Chapter 5 Dean
Dean
The world outside the car was all honey-glaze and asphalt shimmer, the Los Alamos late afternoon pressed flat and hard against the windshield.
I lowered the window for Sergeant, but she barely noticed, curled into herself in the passenger footwell with the dignity of someone resigned to travel.
I wondered if dogs got headaches from the glare, or if they just processed the sting of it in a way we couldn't. The air smelled like juniper and baking roadkill, faint electricity on the breeze.
I kept my eyes straight ahead, letting the low drone of public radio fill the space.
It was almost peaceful. The kind of peace that comes from knowing the next twelve hours, the next seven steps, the next cigarette to be rolled and smoked to the butt on my back porch while the dog learned her new perimeter.
Even the club felt far away, the threats and debts and old grudges all dulled by the aftertaste of Emily's voice and the sight of her, half-laughing in the sun. I touched the dog tags at my throat and let my mind drift to how I’d tell Ma about the adoption, about the chance she had now to maybe give a shit about something again.
The phone rang, vibrating against the center console with a rattle that set my nerves on edge. The screen lit up with Damron’s number. I let it ring twice, like I hadn’t been waiting for the call all day.
“Yeah?” I answered, thumb pressed into the tags so hard I left a dent.
On the other end, silence—then Damron’s voice, a little too careful. “Medina. Where you at right now?”
“Heading east on Trinity. Picked up the dog.” I glanced down at Sergeant, whose ears swiveled in sync with my voice.
“You got anyone with you?”
“Just the mutt. What’s up?”
He let out a breath, a sound like he was about to give a command he knew I wouldn’t like. “Pull over. Now.”
I did. Parked at the edge of a lot behind an abandoned auto parts place, where the heat pressed up from the blacktop and made everything slow and surreal. Sergeant whined in the sudden stillness, then started pacing in the footwell, her nails clicking a nervous Morse code.
I waited, trying to read the script in Damron’s silence. “I’m parked. Spit it out.”
There was no preamble, just, “There was a hit at the bank on Trinity this morning. Two shooters, masks, in and out in less than two minutes.”
“Yeah?” I said, not following the thread yet. “Robbery or message?”
“It’s worse.” His voice stayed flat, no tremor. “They had a customer on the floor. Woman. She tried to play hero with the silent alarm. They shot her in the chest. Died on scene.”
My lungs stopped working for a second, like the air had turned to wax. I felt every hair on my arms stand up, and cold sweat on my back. “Who?” I asked, even though I knew the shape of the answer already.
Damron said it. “Your mother, Dean. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. The heat, the blinding sun, the reek of hot vinyl, all telescoped into one sharp point behind my eyes. Sergeant pawed at my knee, whining louder now, a high keening like she was trying to crawl inside my ribs and push out the sickness there.
“There were witnesses,” Damron went on, voice pinched. “They heard one of the shooters shout in a language nobody recognized—Middle Eastern, maybe. Someone said they saw tattoos. Sultan shit. You get what I’m saying?”
I nodded, the motion mechanical, not sure if he could even hear the movement. My throat was raw. “You think it was for me. For the club.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. “I’m sending Dunn and Rico to clean the scene, keep the pigs off your tail. But you need to get your head straight before you do anything. I mean it, Dean.”
I tried to inhale, but the air was all broken glass. My hands shook, the tremor moving from fingertips to elbows to somewhere deeper, where I couldn’t brace against it. I pressed my forehead to the steering wheel, the dog tags catching on the vinyl seam.
Sergeant tried to lick my ear, maybe to check if I was still alive. I pushed her away, not hard, but she whimpered and retreated, curling tight in the corner, eyes wide.
I tried to focus, grab the facts, do what my father had taught me—catalogue, compartmentalize, control. “What now?” I said, voice shredded.
“Now you grieve. Then you listen for my call. I’m handling club business until you’re steady.
” Damron sounded like he was trying to talk a jumper off a ledge.
“We already got some info. It’s messy. Might be the cartel moving through with Sultan muscle.
Might be a fuckup. But it’s gonna get bloody, so you need to be ready for that. ”
I wanted to scream at him, tell him he didn’t know what it was like to lose the last goddamn person you loved in a world of liars and hired guns. But the rage just burned me up from the inside, left nothing but a thin layer of ash and the certainty that this would never, ever feel less sharp.
Sergeant started to whine again, louder. I reached over and let her rest her chin on my thigh, and we just sat like that, two animals in a heat-locked car, breathing the same sour air.
I made myself say it. “Okay. Call me when you have a target.”
There was a pause, then the click of a lighter on the other end. “Take the time you need, Medina. I’ll cover your ass.”
The line went dead.
I sat in the silence, watching my knuckles turn white against the steering wheel. The world outside was unchanged—sun bright, sky hard as glass, the strip mall across the street empty as always. My chest hurt, a pressure like someone had knifed me just under the sternum and was twisting for effect.
I could still hear my mother’s voice in my head, bright and brittle as old crystal: Don’t get in trouble, Dean. Don’t make it worse. All she ever wanted was for me to get out, make something of myself that didn’t end in jail or a funeral.
Now she was the one with the obituary, and I was still here, in a car that smelled like burning dust, clutching a set of dog tags and a leash for a dog who would never meet her.
I let myself break for a minute. Not a loud thing—no yelling, no fists through the dashboard, just a long, keening sound that started in the throat and came out through my teeth. Sergeant licked my hand, her tongue warm and urgent, and I gripped her collar so tight she yelped.
I loosened my grip, stroked her neck, and made myself breathe.
Eventually, the shaking stopped. I looked at the time, at the empty passenger seat, at the sky turning a deeper blue overhead, and I knew the next steps: call the coroner, pick up Ma’s things, make the calls. The ritual of loss, practiced enough times to be almost routine.
But this was not routine.
This was the sun, merciless and undiminished, burning everything in sight until it was white-hot and brittle, ready to shatter.
I started the engine, checked the mirror, and pulled out of the lot. Sergeant braced herself, watching me with something that looked like fear and maybe a little bit of hope, too. I let her, because one of us had to.
The road unspooled ahead, every familiar turn and pothole suddenly strange, like I was driving through a town built by someone who only knew my nightmares.
I gripped the wheel and kept going, because that was all there was left.
***
The drive to the shelter was a blank. I must have stopped at every red light, obeyed every speed limit, because when I pulled into the Humane Society lot, the sun was barely lower in the sky.
The place was already closed—the inside windows banded with stripes of artificial darkness.
I sat in the car with the engine ticking cool, the seatbelt’s cross-crease still pressed into my chest, and for a moment I thought about turning around and taking the dog somewhere out in the woods.
Just letting her go. I couldn’t imagine bringing anything home, not when home was a crime scene, and the only voices left would be the ones in my head.
Sergeant whined once, urgently, and pawed at the window.
Her eyes fixed on the door, as if she knew the way inside was the only route back to normal.
I opened the door, my hands steadier than before, though I couldn’t feel them.
I led her out with the leash, but she needed none, stuck to my leg like a shadow, her body language saying, Just tell me what to do, boss. Just make this better.
The side entrance was locked, but the moment I knocked—soft, not wanting to break anything more than necessary—Emily’s face appeared on the other side.
She was out of uniform, hair loose, and the neckline of her t-shirt showed the faintest sunburn.
For a second, she didn’t recognize me. Then she did, and she moved fast, unbolting the door and waving me in.
She didn’t say “you’re back already” or “you okay?” or any of the lines people rehearse for tragedy. Just, “Come in. It’s cooler inside.”
I went in. Sergeant came too, pausing in the threshold to look up at Emily, who bent to scratch behind her ears with an economy of motion that said she understood what animals needed, and what people sometimes needed even more.
The overheads were off, the only light coming in milky through a side window. Emily led us through the hall to the little visitation room, where the linoleum was clean, and the air wasn’t vibrating with barking or panic.
She shut the door behind us. “You want water?” she asked. “For the dog, or yourself.”
“I’m good.” My voice sounded like it had been sanded down to the grain.
Emily nodded. She turned a chair around, sat with her arms folded along the top, and just waited. It was the same pose she’d used with Sergeant that morning, letting the space fill itself until the animal decided what to do next.
I tried to explain myself. “I shouldn’t have brought her here. This was a mistake.”
Sergeant started pacing the room, her nails ticking on the tile. Emily watched her, then me, then the floor, all in the same measured sequence. “Mistake for who?” she asked, her voice soft but unyielding.
I could hear the words in my head—she needs a stable home, I’m not the right person, I can’t even keep myself together—but what came out was, “My mother’s dead. She got shot this morning at the bank on Trinity.”
The moment I said it, the air in the room changed. It was the absence of a sound, the hush before something catastrophic, like when a train stops too suddenly, and everyone waits for the aftershock.
Emily said nothing. She just stood, came over, and put her hand on my shoulder, the touch gentle and absolute. Not a hug—no sympathy gestures, no fucking platitudes—just the human contact you give a dog with a broken leg, to let them know the pain is real and noticed.
I felt the tremor in my neck, the tears coming before I could even try to fight them. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I didn’t want to cry at all. But the dam was gone, and the water was everywhere.
For a minute, I couldn’t breathe. I tried to curl in on myself, but Emily’s hand stayed firm, not letting me collapse all the way.
I felt Sergeant press her body into my leg, her nose wedging between my calf and the chair.
It was a ridiculous tableau—tough guy biker sobbing like a child between a woman and a blue-nosed pit bull.
Eventually, I found the bottom of it. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and tried to laugh, but it came out as a choking sound. “Sorry,” I said. “This isn’t how I planned to spend the evening.”
Emily smiled, and it was the first time I’d seen it without an edge. “You think anyone ever plans this shit?” She squeezed my shoulder and let go, but stayed close.
I tried to explain. “I thought if I got the dog for her, she’d… I don’t know. I thought maybe things would get easier. Maybe she’d have something to look forward to.”
Emily shook her head. “You were trying to save her. That’s never stupid. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.”
I nodded, letting that settle.
Sergeant whined again and pawed at my knee, desperate for any kind of signal. I scratched behind her ears, and she stilled, her whole body vibrating with what felt like empathy.
“I can’t take care of her,” I said, motioning to the dog. “Not now. I barely have a place to sleep. Everything’s fucked.”
Emily sat on the floor in front of me, crossing her legs, eye-level with both the dog and me. “You can. And you will. I’ve seen people in worse shape than you get their shit together for a creature who depends on them. This dog doesn’t need you to be a hero. She just needs you to show up.”
I let Sergeant lick my hand, then I let her head rest there, heavy and warm. For the first time since the call, I felt the ache in my shoulders start to let go.
I looked at Emily, who was still sitting, waiting for me to decide.
“You got somewhere to be?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
She shook her head. “No one waits up for me.”
“I could use some company,” I said, and realized I meant it.
“Then you’re in luck. I have no social life and an entire freezer full of Lean Cuisines. We can heat up three, pretend it’s gourmet, and not talk about your mother unless you want to.”
I almost smiled.
Emily stood, went to the door, and unlocked it. “Let’s get out of here before you decide to surrender the dog again.”
We walked out into the parking lot together, the heat a little less oppressive now. Sergeant trotted at my side, ears perked, tail uncertain. Emily didn’t reach for my hand, but she walked close enough that if I tripped, she’d be there to catch the fall.
At the car, she turned to me, her face lit by the gold wash of the setting sun. “You’re not alone, Dean. Unless you want to be.”
I looked at her, at the dog, at the desert sky above us. The world felt changed—not easier, not better, but at least not as empty.
I nodded, reached for the driver’s side, and waited for her to get in.