Chapter 10
Ben
The driveway had never looked so good.
I pulled in and killed the engine, and I sat there for a minute with my hands on the wheel. The stitches in my left arm pulled every time I moved it wrong, which was every time I moved it at all.
Between last night’s raid, the scene at the precinct with Briggson, and the six hours of paperwork that followed, my body felt like it had been put through an industrial press and reassembled by someone who didn’t read the instructions.
Two raids. Zero progress on the only thing that mattered—figuring out who was dirty in the department and shutting down the syndicate moving Drift through Summit Falls.
It had been a fucking long day.
Donovan had headed back to his rental, a place not far from the precinct that he’d chosen for proximity to the work.
I’d chosen this house for the yard. A house with no yard meant a K9 partner who was either crated or leashed every hour of his life, and after seven years of doing the hard stuff together, he deserved better than that.
I had too much to carry, so I went to the front door first with my gear, unlocked it, and left it standing open.
Then I headed back to the truck for the groceries—two bags, not much, a couple of steaks, a carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, a few other things.
I was so tired of takeout that I’d pulled into the store on the way home just to buy something I could cook myself.
I grabbed the bags from the passenger seat, then went around back to let Jolly out of his crate. He jumped down from the truck and stayed close while I walked toward the house.
Kayla was at her car across the yard. She looked up and gave a small wave. I shifted a bag to free one hand and waved back.
That was when Jolly bolted.
Something tripped a wire in him. Maybe a sound from the backyard, maybe a shift in the wind, but whatever signal he’d been waiting for, he got it. He launched past me on the walkway, clipping my hip hard enough to spin me sideways.
Both grocery bags hit the concrete. I heard the eggs go first, the wet crack of shells against the unyielding ground, and then the rest followed—everything scattering across the front step.
Jolly didn’t look back. He tore away from my side in a blur and I heard the quick clicking of nails on concrete, then barking from the backyard.
The steaks had landed on the edge of the walkway, the packaging split open, raw meat exposed to the dirt.
The eggs were done: half the carton cracked on impact, yolks bleeding across the step.
The bread had landed in the grass, the bag torn open.
Jolly was already in the backyard, barking.
I stood in the doorway and looked at the wreckage of my dinner plans.
My arm throbbed. My back ached. I’d been awake for twenty-two hours, and the one small thing I’d been looking forward to—the thought of eating an actual home-cooked meal rather than takeout—was spread across the ground in front of me.
“Terrific.”
I crouched down and started picking up what I could. Most of it was a loss. The eggs were beyond saving, the rice had scattered everywhere, and cooking a steak that had come out of the packaging and was covered in dirt and grime probably wasn’t a good plan.
“Oh no.”
I looked up. Kayla was already crossing her yard toward me, moving fast. She reached the walkway and dropped down beside me, gathering what was salvageable of my scattered groceries.
“Jolly wasn’t messing around! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The food…not so much.”
She picked up the steak and its packaging and held it at arm’s length, examining them. She turned it over once and shook her head. “Yeah, that’s done.”
“That was dinner.”
“I have chicken and rice at my house. William and I just finished eating. There’s plenty left. Let me bring you a plate.”
“No, it’s fine.” I kept picking up the mess. “I’ll order something.”
“You sure? It’s really no trouble.”
“Appreciate it, but I’ll just get takeout.” I dropped the ruined steak package into the remaining intact grocery sack. “Again. Not my first choice, but it’ll do.”
She helped me pick up the last of it. A dented can of soup and a box of pasta had survived the impact. The rice would have to become food for critters. We stood up at the same time, and she handed me the items she’d collected.
From the backyard, Jolly’s barking kicked up another notch. Sharp, insistent, aimed at something I couldn’t see from the front of the house.
Kayla glanced in that direction, then back at me. Something shifted in her expression…a slight tightening around her eyes, a breath that looked like it was being held rather than taken.
“There’s actually something I need to talk to you about.”
I waited. My arm was throbbing. My eyes were dry and heavy. The thought of one more thing—one more problem, one more conflict, one more conversation that required something from me—sat on my chest like a weight.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?” The words came out more clipped than I intended. “I want to hear whatever it is. It’s just been a bad day, and I don’t think I’ve got much left.”
She studied my face for a second. Whatever she saw there was enough.
“Sure. Tomorrow’s fine. It’s nothing urgent.”
“Thank you. And thanks for helping me clean up.”
“Of course.” She gave me a small nod and headed back across her yard toward her house.
I watched her go. She’d come over without hesitation, seen a neighbor in trouble and moved toward it, not away. And I’d sent her back with a curt voice and a closed door.
I carried the surviving groceries inside and dumped them on the counter.
The trash can got the steaks, the eggs, the bread, the split bags.
Then I went back to the front door for my gear.
The vest, the duty belt, the K9 kit I always kept packed and ready.
Hauled it all inside and set it in the dining room.
Through the kitchen window, I saw Jolly was, no surprise, right at the fence. Same section, same rigid posture aimed at the wood like it contained the answer to a question only he could hear.
I didn’t call him in. Not tonight. He’d worked hard last night in the raid. Harder than any of us, if I was honest.
He could have his fence.
I opened the drawer by the phone where I kept the takeout menus. Thai, pizza, Chinese. I’d ordered from all three in the past week. The pizza place twice. Maybe I’d just eat cereal. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d made dinner out of a bowl of Cheerios.
Someone knocked on the front door.
Kayla stood on the step with a plate in her hands. Chicken and rice, covered tightly in cling wrap, still warm enough that condensation fogged the plastic from the inside.
“Before you say no,” she said, “just take it. If you don’t want it tonight, put it in the fridge and eat it tomorrow. But you look like you haven’t had a real meal in a while, and I made too much, and it’s just going to sit in my fridge until William and I get tired of looking at it.”
I looked at the plate. Then at her. She was holding it out with both hands, her chin tilted up slightly, and there was something in her expression that dared me to argue.
Not unlike when she’d pulled that milk crate across the yard.
I took the plate. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She didn’t leave. Her eyes had dropped to my left arm, to the white gauze wrapped around my forearm, visible below the pushed-up sleeve of my shirt. The bandage was clean, but it was obvious. Hard to miss when someone was standing two feet away in porch light.
“What happened?”
“Work thing.”
“A work thing that required bandages?”
“Training accident.” I couldn’t tell her the truth about why I was really here. “It’s nothing. A few stitches. More annoying than anything else.”
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes still on the bandage. “Training is that dangerous?”
“Um, yeah. Sometimes. A little.”
The look she gave me said she didn’t think a little was the whole story. She stepped past me into the house—not aggressively, not like she was claiming territory, but with the quiet certainty of a woman who’d made a decision and wasn’t interested in discussing it.
“Sit down. I’ll heat up the dinner for you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” She was already in the kitchen, pulling the plastic wrap off the plate. She opened the microwave, set the plate inside, and pressed buttons like she’d lived here for years instead of never having been past the front door. “Where do you keep your forks?”
“Drawer to the left of the sink.”
She found it, pulled one out, and set it on the counter. The microwave hummed.
I stood there in my own kitchen and let someone take care of me.
It was such a foreign sensation that I didn’t know where to put it.
My friends at Citadel were brothers in every way that counted, but brothers showed concern through sarcasm.
Donovan had cracked a joke with the medic about whether the knife was okay.
Once Jace heard about this, he would calculate the statistical likelihood of infection and text me a spreadsheet.
This was different. Kayla wasn’t making a joke or entertaining herself. She was heating up a plate of food and finding me a fork because I’d been hurt and that bothered her.
The microwave beeped. She set the plate on the counter in front of me, fork beside it, and leaned against the opposite counter with her arms crossed.
“Eat.”
I sat on the counter barstool and ate. The chicken was good.
Seasoned simply, cooked well, the rice soft.
It was a meal that didn’t try to be anything other than what it was, and after a week of takeout containers and cold pizza and one deeply regrettable gas-station burrito, it was the best thing I’d tasted in recent memory.
“This is good. Really.”
“It’s just chicken and rice.”
“After more than a week of delivery food, chicken and rice is a revelation.”
Something warmed in her face. She looked away, toward the back window, and I followed her gaze.