Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Crowe
The East Texas group arrived late Tuesday night. Bobby had agreed to meet them and get them all situated since we wouldn’t start our training until Wednesday morning.
I got up early on Wednesday so I would have time to stop and grab breakfast burritos for the camp since I hadn’t been there to prep breakfast. I hadn’t wanted to leave Noah at the apartment alone for three days, but I had a job to do, and I knew that was the safest place for him, and that was what mattered most.
When I arrived at camp, a couple of the trainees were sitting out near the firepit with Bobby. I introduced myself and then said, “I’ll take the food inside. Bobby, round everyone up. We have a busy day ahead of us today, so I want to get an early start.”
Normally, I eased a group into things on their first day with some team-building activities, but since they were only coming for three days instead of the normal week, we didn’t have time for that. Hawk would be there around nine to start us off hot with his specialty, hand-to-hand training.
A few minutes later, they began filing into the house. There were six of them. The two women, Reyes and Castillo, and the four guys, Garza, Webb, Mitchell, and Okafor. I leaned against the counter with my coffee, watching them all while they passed around the food.
I could already tell I was going to like Reyes.
She had quite an intensity that made me think she would be running her own department in a few years.
Okafor was a rookie, but he didn’t carry himself like one, so if I hadn’t read the files Bobby had put together on each of them, I wouldn’t have realized it.
They all seemed to get along so that was a good sign.
Hawk arrived a few minutes later. He got himself a cup of coffee and joined them at the table, taking a few minutes to get to know them all before I announced that it was time to wrap it up and get started.
I gave them a few minutes to finish their food and clean up, then I went to the front door and held it open. “Y’all follow Hawk to the training area.”
Once the six of them were lined up on the open ground outside the farmhouse, I stepped up in front of them.
“Today we’re going to start with some hand-to-hand combat training.
Hopefully, you already have some hand-to-hand combat skills, but it won’t hurt for you to pay attention anyway.
You might learn something. Now, one last thing, I know you’re all law enforcement officers, and you’re used to being the authority, but here at TBT Training Camp, you’re the trainee, I’m the one in charge. Got it?”
They all glanced from side to side at each other, but then they all nodded.
“Okay, Hawk’s going to take the lead. He’s our hand-to-hand combat expert, so pay attention to what he’s showing you this morning.”
Hawk stepped forward. He was built for this. He was a big guy, and he moved in a confident way that said he didn’t need to do anything to prove to you that he was dangerous.
“Hand-to-hand isn’t about strength,” he said.
“You’re all going to encounter someone bigger than you at some point.
” He glanced at Reyes and Castillo. “Some of you already have. I also know you all have self-defense training, but I want to start with the basics so I can see what we’re working with.
We’re going to start with how to break a hold.
Simple stuff. Wrist grab, lapel grab, bear hug from behind.
You’d be surprised how many situations start with one of those three. ”
“What about knife defense?” Webb asked. He was mid-thirties, the most experienced of the group after Reyes.
“That’s this afternoon,” I said. “We’ll run the holds this morning and do knife defense after lunch.”
“Why split it?” Okafor asked. He seemed genuinely curious. I liked that about him.
“Because they require different mindsets,” I said. “Hand-to-hand is about control. Knife defense is about survival. You don’t want to blur those.”
Okafor nodded.
Hawk started them on wrist grabs. I watched from the edge of the grass, arms crossed, tracking each pairing.
I was watching for the habits that got people hurt, the instinct to pull away instead of turning into the hold, the tendency to tense up when they should be dropping their weight.
Things that I could share with Hawk for later in the morning.
“Castillo,” Hawk said. “You’re fighting the grab. Stop fighting it.”
She reset and tried again. This time, she turned into it instead of against it, and Garza’s grip broke cleanly.
“There,” Hawk said. “That’s it. Again.”
He was like that. He’d tell you what you were doing wrong, show you what right looked like, and then watch you do it until you had it.
He never made anyone feel stupid, but he didn’t give needless praise either.
If he told you you were good, you were good.
That was what made him such a good self-defense trainer.
We worked through the morning. Bobby circulated with water and made sure nobody pushed through something they shouldn’t.
At one point, Mitchell went down awkwardly on his wrist. He wasn’t injured; it was just a poor landing.
Hawk was crouched beside him before I’d taken two steps, checking the range of motion with his hands, asking questions in a low voice that didn’t carry to the rest of the group.
“Walk it off,” he said finally. “You’re fine. Take five minutes.”
They all handled themselves really well, which surprised me a little since their department had specifically requested this as part of their training. But what I’d said earlier was true, and it never hurt to refresh your training.
By eleven-thirty, I called a break for lunch.
Bobby had set out food on the long table in the farmhouse—sandwiches, a pot of soup that had been going since morning, and fruit.
The group settled in with the comfortable noise of people who’d been working hard and were ready to eat.
I filled a plate and took it to the far end of the table where Hawk was already sitting with his soup and his coffee, looking at something on his phone.
He put the phone face-down when I sat.
“Okafor’s going to be good,” he said.
“I know. The instincts are already there.”
“Reyes, too. I can tell she’s had some training. Not all of it good, but she’s got the discipline to unlearn bad habits, which is rarer.”
Hawk drank his coffee and looked at me with the expression that meant he was deciding how to say something.
“What?” I asked.
“How’s Noah?”
“He’s good,” I said.
“That’s all? He’s good.”
I looked at him. He looked back, completely comfortable, the faint suggestion of something amused around his eyes.
“He’s settling in,” I said. “Better than I expected. Better than I think he expected.”
“And you two?”
“We’re figuring it out.”
“Crowe.”
“Hawk.”
He set his coffee down. “Eight years,” he said. “I’ve known you for eight years. In those eight years, I’ve watched you care about exactly three things… the camp, your brother, and Blackbird. And now there’s a fourth thing, and you’re sitting here telling me you’re figuring it out.”
“That’s what we’re doing. Someone is out to get him, Hawk. Now isn’t really the time for us to figure out our future plans.”
He shrugged. “Actually, I think that makes now the perfect time for that.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“Yep, nothing like a little hope to get you through,” he said.
“Maybe,” I grumbled.
It wasn’t that I thought he was wrong; it was just that it was too soon for me and Noah to be talking about a future together.
We’d been together for such a short time.
Of course my grandfather liked to say that the day he met my grandmother for the first time, he’d known she was the one and never looked back.
“I’m just noting that when you left HQ this morning, you looked like a man who was leaving something important behind.”
I looked at my sandwich. “I told him I’d be here for a few days. He knows.”
“Does that make it easier?”
“No.”
Hawk smiled, not a large one, just the corner of his mouth. “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.”
We ate for a while without talking. One of the deputies had started telling a story that was getting a lot of reaction from the others.
“Don’t you worry. I’ll stop in and check on your boy tonight.” He picked up his coffee again. “Mika’ll feed him. You know how he gets when someone needs taking care of.”
I did know. It was one of the things about the Three Bears I was sure of. The way they folded in around whoever needed it without making a production of it. Noah had been folded in whether he’d asked to be or not, and from what I’d seen, it was doing him good.
“He said something,” I said, “when we were out here the other day. That he was lucky to have all of us. That he didn’t know how he’d get through this without Three Bears at his back.”
Hawk was quiet for a moment. “What did you say?”
“I said good thing he didn’t have to find out.”
Hawk nodded slowly. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly right.”
The afternoon session ran long.
Knife defense always did. There was more to cover, the stakes were higher, and people felt that.
The energy shifted in the afternoon, the way it always did when the training moved from something theoretical to something visceral.
Everybody had seen what a knife could do.
But especially this group. Their department had lost a guy last year to a knife attack. That knowledge sat in the room with us.
Hawk and I did the knife demonstrations.
He came at me with the marker blade—chalk-tipped, metal handle—and I ran the blocks and the counters while the group watched, talking through each one, explaining not just what I was doing but why.
The X formation with the wrists. The way you moved into an attacker rather than away from them.
The ground control that followed a successful disarm.
“In a knife attack, odds are you’re going to get cut,” I said, after the third demonstration.
“Accept that now. The goal isn’t to avoid getting cut.
The goal is to make sure that if you do get cut, it’s somewhere you can survive it.
Wrist facing you, not away. Inner forearm, not outer. Muscle, not artery.”
Webb raised his hand. “What if you can’t disarm them?”
“Then you do what you have to do to go home at the end of the shift.” I looked at the group. “There’s no elegant solution to a knife. It’s ugly, and it hurts, and the best outcome is everybody comes out of it alive. Next best is that you live through it. Keep that as your focus.”
They paired up and worked it. Hawk and I moved through them, correcting, adjusting, watching. By four-thirty, I called it.
“Good work today,” I said, looking at the group. “All six of you. You came in here with skills, and you’re leaving with more. That’s what this is supposed to do.” I looked at Okafor specifically, for just a beat. “Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow morning we’re on the range at seven.”
They dispersed toward the cabins. Bobby started gathering the training gear with the efficient quiet he had when he was in work mode. Hawk dropped off the fence post and came to stand beside me.
“You’ve got a good group,” he said.
“Yeah.” I watched them go. “They are.”
Dinner at the farmhouse was good. We grilled some burgers, and the group ate with the easy sound of people who genuinely liked each other.
The conversation ran from shop talk to stories to the ongoing debate between Garza and Castillo about the best breakfast tacos in East Texas that had apparently been running since before they arrived.
“We’ll have to get you out to visit, Jackson,” Garza said. “What you brought us today was good, but nothing compares to Santana’s breakfast burritos.”
“The Green Frogs are better,” Castillo insisted, refusing to let it go.
“Well, next time I’m out that way, I’ll have to try both and settle this debate for you,” I said, and everyone laughed.
“Good luck with that,” Webb said. “We’ve all tried.”
The conversation moved on, and I sat at the end of the table and ate, half listening, but at the same time, I thought about the apartment on the ninth floor of the Three Bears building, and the gray morning light through the window, and Noah in my t-shirt with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea.
I thought about Hawk’s face when I’d said I was figuring it out, which wasn’t really true, was it? Truth was, I’d already figured it out. Noah was mine. The problem was, I didn’t feel like it was fair to ask him to make decisions like that right now. Not with everything he had going on.
After dinner, I helped Bobby clear the table. He washed, and I dried, same as we always did when it was just the two of us.
He handed me a bowl without looking up. “I can stay out here tonight if you want me to. I can even cover breakfast if you need me to.”
“I’ll be up at seven.”
“I know you will.” He handed me another bowl. “I meant you could come from town instead of from here.”
I looked at him.
He kept his eyes on the sink. “I’m not blind, Crowe. Just sayin’.”
I dried the bowl and put it on the shelf. “Good work this week, Bobby.”
“Thanks, and drive safe.”
The building was quiet when I got there. I unlocked the door to the apartment carefully, the way you did when you were trying not to wake someone.
The apartment was dark except for the lamp in the bedroom, which he always left on.
I set my keys on the counter, shrugged out of my jacket, and crossed to the bedroom. He was asleep on his side, one hand loose on the pillow beside him. He’d left space on the other side for me without even realizing it.
I got ready for bed as quietly as possible and slid in beside him.
He stirred.
“Jackson?” His voice was low and blurred with sleep.
“Yeah,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he turned and curled into me, his forehead against my shoulder, his hand finding my arm in the dark.
“You came home,” he murmured.
I lay there with his body warm against my side and the sounds of the city outside the window.
I didn’t answer him.
I didn’t have to.
He was already asleep.