For my own life. With the man I love. I hope.”
At the word “love,” his face went utterly still. Then he shook his head, a hard, firm rejection. “No. Not a good idea. Families and me don’t work so well together. Look what just happened—”
She cut him off, words tumbling from her mouth, her voice rising. “Yes, look at what just happened. My sister acted out, my mom didn’t see it, and neither did I,” she said. “We all made mistakes there, but not you. We’ll forgive her, because she was just a kid, trying to figure out how to be an adult. That’s what your family didn’t do. They pushed you away, blamed you for their failures and your honest mistakes, taught you to take things away from yourself, to not let yourself have the things you want. I’m not pushing you away. You can have me, Conn. All you have to do is let me in.”
“Cady—” he started.
“No, listen to me. I really want you to come with me. I want you by my side all the time. It’s immature—I mean, I’m perfectly able to be on my own but I don’t want to be—and … and it’s a shitty, shitty life on a big bus, staying in hotels, which is not all it’s cracked up to be, let me tell you. Promo appearances, sound checks, concerts, I’ve got no time to myself when I’m on tour. Days off are rare, scheduled weeks in advance, and I spend most of them sleeping. I’m asking you to—”
“Yes.”
“—give up everything you know, leave the McCools … what?”
He crossed the room to stand in front of her, close enough that she could see his pulse thumping away in his neck, the quick inhales and exhales, the way his eyes darkened. He raised his hand to her cheek and stroked his thumb along the curve of her ear, then bent his head and kissed her. “Yes, I’ll be your body man.”
“Okay. Good,” she said, a little disoriented. He kissed her again, hot and fierce and sweet. Her brain shut down, all systems offline, leaving only the flashing light that said, Yes, this, this is what you were looking for and didn’t know you wanted. Him. This man. Forever.
He lifted his mouth, then bent his forehead to rest on hers. “Have you told Chris about this?”
“Not yet. I thought we could tell him together. It’ll be fun.” Her voice grew serious. “You’ll quit the police department for me? I mean, you can think about it over the next few months. If I get my way, I’m not going to be traveling for a while. I’ll totally understand if—”
“I may not have a job after tomorrow anyway,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I agreed to work with Kenny. Hawthorn might think I’m playing both sides. He might want to go after him with someone who wasn’t trained by Kenny.”
“You haven’t told Lieutenant Hawthorn yet?”
“He’s been out of town at some conference.” He shrugged. “Oh, well.”
Where was the cop who’d been so furious to be saddled with her just a few short weeks ago? “I guess we’ll deal with it tomorrow tomorrow,” she said nonsensically.
“What the second reason you’re here?”
She walked over to the box and parted the flaps to reveal chintzy eighties Christmas decorations scavenged from the boxes in her basement. “I brought over some of Nana’s Christmas decorations. I thought … they’d remind you of Christmas with your grandma. Gold garland, the ornaments with the thread wrapped around them, colorful lights, tinsel, and a tabletop tree. You’re invited to come decorate with me and Em and Mom. In fact, Mom says no excuses, or she’ll track you down, but I wanted you to have a little bit of Christmas here, too.”
“Thank you.” He nodded at a battered bit of greenery in her hand. “What’s that?”
“Mistletoe.” She held it over her head, and beckoned him to her with one crooked finger. This time, when he laughed, his whole body relaxed.
* * *
Lieutenant Hawthorn returned from his conference on Tuesday morning. Conn was waiting by his office when he walked in just before eight o’clock. “Officer McCormick,” Hawthorn said. “Come in.”
The Block hummed around them, a little hive of activity as the holidays approached. Conn stood in Hawthorn’s office, hands shoved in his pockets. The weight of his badge and gun registered more than they normally did, because he wasn’t sure if this was the last time he’d wear them.
“I read your final report,” Hawthorn said as he set his coffee on his pristine desk. “It’s a little unclear as to how the mystery-stalker situation resolved itself.”
“It was her sister,” Conn said. “I saw a threat when it was just a teenage girl acting out.”
Hawthorn gave him a sharp look, then an odd, raw laugh. “Don’t underestimate the power of a teenage girl to ruin someone’s peace of mind.” He sounded like he was speaking from experience, but Conn knew better than to ask. “I assume she doesn’t want to press charges and would prefer to keep this out of the media.”
“Got it in one,” Conn said.
“Good. Jordy’s refusing to cooperate with us. All charges have been dropped. Abracadabra, you’re back on your regular shift.” He opened his laptop, then looked back at Conn while he waited for it to power up. “Anything else?”
“I’m putting in my papers,” Conn said. He took his badge and his gun off his belt and set them on Hawthorn’s desk. Only because Cady came back for him could he do this. Her love, her presence, made it possible for him to see a future without the police department.
“Explain yourself, McCormick.”
“Cady offered me a job as her bodyguard. I took it.”
One of Hawthorn’s eyebrows shot skyward. “That was fast.”
“I won’t actually be leaving town for a few months,” Conn said. “But after I tell you what I learned in my own investigation, I’ll need to put in my papers anyway. I know who set me up.”
“You do.”
“It’s Kenny. He’s running the Strykers from the gang unit.”
A slight widening of the eyes was Hawthorn’s only reaction to this bomb. “And you know this how?”
“I put it together,” Conn said. He set a file folder on Hawthorn’s desk, and a memory stick. Hawthorn would want an electronic version, but not one sent through the department’s email. “I went into the records and started looking at the arrests, the trends, which cases stuck and which ones went away. I couldn’t make the data, which said the Strykers were fading away, work with my experience on the street, which was that the Strykers had the entire East Side in a stranglehold. So I started looking at the officers on the gang unit. The one thing they had in common was that Kenny trained them.”
“He’s not part of the gang unit.”
“No, but until last year, he worked out of this precinct. Remember when he transferred into administration and everyone was so surprised?”
“He was distancing himself.” Hawthorn had no nervous habits. You had to really pay attention to notice the most minute changes in facial expression. “What happened?”
“I confronted him about the assault. He said it was an initiation rite. He was going to track me down on shift one night and tell me what was going on. I wasn’t supposed to be assigned to a special duty that basically made me drop off the face of the earth.”
“Why you?”
“Because I had no one but the department. I was a loner, volatile. Kenny thought I’d be easy to turn.”
“And now you’re not alone.”
Now he had Cady, but Conn could be mysterious and silent, too. “When he couldn’t find me, he figured either I’d figure out what happened and go to him, in which case I could join them, or I’d go to him crying to make it go away, in which case he’d fix it and act like he knew nothing.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I was in.”
Hawthorn’s gaze flickered to the gun and badge on the table. “But you’re obviously not in.”
Police departments had factions that rivaled the tribal warfare tearing apart most of the world’s hot spots. Conn had been singled out for one of those factions, which usually meant, in the us-versus-them world, that he was tainted to all the others. “Even if Cady hadn’t offered me a job, I can’t be that kind of cop. If that’s what it means to be a part of this department, and Kenny turned it into an us-against-them proposition, I won’t do it.”
Hawthorn’s gaze sharpened. “So if you didn’t think you have to resign, you’d stick around until she went on tour?”
“I can’t. I agreed to participate in illegal activities,” Conn said. “That’s grounds for termination.”
Hawthorn shook his head. “Pick up your weapon and your badge, Officer McCormick.”
Conn stared at him.
“You’re right. That is grounds for termination, except when you can use your newfound detective skills and your experience as an undercover officer to get inside the ring and help us take it apart from the inside. Unless what you’re really saying is you won’t be a bad cop, but you also won’t be a snitch.”
The option of working to bring down the bad cops hadn’t occurred to him; he’d seen only the chance to be in or to be out. “You want me to work for him?”
“Right now I don’t have a case,” Hawthorn said. “We’ve got suspicions, a paper trail, trends. But I don’t have hard and fast evidence. You can get me the evidence we need to shut this down … if you agree to investigate your fellow officers. I know what they say. Don’t betray a brother or sister in blue. But when your brother or sister in blue betrays everything the department stands for, betrays the trust of the community he or she is sworn to protect and serve, then you call upon a different loyalty: the loyalty to the cops who stand against corruption.”
Like Kenny, Hawthorn made playing on his team sound cool, like being chosen, one of the elite in the worst possible way. Everyone rotated through Internal Affairs; it helped reduce the stigma of being the snitch who investigated and prosecuted other cops. But that didn’t change the “us against them mentality” most cops had for Internal Affairs. Kenny’s club was the cool kids smoking pot and ditching school. But unlike Kenny, Hawthorn’s invitation was a more refined, more elite version of being a cop. It was being one of the best cops, the ones who held themselves to a higher standard every single day, in every single encounter with the public or with their fellow officers.
He didn’t have to give up the only family he’d ever known.
Conn picked up his gun, then his badge from Hawthorn’s desk. He secured the holster on his right hip, then pinned his badge to his belt pocket. Despite the added weight of the gun he felt lighter, freer.
Hawthorn’s gaze sharpened. “You’re taking a big risk. There’s no guarantee they won’t kill a cop to protect themselves.”
Conn shrugged. “If I can take him down, I will. Leave this house a little cleaner than it was when I got here.”
Hawthorn nodded. “By the way, McCormick. As Ms. Ward’s body man you were isolated, alone, and off-balance,” Hawthorn mused. “And you handled it like a pro.”
Conn blinked.
“All those things your superior officers write you up for? The inability to control your impulses, your hotheaded approach, your total disregard for protocol and safety? It’s one thing to keep your head when bullets are flying. It’s another to do it when it’s the constant strain of a psychological threat. Nice job, Officer McCormick.”
“Thanks,” Conn said. The tips of his ears were turning red. He resisted the urge to shove his hands in his pockets of his utility pants.
“You’re welcome,” Hawthorn said genially. “Now go back to work, pretend I just reamed your ass, and help us take down these bastards.”