Her arm stretches across the desk, and grips the side, almost as if she's trying to hold herself up to the interrogation I'm giving her. "Molly, I say this in the gentlest way. I'm not sure where Darren and I are going, but we have a lot of fun. We've not put a label on it, because both of us have been dealing with a lot. I don't talk about it often, but the last year in my life hasn't been easy either. He makes things a little easier."
And those words are what make me think both she and Darren may be the ones to heal each other from whatever it is their dealing with. "He does," I agree. "He's always been one of the best men I've known. A few times he kicked Levi's ass when he was doing things he shouldn't have been doing. We've always respected him, and I like knowing that he's with someone like you."
"So do I, Molly. So do I."
All of a sudden we hear a large commotion of sirens, more than we normally do. "What the fuck?" I ask, hopping up, and running over to the window to look down at the ambulance bay. There's not only ambulances, but there are cop cars from every agency within our county. Immediately, I'm nervous. I haven't heard from Levi or Dakota today, and come to think of it, I haven't heard from Dad since the texts we shared this morning. Normally I don't text my grandfather every day, but with shaking hands, I fire off a text to him, just to be safe. "That's got to be law enforcement that's hurt," I whisper. "Come on, let's head down there. Have you heard from Darren today?" I ask as we jog down the stairs.
"Yeah." She pulls her phone out of her pocket. "We talked a little over an hour ago."
The uneasiness in my stomach doesn't go away though, not as we we take the stairs two at a time, down toward the ER. It's a living thing in my stomach, breathing and sinking it's claws into my flesh, tearing it with the fear of what I'm going to find when I get down there.
We burst through the doors to the ER, and I see a stream of first responders.
There are three stretchers coming through the bay, EMT's calling out vitals as they come in. The first two are people I don't know. They don't look like they're from around here. They have tattoos on their necks, and they look gang affiliated. We don't have anything like that around here that I'm aware of.
But it's the third stretcher. That's the one that causes my knees to buckle and a cry to be torn from my chest. My brother is doing chest compressions on our Dad, and my life as I know it? It stops.
Chapter 22
Dakota
I catch Molly when she collapses, barely keeping her from hitting the floor. I can't imagine how she feels, because I know how I felt watching them load Caleb into the back of the ambulance. This is one of those times when you don't want to know the person who is injured. You definitely don't want it to be the man you think of as your second father.
"He's gonna be okay," I whisper to her, my mouth at her ear. "Caleb is strong. He's going to be fine."
She turns to me, those eyes of hers swimming in tears. "I hope you're right."
I hope I am too, but I don't say that part out loud because what she needs from me right now is not my fear. What she needs is positivity and steadiness, and that is something I can give her even when the inside of me is about to fucking fall apart. I've been doing that since the moment those two cars went sideways in front of us on that S-curve, when my whole body went ice cold for about two seconds before training took over and me and Levi got to Caleb's cruiser. I have not let myself think about how bad this is, and how much worse it can get.
The ER is loud and full of chaos as I look around, taking stock of what’s going on around us. The waiting area has more uniforms in it than I've ever seen in one room outside of a departmental function. All agencies are present, some off-duty people who came in on their own once the radio traffic went out, which is what happens in a town this size when it's one of their own. There's something about law enforcement looking out for its people that I have never once in my career taken for granted, because I grew up without that kind of thing and I knew what the absence of that felt like until Levi and I were friends.
The doors from the parking lot push open, and I know before I look up who it's going to be, because there is exactly one person in Laurel Springs who moves through a room the way this man does.
It’s Chief Harrison.
I’ve known this man most of my life, and he’s never scared me. Right now though? I’m getting out of his way. He's got his jaw set and his eyes are doing that thing they do when he's in command mode, reading everything in the room at once, and he walks directly to where Levi is standing near the desk.
"Where the fuck are they?" he asks, his voice calm and quiet, but deadly at the same time.
Levi puts a hand on his grandfather's arm. "Grandpa."
"I want to see the men who were brought in with Caleb."
"I know you do." Levi's voice is careful in a way that tells me he's been thinking about this since before the Chief walked through the door. "But you can't. Not like this. Not right now. This needs to be done completely by the book." He keeps his hand on his grandfather's arm and holds his gaze. "You are too close to this, and you know it as well as I do, and if you go in there right now, you compromise everything that comes after. Dad wouldn't want that. He wants these fuckers arrested and doing time."
Mason looks at Levi for a long moment, and I can see the argument happening behind his eyes, the part of him that has spent decades solving things by going directly at them wrestling with the part of him that didn't get to be Chief as long as he has been by being reckless. It's not a quick fight.
Then Ryan steps forward, and he does it the right way, which is to say he does it without making it a big thing, just a man who has a job to do stepping into the space where the job needs doing. "Chief." He addresses Mason directly, and there's the particular respect in it that Ryan has always had for the people who came before him, which is one of the reasons he's good at what he does. "I'll take lead on this until the state police can get here and sort out jurisdiction. You have my word that everything gets done right.”
The Chief looks at him. He doesn't say anything for a moment, and I think about what this costs him, handing off an investigation that involves his family to someone else, even someone he trusts. There are things you can train for and things you can't, and watching a man you respect swallow his own instincts because the right thing and the thing he wants to do are pointing in different directions is one of the things you can't train for. You just have to watch it and respect it.
"All right," Chief Harrison says finally, and it's two words, but they carry the weight of a much longer sentence. "You keep me informed."
"Yes sir," Ryan says, and means it.
The Chief moves toward the family waiting area, and the room lets out a collective breath that nobody was consciously holding.
I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I notice Macie. She's either came down with Molly or she’s come down on her own. I didn’t see her when I saw Molly, but a lot was going on. She's standing just inside the ER doorway in her scrubs, and when Darren turns and sees her, something happens on his face that is quick and controlled but not quick or controlled enough that I miss it. He crosses toward her and they stand close together and exchange a few words that I can't hear from where I am, and her hand comes up and touches his arm briefly before she pulls it back, and he gives her a single nod before he goes back to what looks like coordinating officers to take shifts to cover those who have showed up here.