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“Where are we going?” I asked as we drove down an unfamiliar street.
Marx glanced in the rearview mirror, and his eyes narrowed at the headlights that appeared out of the darkness behind us.
He slowed to twenty miles per hour, and one hand fell to rest on his gun as the vehicle closed the distance between us.
I gripped the handle on the passenger side as I twisted around in my seat. The headlights pressed in on the rear of the car, and I could feel Marx’s tension. Could this be more of the enforcers he had mentioned?
I held my breath as the headlights gave way to a truck. It swerved over the line to our left, and then cut in front of us. It sped up and disappeared down the road.
Marx’s fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. “The only safe place I can think of at the moment,” he finally said, in answer to my question.
“But if they’ve been following us for the past month, studying our movements, they’re gonna know every place we can think of.”
“I haven’t been here in the past month.” He returned both hands to the steering wheel. “I haven’t been here since summer, and I don’t know where else to go.”
“Where?”
“Matt’s house.”
He was taking me to Captain McNera’s house? I thought about the man who had been in tears due to some bad news in the family the last time I’d seen him. “I don’t think we should go there. What if they follow us? Won’t that put him and his family in danger?”
“You let me worry about that.”
A few minutes later, we pulled into the driveway of a two-story house set back from the road. I followed Marx up the front steps onto a wraparound porch and sank weak-kneed into a chair that rested against the railing.
He pounded on the frame of the screen door with the side of his fist. “Matt!” He waited a beat before pounding and calling for his friend again.
I bent forward, resting my head on my knees. It felt like there was a thunderstorm booming around between my ears, and I couldn’t seem to shake off the dizziness.
“How’s your head?” Marx asked.
I offered him a thumbs-up and heard him sigh. He pounded on the door again, but he didn’t shout this time. My head was grateful for that.
I looked up when I heard a dead bolt snap, and the front door wrenched inward. A shadowed figure filled the opening, and fear gripped me when my eyes snagged on the gun aimed at Marx’s chest through the screen door.
There was a beat of breath-stealing uncertainty before the gun lowered and Captain McNera exhaled, “Holy mother of . . .” He flipped on the light just inside the door, and the dull yellow glow illuminated his tired, lined face. “Do you have any idea what time it is, Rick?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have a problem,” Marx said. “The safe house was breached.”
Captain McNera blinked, his sluggish mind apparently struggling to come to terms with that news at one a.m. “When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Casualties?”
Marx nodded but didn’t elaborate. “Can we discuss the details inside?”
“Right, of course.” Captain McNera opened the screen door to invite him in. “Helen’s at some kind of women’s retreat with the church, so we can talk freely in the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.”
Marx helped me to my feet despite my assurances that I was fine, and I saw Captain McNera’s eyes widen a fraction in surprise. He hadn’t noticed me sitting there in the dark.
“I got her out,” Marx explained.
“When you said the safe house was breached, I thought the worst,” he admitted. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I stiffened at the unexpected contact. “I’m glad you’re okay, kiddo.”
He gestured us inside, and Marx led me into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair at the table and demanded, “Sit before you fall over.”
I plopped into the chair with a half-hearted protest. “I’m not gonna fall over. I’m fine.” Aside from the pain ricocheting around inside my skull, which I wasn’t about to admit to.
“You’re a bad liar.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a washcloth as if he were in his own kitchen, then held it under the faucet.
“I didn’t see any suspicious vehicles in my driveway,” Captain McNera said as he strode into the kitchen. “Any chance you were followed?”
“I’d like to think not, but there’s always a chance,” Marx admitted reluctantly. He drew up a chair in front of me and sat down. “Let’s see how bad it is.” He brushed my hair aside and dabbed gently around the gash on my forehead.
“What happened to your head?” Captain McNera asked, his expression pinched with concern. He must have just noticed the blood trickling down my face. I had tried to wipe it away—it was all over the sleeves of my purple T-shirt—but it continued to flow.
“Daniel got a little rough,” Marx explained irritably.
Captain McNera frowned. “Daniel who?”
Marx sighed, and I caught the glimmer of conflicting emotions in his eyes before he said, “Maybe we should just start from the beginnin’.”
“I think that would be a good idea.”
“I got a text from Holly that the enforcers had breached the house, so I called for backup and immediately headed to the address she provided.”
Captain McNera’s gaze shifted to me. “No one was supposed to know where you were. How did they find you?”
“Danny . . .” I swallowed as I thought about how this news might impact Sam. “Sam’s partner was working with them. He put a tracker on the marshals’ car.”
Disbelief and something that might have been righteous indignation brightened Captain McNera’s cheeks. “That’s a very serious accusation, Holly.”
“I realize that.”
“You can’t just accuse one of my officers of conspiring with drug dealers without proof. Maybe you misunderstood the situation.”
Anger boiled to the surface, making my voice sharp. “I didn’t misunderstand.”
“I heard the entire conversation between them, sir. Holly called me and put the phone in her back pocket, and I heard his confession. When I got there, he had her handcuffed and was tryin’ to force her into the trunk of his car,” Marx explained. “When that didn’t work, he put a gun to her head.”
Captain McNera paled. “Put a gun to her . . .” His gaze shifted to me, and he just stared at me, shocked, before gesturing to his forehead. “That’s from the gun?”
“No,” Marx said before I could speak. “That’s from the door frame he slammed her head into when he got angry.”
I watched fury chase away all other emotion on Captain McNera’s face. “How could I have misjudged him so completely? I thought he was a good officer. I thought—”
“It’s not your fault,” Marx interrupted.
“Of course it's my fault. I’m his commanding officer. I should’ve seen it.” He rubbed at his face as if it might help him make sense of things.
“Nobody saw it. Sam was his partner and he had no idea that Daniel was involved with this.”
Captain McNera’s anger drained away, and he looked abruptly tired. “That’s not gonna be an easy conversation.”
“No, it won’t, but I’ll be there if you want.”
Captain McNera nodded as he pushed away from the counter. “I would appreciate that. I know you and Sam are close. I’m gonna grab the first aid kit out of the hall closet so we can take care of that head wound, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
Marx stood and rinsed the bloodstained rag out in the sink as Captain McNera left the room. “I think you might need stitches.”
I touched at the gash with light fingers and hissed in a breath.
“Don’t touch it,” he chided, returning with a clean washcloth. “You’re gonna get it infected.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
He gave me a flat look. He had said that same thing to me the first time he’d been shot, and apparently he didn’t like having it flung back at him. “It is not a scratch. Now hold still.”
He reached to push my hair back out of my face so he could continue cleaning the wound, but I brushed his hand aside. “Stop fussing. I’m fine.”
“I will fuss if I wanna fuss.”
“I’m perfectly capable of tending to my own injuries,” I pointed out. I had done it plenty of times before. I held out my hand for the washcloth.
“You’re gonna be stubborn about this, aren’t you?”
“Apparently I’m a stubborn snot about everything,” I said, motioning for him to hand over the cloth.
He grimaced. “I heard that comment. That man knows nothin’ about you.”
“So I’m not a stubborn snot?”
He almost smiled. “Stubborn? Frequently. A snot? Never. He was just angry that you weren’t gullible.” He placed the washcloth in my hand. “The bathroom is through the livin’ room and down the hall if you need a mirror. Second door on your left.”
“Thanks.” I took the washcloth with me as I wandered through the tastefully decorated living room toward the bathroom. I paused when I heard Captain McNera’s low, angry voice coming from the hallway.
“Rick is at my house with the girl. Come get her, and try not to screw it up like Danny did. We don’t need any more casualties.” He paused as if he were listening and then said, “I know it puts me in the middle of it, but there’s no other way. Say you followed them, and make sure no one suspects my involvement. A bump on the head ought to do.”
The meaning behind his words washed over me and carried away my breath. I retraced the conversation in my mind, desperately searching for any other possible meaning, but I came to the same shocking conclusion each time: Captain McNera was the person behind the attack at the safe house. Danny had been working for him when he put the tracker under the marshals’ car.
I backed away, retreating into the kitchen, where Marx was brewing a pot of coffee. My eyes met his, and I froze.
God, how do I tell him that his best friend betrayed him?
There were so few people in this city he considered friends, and he had known Captain McNera for twenty years. They had been partners on the police force.
“Holly, what’s the matter?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the truth caught in my throat. He might consider me a friend, but he’d known Captain McNera for so much longer. What if he didn’t believe me?
“Holly?”
“I . . . overheard Captain McNera on the phone.” I licked my lips and forced the rest of the words out. “He called someone to . . . to come get me, and told them not to screw it up like Danny did.”
An uncomfortable silence followed my announcement. When Marx finally spoke, his voice was taught with anger. “What exactly are you sayin’, Holly?”
I bit my bottom lip as tears pooled in my eyes. God, I don’t wanna break his heart. “He told them . . . to make it look like they followed us, and to make sure no one suspects he’s involved.”
Doubt and confusion played across his face. He shook his head in silent denial even as I saw the beginnings of questions in his eyes. He stepped back from me and rubbed a hand over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
He held up a hand to silence me as he visibly struggled with the news. I swallowed the lump of regret in my throat, and my eyes flitted to the back door. If he chose not to believe me, I would need to slip away before Captain McNera’s people came for me.
“I found this on the living room floor.”
My spine stiffened at Captain McNera’s voice, and I turned to see him walking casually into the kitchen, the damp rag I’d been carrying to the bathroom draped across his palm.
I hadn’t even realized I’d dropped it.
He offered it to me, but I stepped back from him, retreating slowly until my back touched the flower-patterned wall. His expression turned questioning, and then he looked at Marx, who was regarding his longtime friend with uncertainty.
Captain McNera sighed, and weariness crept over him, rounding his shoulders, darkening the circles beneath his eyes, and deepening the grooves in his heavily lined face until he seemed to have aged ten years between heartbeats.
“I wish you hadn’t heard that phone conversation, Holly.”
Marx’s eyebrows knitted together. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me you didn’t have anythin’ to do with any of this.”
He set the first aid kit he had brought with him on the counter, and tossed the rag on top of it. “I can’t do that, Rick.”
He drew the gun he’d had with him when he opened the front door, and Marx snapped his weapon up in the same instant.
Marx was completely exposed in the middle of the kitchen; he had no vest to protect him this time, and it was a trained officer at the other end of the weapon aimed at his chest.
“Matt,” he gritted out, and I could hear the pain and fear in his voice. He was holding his best friend at gunpoint, and he wanted more than anything not to have to take that shot. “Put it down. You don’t have to do this.”
Captain McNera gave him a threadbare smile. “I’m not some unstable suspect who doesn’t know what they’re doing, Rick. You can’t talk me down. I know what I’ve done, and I know exactly what I’m doing now.”
“So this entire time, this entire case—everythin’ that’s gone wrong—was because of you,” Marx realized. “You had my informant killed to cover up your operation because you knew I planned to track him down and get the rest of the information. And Tear—”
“He was a liability. Holly identified him.”
“And the dealer I brought in? Did you have him killed so I couldn’t question him?”
A memory surfaced in my mind. “Danny was there when he wasn’t supposed to be, and he would’ve known the cameras weren’t working right. He killed him, didn’t he?”
Captain McNera’s lips puckered as if he had just tasted something sour. “Danny was a mistake. I knew it the moment you brought me the picture of Holly you found on the dealer. I don’t know what he was thinking using a crime scene photo of her that only our department had access to.”
“And the cop you wanted me to hand the case off to—Ricardo—I assume he’s the one who’s on his way here now,” Marx said. When Captain McNera didn’t answer, Marx demanded, “Why?” I could hear the weight of his grief and anger in that single word.
“For my family. I need them to be taken care of.”
“For your family?” Marx asked in disbelief. “What about my family, Matt!”
Captain McNera shook his head. “I would never have hurt Shannon. I care about her too.”
“You sent your bulldogs into her home.”
“It was just supposed to scare you off the case.”
A muscle in Marx’s jaw flexed. “And Holly?”
Captain McNera frowned. “She’s not family.”
“She’s family to me!” Marx shouted, and I cringed at the volume of his voice. “And don’t pretend you didn’t know. You sent them after her because you know.”
Captain McNera’s lips whitened as he pressed them together. He didn’t deny it.
“Is that why you asked me about my relationship with her? So you could figure out if you could use her against me? Did you send that drug dealer after her in the precinct so you could gauge how much I care for her?”
Regret flickered across Captain McNera’s face. “You reacted like a father protecting his little girl. I didn’t expect that, and I almost . . . reconsidered.”
“But you decided to take her anyway. What was the plan? Hold her over my head so you could keep me from movin’ forward with the case until you decided to bow out?”
“You didn’t give me a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“I knew it was only a matter of time when you called me about your informant’s information. You never could look the other way. Holly was my last chance to discourage you from ruining everything. I took precautions for her safety. They were never gonna hurt her.”
“Never gonna . . .” Marx trailed off in disbelief. “Look at her, Matt. She didn’t do that to herself!”
Captain McNera glanced at the gash on my forehead. “They weren’t supposed to—”
“You’re not that naive. Even if Daniel hadn’t lost his temper, you hired thugs. Did you really think they wouldn’t hurt her, or did you just decide that the benefits outweighed the risks?”
“If you had just backed off, she wouldn’t be hurt at all.”
Fury and pain warred for control on Marx’s face. “Twenty years, Matt. We’ve been friends for twenty years. When exactly did you switch sides? When did it become okay to sell drugs to kids, murder people, and abduct innocent girls just to keep your secrets?”
“You don’t understand, Rick.”
“No, I don’t.” His voice shook with rage. “You betrayed our friendship. You betrayed everythin’ we stand for. And for what? A more lucrative retirement plan? How much did your morals cost, Matt?”
“Don’t judge me!” Captain McNera yelled, and the gun vibrated with anger in his hand. “Don’t pretend you’ve done everything by the book.”
“There’s a big difference between grayin’ a few lines to catch a criminal and breakin’ the law. I never crossed that line. Don’t demonize me to soothe your conscience.”
Tears welled in Captain McNera’s eyes. “You’re right. I crossed a few lines that I regret crossing, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.”
Marx shook his head. “I don’t understand what happened, Matt. You were a good cop. You helped a lot of people.”
“And what do I have to show for it? More bills than I can afford, a house in foreclosure because I can’t pay the mortgage. I’ve learned a lot in my years on the force, but mostly I learned that criminals can make in a day what I make in a year.”
“You knew that goin’ into it, but you wanted to make the world a better place.”
“I was a foolish kid full of unrealistic expectations and impossible hopes. The world will never be a better place, because the people who work hard, who spend their lives trying to make a difference, are the ones who never win. We deserve a chance. Our families deserve a chance.”
“Spare me the propaganda, Matt,” Marx said curtly. “I’ve heard it all before from every dirty cop I’ve arrested and every low-life criminal with a sense of entitlement.”
Captain McNera sighed. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters now. I can’t change what I’ve done. I can’t fix this.”
Marx clenched his teeth as if he desperately wanted to keep the words from escaping. “No. You can’t. But nobody else has to get hurt.”
“You could just look the other way for once, for the sake of our friendship.”
“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that. Just put the gun down and we’ll talk. We can work with the DA to get you a deal, somethin’—”
“I’m dying, Rick.”
His words seemed to echo in the silence that followed.
“Unless that sentence is two months or less, it won’t matter anyway. Doctors gave me two more months at most. Inoperable brain tumor.”
Moisture gathered in Marx’s eyes, and he looked like he might double over from the excruciating impact of that news, but he kept his spine straight.
The conversation with Captain McNera in his office came back to me: he had been crying while looking at a photo of his daughters, and he had explained it away by saying “bad news in the family.”
I understood now.
Death for someone who didn’t believe in God meant eternal separation from the people he loved. It was an end. He was losing his family, and all of this—every terrible decision, every life lost—had been to provide for them when he was no longer here to do it. That didn’t make it right, but I felt a pang of sorrow for him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Marx choked out.
“They would’ve forced me out, citing that my judgment might be impaired, and I need the money. I can’t let Helen lose the house. I can’t leave her with all of my unpaid medical bills.” Captain McNera wiped at the tears on his face with the back of one hand while keeping the gun trained on Marx. “Let this go, Rick. Let me die at home with my family.”
Marx visibly wrestled with that decision. It took him a moment to find his voice. “You could’ve come to me for help, but you made your choice.”
Captain McNera grunted as if he had expected nothing less. “I won’t go to jail, Rick. I won’t see that look of shame in my family’s eyes.”
I looked at Marx in alarm. Had he heard the unspoken threat in those words?
“You’ve always been an amazing cop and a better friend than I ever deserved. I’m sorry for putting you through all of this, but I want you to know that I never intended for you to get hurt.”
Captain McNera slowly lifted his gun to his temple.
“Don’t do this, Matt,” Marx pleaded.
“Please don’t,” I said, stepping forward.
“Holly,” Marx snapped.
I knew he wanted me to stay out of harm’s way, but I couldn’t just cower by the wall and do nothing while a man took his own life. The pain of his suicide would ripple through the lives of everyone around him, especially Marx.
“Don’t do this to your family, to your friends. If you kill yourself, you’re murdering a little piece of everyone who has ever loved you, everyone who has ever cared about you. You’re hurting them in a way they may never recover from. Please . . .”
Captain McNera looked at me through a haze of tears.
“If you care about them at all, don’t deprive them of loving you for two more months. Even if there are bars in between, bars are better than nothing but memories.”
Captain McNera smiled sadly and shifted his eyes back to Marx. “I see why you love her.” To my surprise, he looked back at me. “You’re a sweet kid, Holly, but there’s no hope to be had here.”
Sweat beaded across his brow as his finger flexed on the trigger.
“There’s always hope,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “You can see your family again. Death doesn’t have to be a final good-bye. Just a . . . a ‘see you later.’ Please just—”
“I don’t believe in an afterlife, Holly. There is no God, no heavenly gate, no eternal life with the people we love. There’s only a grave. We’re all just . . . nothing but dust.” Fresh tears dampened his cheeks, and the gun wavered at his temple. “I truly am sorry for this.” He lowered the gun and then angled it in my direction.
Dread slammed into me.
“Matt!” Marx shouted, stepping forward. “Don’t make me do this!”
I flattened myself against the wall.
“Forgive me,” Captain McNera said, his words catching on a sob as he leveled the gun at my chest.
I braced for the searing pain of a bullet, but the only pain I felt was the quiet breaking of my heart when I saw Captain McNera fall.
Marx kicked the gun away from his friend’s hand and crouched down to press two fingers to his neck. His face was a mask of pain as he closed his eyes. He had killed his friend of twenty years to save my life.
I parted my lips to say something, but there was nothing to say. I wouldn’t thank him for killing his friend to save me, and saying I was sorry fell so short in this moment.
He stood and walked to the wall. He stared at it for a long time, seeming petrified by his pain; then he clenched his fingers into a fist and hit the wall, denting the plaster. He hit it again before dropping back against it and sliding to the floor.
He covered his tear-stained face with a bloody hand, and his shoulders shook as he cried silently.
Seeing this man, who was always brave and strong, crumple under the weight of grief was heartbreaking.
I crossed the kitchen and sank to the floor beside him. There were no words to soothe this wound, so I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rested my head against his, holding him while he cried as he had once held me.