29. Tim
29
TIM
THEN IT ALL CAME TUMBLING DOWN
I storm into the bar just a single step ahead of Felix, only to skid to a stop and find Aubree sitting on the solid countertop, her feet on the stool and her elbows on her knees. She cups her face in her hands and bounces. Bounces. Bounces her knee to work through the metric pile of anxiety pulsing through her blood. So beautiful. So fucking powerful in her skin. But terrified, as her eyes swing to me and tears ball in her lashes.
Cato sits against the back wall, the guard he was born to be. The sentry who will watch over his family until the day he dies. His ankles are crossed, and an icy soda, despite the cold outside, rests in his hands, while Archer and Minka loiter to the right, chest to chest, and his arms wrapped over her shoulders as tension pierces the air.
Because a police radio crackles in the center of the room, deep baritone voices barking out orders and speaking in police code most folks wouldn’t understand.
Most uneasy of all, even more than Aubree, is Fletch as he hangs out by the pool table, pacing, pacing, pacing until I hear words that explain his worry.
“Female subject has exited the premises.” I don’t recognize the cop’s voice, but I know, even before he says her name, who he refers to. “Positive ID, Jada Watson.”
“She’s out,” Aubree breathes, dropping her head and pressing her face into her hands. “She’s safe, which means they can breach now. ”
“What’s happening?” I stalk across the bar and stop in front of Aubree, my heart in my throat and my entire world balancing on a razor-sharp wire. Because she’s not getting up and running my way. She’s not throwing herself into my arms. And the fact she’s not makes me want to fucking puke. “They haven’t breached yet?”
“Just about to.” She drags wet eyes up, searching mine through the tears in her lashes. “Anyone follow you back here?”
“Your concern warms my cold, dead heart, Doctor Cutie.” Felix strides across to Archer, clapping the side of his face and pulling him in for a hug he never asked for. Then he circles away again, moving to the baby. The one he raised. The one any of us would give anything up for, even if we never actively tell him so. “I still think you’re setting fires for no reason, though.” He turns to lean against the counter beside Cato. “Calling the cops just because I was gonna intimidate and possibly assault someone?” He scoffs. “Weak.”
“Alpha Team, C side,” a voice crackles through the radio. “Bird and Hutchins, B side.”
“That means Stevenson and Dawson are going through the front,” Archer murmurs. He crushes Minka to his chest and presses his lips to her scalp. “You better be right, Emeri, or we’re all in trouble with the chief on Monday.”
“Talk to me, Aubree.” I cup her jaw and force her face up. Because if I don’t, I’m not sure she’ll ever look into my eyes again. “I need you to make sense.”
“Abort!” Detective Stevenson’s panicked shout scratches through the radio, like scattershot from a shotgun. “I said abort! Trip wire. Everyone, back aw?—”
The boom is deafening, cutting through the radio and punctuated by a vibration bouncing through the floor. Shockwaves roll up through my calves and stop in my thighs, though we’re easily several blocks from the house we followed Jada to just a few hours ago.
And then there’s nothing. Just radio static and the heavy breathing of the woman who won’t look into my eyes.
“What the fuck?” Fletch slams a pool cue to the table and spins away while the wooden length bounces off the side and clatters to the floor. “An explosive?”
“Officers injured!” one voice shouts.
“Ambulances required!” comes another.
“Fire and rescue required! ”
Exhausted, Aubree drops her head and dangles it between her shoulders.
“You need to speak.” I grab her chin and drag her back up. “Talk to us, Emeri. Because we were gonna walk through that door. We sure as fuck wouldn’t have known it was a trap till you were peeling our limbs off the road outside.”
“You’re on Booth’s payroll?” Cato tilts his head to the side, genuinely curious, when most others who grew up in our world would choose anger.
Felix, on the other hand, reaches into his coat and strokes the handle of his gun. It’s not a threat… yet. But caution. Preparation. And a fucking bullet I have to step in front of if he loses his temper.
“You just fucked over his attempt to end a reign. Again ,” Cato adds. “How the fuck does that happen unless you’re sleeping with the other guy, too?”
“Hey!” I glare at him across the bar. “Don’t.”
“Dude!” He slides off the counter and lands on his feet. “She has intel no one else is getting unless they’re on the inside. She knew of an attempt on my brother’s life, and that information didn’t come via a fuckin’ carrier pigeon. She’s one of them.”
“I’m not one of them,” she groans.
“It was a long fuckin’ game,” Felix whistles. “ Long . Work for Minka, Minka marries Archer, Archer reunites with his estranged family, I meet Christabelle and eventually get hitched, and you…” He shakes his head, chuckling under his breath. “You marry Tim II’s heir and meet Cordoza on the same night. It’s brilliant, really. Diabolical. But brilliant.”
“I’m not playing any games,” she murmurs. “I’ve never met Nathan Booth in my life.”
“Your conscience got the better of you!” Felix snaps, startling her and stalking around to stand on her right. My left. Just two feet from where I’ll choose her over him. “You were playing the game and setting the traps. But you caught feelings, and now a handful of cops are injured or dead. Luckily for you,” he sneers, “Archer isn’t one of them. Who is Booth working for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is pulling Booth’s strings?! You’re playing both sides of the same war, so the least you can do before you screw us over is give us a cheat code. Who wants New York so fuckin’ much they’d literally blow me and Tim up in broad daylight?”
“I’m not working for anyone in your world!” She shoves away from the bar, tearing away from my hand and slapping it again when I reach out for her. I want to pull her behind my back. To give her shelter and safety, away from my brother’s twitching gun hand. But of course, she steps up to the don in challenge. Hardened and unafraid. “Booth shot two of his own men down at the Bay, because they screwed up with making Duane a bridge to Tim. Booth is on his boss’ radar, because he’s inept and disorganized, so he had the other four gunned down. He was probably hoping to hit Booth and cleanse the city, but Booth is a cockroach who just won’t go away. My brother was targeted, because of his poor impulse control and strong connection to me, and I was targeted because of what I am to Tim.”
“Makes you a plant,” Felix sneers. “Lure him in, kill him dead. Step away, Tim.” He comes around and snags my sleeve, like he thinks can move me if I don’t want to be moved. “She’s gonna be the reason you die.”
“I’m the reason he’s alive!” she snarls. “I’m the reason you’re alive! Open your damn eyes, Felix. If I was working for someone else and wanted you dead, I could have done it a thousand ways, on a thousand different occasions.”
“Could have,” he growls. “Didn’t. Because you’re not a killer. Your conscience undid you.”
“I assure you,” she spits out. “My conscience wouldn’t stop me from hurting you . You’re a blight on this family, and an egotistical asshat who never takes anything seriously.” But then she sighs and steps forward, sandwiching his hand in hers and bringing them up, almost in prayer.
He startles and attempts to whip his hand back. But she’s strong, and right now, she’s determined. “You’re also the most protective, most loving, most generous brother of any I’ve ever known. You would die to protect any of them, and you would kill, no matter who, no matter where or when, if you felt it necessary. You mourn for the sixteen years you lost, and you default to crazy obnoxity now, because if you told them how you really feel every time their names pop up on your phone, you’d feel like an idiot.”
He rips his arm back, his brows pinching tight and his dark green eyes glittering with confusion.
“You read my diary or something?”
“You,” she turns my way, taking my hand and doing as she did with Felix. Her touch sends my heart galloping, yet, it brings me calm, too. That’s how it’s always been for us. It’s how a man becomes addicted, even when he knows he shouldn’t. “You want to stand by Felix’s side and be his right-hand man. You want to rule the West Coast, just as he rules the east, because you know the power runs through your veins. You don’t oppose the destiny you were born for, but you abhor the violence and cruelty it began with. And though you could have Copeland, or really, New York too, unopposed, you’re terrified your father’s DNA will overpower your sense of good. You prefer no power at all, over the possibility that you may become even a fraction like him.”
She steps back, licking her dry lips and turning to Minka. Extending her hand and wiggling her fingers in offer.
Minka snorts. “No thanks.”
So Aubree bends and grabs on anyway, yanking the woman closer and smiling when her eyes widen in panic. “You’re terrified of love. Because you know how easily someone can fall out of it, and you work with the dead, which means you know how easily someone can leave. Or be taken away. This is why you prefer to be mean and antisocial. Can’t miss something you don’t have.”
“Aubree—”
“You can’t stand the thought of dirty old men hurting society’s most innocent. Which isn’t really a secret, I know. But the fact you seek justice is. The V?—”
“That’s enough of that!” Archer yanks his wife away and practically tosses her behind his back. “What the fuck, Aubs?”
“That shoulder reconstruction you had?” Aubree leans around to spy her boss. “The one you’re supposed to be attending physio for, but never do? The shoulder that should hurt, but rarely does? There’s a reason you’ve escaped that fate.” She turns to Cato, smiling and offering her hand, though he’s all the way on the other side of the bar. “Wanna talk about Jenna yet? Or how abandoned you felt when you grew up and realized you had two older brothers you didn’t even know? Or we could discuss the way Tim II attempted to groom you, to usurp the other four and take a city after putting Cordoza in the ground. You had a destiny, but you chose sports and sex, because both are better than holding another man’s gray matter in your hands when you’re only eleven years old.”
He blinks. Blinks. Grins, then blinks. “Excuse me?”
Finally, she casts her eyes to a stunned Fletch. “You’re darker than all the others… combined . They were raised in hell, beaten and burned, tortured and psychologically devastated all throughout their formative years, but you carry more darkness than all of them. Because of Jada.”
“Don’t talk about her! Not now. Not today.”
“You’re cloaked in shadows because of the pain you feel. But she’s wrapped in black because of the pain she’d rather foist onto a child. Everything you do is to protect Mia from touching that darkness. But Jada…” She shakes her head. “She wants to latch onto Mia. Because she’s light. She’s good . I won’t let her touch that baby. ”
“You’ve gone off topic, Aubree Grace.” I snag her arm and pull her around until she has no choice but to look up into my eyes. Until she has no escape, and no excuse to avoid me. “A bomb at that house today?”
“I didn’t know about the explosives. But I knew going there would kill you both.”
“ How ? How did you know?”
“The, uh…” She sniffs and looks down, shame, or maybe embarrassment, washing through her touch and tingling up my arm.
“Aubree?”
“The DB told me.”
“The dead body?” Minka stalks around Archer and plops her ass on the counter. “Nah. I’m calling bullshit.”
“Bullshit me?” Aubree spins to her boss. “Bullshit you! You hear them, too.”
“ Hear them?” she laughs. “The dead people? No, Doctor Emeri. I autopsy them.”
“And the little girls? Those sweet little babies who deserve a little… vigilante justice? They don’t speak to you?”
“Aubree!”
“Maybe they visit you in your dreams, because that’s when you allow yourself to hear them. But I’ve been listening my whole life.” She turns back to me. “Your driver? Frank? He’d take a bullet for you. Because he worked for Tim II, and he saw what evil is. Now he looks at you, and he knows, it’s his job to bottle this.” She looks me up and down. “This goodness. He would sacrifice himself for you. Because he has high hopes for a world where, from evil, you still exist. You shouldn’t. The cards were stacked against you, but you chose distance over power, and good over malice. Oh, and Daisy? She thinks of you like a brother. And you think of her like a sister.”
“You asked me if I thought she was attractive! You know everything else, right? How could you not know this?”
“I asked you about her while you were actively thinking of her.” Her eyes dance when I remember. When I recall the way my heart skipped, because I was thinking about Daisy, but I wasn’t thinking about Daisy. “If you’d been paying closer attention, you’d see what I’m trying to tell you.” She turns to Felix. “You would die a happy man if Tim agreed to meet you on your level. He doesn’t have to be as outspoken or as obnoxious as you, but you feel like a fraud, sitting where he was born to sit. If he joined you, you’d be unstoppable.” Then she looks at Archer. “You’re terrified of exposure. Hers, not yours. And her blood disorder keeps you awake at night. I found out what she is, not through her, but through you, way back around the first time you got married. I had suspicions before, but you told me in giant, neon lettering. You’re an open book, and I’m fluent in Malone.”
“You…” Cato considers. “Read minds?”
“I read moods.” She shrugs. “And feelings. Energy. I read memories and intentions. I’ll touch you when I want to know more, and I’ll heal you when I can.” She looks at Minka. “Your shoulder should hurt a hell of a lot more than it does.”
“I told you not to touch me.” Our most socially awkward one wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like when people touch me.”
“Yet, I wrapped myself all over you the very first day, the very first minute, we met. I knew from the start everything I needed to know.”
“I just assumed you were an overly friendly crackpot who would eventually wear my skin.” Minka folds her arms. “This is all a load of shit, right? You’re punking us to mess with Lix, because he’s annoying and you’ve officially run out of patience. I’d sooner believe you’re in bed with Booth.”
“This is…” She draws a long breath and exhales again with a sigh. “It’s my business. It’s my life, and it’s not something I share with just everybody.”
“Because it’s a load of shit!” Felix snaps. “You’ve been collecting intel on my family, and now you’re preparing to use it against us. You’ve convinced me of nothing, Emeri, except that you’re a sneaky shit who knows how to dig deep into a family you shouldn’t be hanging around.”
“We all have guardian angels watching over us.” She ignores my brother and turns to search my eyes. “Sometimes I ask mine for help. Or for guidance. For healing. For strength. I’m like my sister, and my sister is like my dad. And Eli has gifts, too. Oh! And Cordoza, too.”
“What?” Cato explodes. “That fat old fucker reads minds too?”
“No, he…” she considers. “I imagine he has a finely tuned gut instinct that revolves around reading someone else’s intentions. He allows Felix to do what he does in New York, despite the fact he could have easily wiped the Malones off the map and kept the city for himself, because he understands Felix rules out of love, and Tim doesn’t rule, also out of love. He understands that Tim II attempted to create monsters, but all he created was the very army that would defeat him in the end. He understands who Minka is, even if not the things she does. He understands her heart, and he’s… pleasantly intrigued.”
She brings her focus back to me, her perfect ocean blue eyes flickering between mine. “You can choose not to believe me. And you can choose to think we got married without me knowing. The beauty of choice is that it’s all yours, and whatever you do with it will lead you to the path you’re meant to be on. But I won’t stop being who I am, and I’ll continue doing the job I do, standing up for the dead and working for the best damn chief M.E. this city has known. If, at some point, I see a certain outcome I know I can stop, then I’ll step in the way and try to fix it. Because I have that ability, and I won’t?—”
“Wait!” Archer grabs Aubree’s sleeve and spins her around so fast, her feet skid on the floor. “You can, like, sense the dead and their thoughts and feelings and yada yada?”
“Some—”
“Why the fuck are you out here watching us run through an entire investigation, when you can just ask the dead person who killed them?”
“Because it doesn’t work like that,” she snickers. “You’re oversimplifying something that isn’t, well… documented. It’s not real, according to science. And presenting your case to a judge, with a sticky note that says, ‘ Aubree said so ’ isn’t going to do you any favors.”
“Back here.” I grab her neck and spin her around, drawing her closer until she’s forced to stand on her toes and fold her neck back. “So you know when I’m lying?”
She chokes out a laugh. “Every single time.”
“And yet, you let me lie and look stupid?”
“Those are your choices. I give you ample opportunity to tell the truth.”
“Our marriage?”
“From the moment Cordoza handed you the envelope.”
“But not before that? I was thinking about it for weeks before.”
“It hadn’t happened until the envelope.” She pushes to her toes and fingers the buttons of my shirt. “But I knew you were planning it. Just like you were planning to do the same in Jamaica, but it didn’t pan out.”
“And Duane?”
“I knew.” She pats my collar down and sighs. “I knew he would be okay, which is why we didn’t go searching for him last night. Just as I knew you would die if you didn’t listen to me.”
“What else do you know?” Cato questions, way too fucking excited. “I’m going pro, right?”
“Easily. But that’s a path you’re on right now. You train hard, you have a natural skill, and you’re holding on to enough course credits to get you through college. Your path, right now , is leading you toward pro basketball. But that could change at any moment, depending on the choices you make. I can’t predict the future. That’s not what this is. ”
He rolls his eyes. “Sounds like you want my twenty-bucks and a thank you for telling me absolutely nothing.”
“I know you’re not romantically interested in Jenna Anderson, the owner of the Copeland Condors’ stepdaughter. But you would kill for her.”
His cheeks pale in an instant. “You sneaking looks at my texts?”
She wrinkles her lips in disgust. “I’d rather not pollute my eyes and mind with that filth.”
“What about Felix and Christabelle, then?”
“Hey! Keep my name out of your mouth. I didn’t ask for this hokey fortune teller nonsense.”
Aubree smirks, glancing across and side-eyeing my brother. “Christabelle will be pissed when she finds out how close to death you were today, and how rudely you’ve spoken to me, considering how gracious I was about saving your life. Though, the fact she didn’t fly across, too, sure is interesting. You typically present as a united front.”
His eyes narrow. “We just got back from Spain. She wanted to unpack.”
“That,” she smirks. “Or it could be the nasty case of hyperemesis gravidarum she’s suffering and her treating doctor’s orders to stay home, so they can monitor her diabetes alongside pregnancy.” Aubree winks. “I’m confident you’ll be back on your plane before bedtime tonight. Landing again while she sleeps, and sliding into bed before she wakes. You didn’t want to leave her, but this bullshit you think I’m slinging…?” She turns, only to step back and rest against my chest. “You feel it too. You’re not here to collect a few dollars from some low-level nobody. You’re here because you knew your family was in danger, and there was no way you would send them into that fight without you by their side.” She looks up to meet my eyes. “You couldn’t be controlled by a man who wanted to beat you. But you were absolutely a prisoner to the man who would beat your brothers instead. That hasn’t, and will never, go away, just because you live on different sides of the country.”
I spin her again, dragging her around until her chest presses against mine and her breath hits my chin. “I need something to make sense. Anything.”
“Four officers are injured,” the radio crackles to life. “All are conscious. All are breathing. Ambulances are on site and treating. Firefighters are preparing to search the premises, but if there’s anyone in there…”
“Not everything makes sense,” she murmurs. “And not everything comes with a cute little bow. Sometimes, the angels are at work instead. And that’s not something you’ll find in textbooks, or on a judge’s docket. ”
“You can read anyone? Any time? Just by touching them?”
She brings her bottom lip between her teeth and shakes her head. “Some people don’t want to speak. Some don’t want to be touched. And some,” she releases her lip, “are so self-absorbed, even when I try, it’s like looking into a mirror, but all I see is them. But you’re alive today.” She pushes up to her toes and presses a kiss to my jaw. “I’m going to make sure you stay that way.”
“So what am I thinking right now?” Felix barges in on our moment and grabs Aubree’s hand, crushing it in his fist and slinging her around. “Tell me. If you’re not full of shit, you’ll know.”
Disdainfully, she pries her hand from his and shakes his grip off. “I’m not your monkey. I won’t dance on command.”
“Because you can’t. You’re full of shit.”
“I won’t be what you want me to be.”
“A dancing monkey?” Cato asks.
But Aubree shakes her head. “A co-conspirator in the mafia world. I’m not moving to New York, and I’m not becoming your newest enforcer.”
“Dammit.” Felix slams his hands into his pockets. “How does she do it?”
“You said you can’t read minds,” I whisper. Fuck me, how are those words even leaving my mouth? Mind reading . “But you just read his?”
She wraps her arms over my shoulders and pulls up to touch her lips to mine. “That was an easy guess. Now you owe me a divorce.”
“Excuse me.” My heart stutters to a painful stop. “What?”
She flashes a wide grin. “Do it properly. Engagement ring. Get down on one knee. Ask me to marry you, and then I’ll consider your offer and get back to you in three to five business days.”
“I’m not divorcing you!”
“I want a real wedding.” She kisses me again. “I want a gown. And a first dance. I want photos to frame and set on our mantle. I want my best friend to be my maid of honor, a job she’ll hate, but one she’ll do anyway because she loves me, even when I make it weird. And I want Mia to be my flower girl. And then I want you to carry me over the threshold so we can follow tradition the proper way.”
“You made me do the Malone story twice. Now you want the marriage twice? Seriously?”
“What can I say?” She flashes a teasing grin. “I’m high maintenance. And I saved your life today, so…”