Chapter 10
Terran
Life moved quickly over the next two and a half weeks.
Getting discharged from the hospital, while swift, had me back with my family within hours of the paperwork being signed and put into the system.
My sister, along with Ainsley in tow, had picked me up and whisked me back to our house.
Strict orders of bed rest were non negotiable, as were the nightly bedtime stories Ainsley had conned her mother into allowing me to read to her before we settled her in for the night.
The kid was certainly going places with her skilled tactics.
I wagered a courtroom. My sister was betting on real estate.
Being back home and in my own bed, surrounded by my family, was so much better than trying to sleep in that damn hospital room, fighting to shut out the sounds of the staff and patients coming and going outside of my open door.
The staff had tried to make me as comfortable as possible while I was there, but nothing beat being back in your own environment, surrounded by the familiarity of the life and comfort you’d built for yourself.
My follow up with getting my stitches removed this morning had come just as quickly.
A relatively painless process and handled with care by Dr. Jacee, who’d pulled and plucked nineteen stitches from my skin with ease.
The work had been impeccably done, a fact Dr. Jacee felt the need to point out several times while I was laid out on his table.
None of it surprised me. Dr. Montgomery—Silas, as I’d come to find out from my paperwork—struck me as a perfectionist. He was calculated in the way he talked and carried himself. It made sense as to why that was also mirrored in his work.
I tried to not allow my gaze to wander around the halls while I passed through them on the way out of Dr. Jacee’s office and to the front entrance, once I was sent on my way with one more follow up appointment for the end of the month.
Searching for a familiar tall figure and finding none that matched was annoying to catch myself over.
Especially, once that small sliver of disappointment stabbed at me when leaving the hospital once more.
While unsurprised to be shoved off onto another doctor after what happened the last time we were alone in a room together, I found myself irritated over how quickly things had gone downhill.
In the blink of an eye, I’d gone from thanking the man who quite literally saved my life, to making him wildly uncomfortable to the point in completely cutting off care and sending me to someone else.
Not only was it embarrassing, but it tainted the gratitude I had tried to show him.
What kind of thank you ended with a boner and a stifled moan?
How much of a desperate horn dog was I?
The only silver lining to all of this was the phone call I’d received from my captain the moment I’d climbed into the passenger seat of my and Amelia’s car, telling me I was needed down at the precinct for my formal interview with IAB, giving me a much needed distraction from the agony of reliving that scene in my head over and over again.
Amelia had dropped me off soon after, wishing me luck before heading out to grab Ainsley from daycare.
Two officers from IAB were waiting for me by the time I stepped through the double doors, and they had quickly ushered me into one of the back interrogation rooms for our chat. Audio and video recording had been set up, and then we got down to business.
Recounting the details wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I originally thought it’d be.
Largely due to TJ and I following exact protocol up until the point I was stabbed.
Neither of the officers batted an eye while they recorded my play-by-play of tackling Thomas to the ground and reaching for my handcuffs when I should’ve been grabbing his arms to pin them down instead.
Their underwhelming reaction meant one of two things: either they were going to wait until the investigation concluded to lecture or fire me, or they didn’t care at all and believed this to be a one-off situation.
The conclusion of which would come within the next few weeks.
“Your cooperation is appreciated, Bishop.” Matthers, one of the IA desk jockeys, shot a hand out to catch my shoulder, giving it a hard squeeze that twinged up along the base of my neck when we all stood up. “I’m sure you understand that discretion is needed at this time.”
“Yeah, of course.” My shoulder subtly twitched under his hand. “Any word on if a lawsuit is being brought against us?”
“We’re not at liberty to say at this time.”
Figures.
“Understood.”
The other one, Jacobs, said, “We’ll be in touch. Collaborate with your captain on the next steps for your leave and when you’ll be returning.”
If they were already talking about me coming back to work, that had to be a good sign.
If there were plans to fire me at the end of all of this, they wouldn’t waste their time in putting me on administrative leave until further notice and getting me the hell away from the precinct until they could properly draft up the paperwork with a lawyer and boot me to the curb.
That was how it went in cases like this one. Most of the time, anyway.
Out in the hallway, captain Erin McCormick was waiting for all of us with her arms crossed over her chest and her body leaning back against the wall opposite of the interrogation room. Her dark blue eyes were targeted on the two men behind me, her lips thinned into a tight light.
“Well?”
Matthers nodded to her first. “We’ll let you know as soon as we have word from the top.”
“Feel free to take a coffee for the road, boys,” was all she responded with before pushing away from the wall. “Just put on a fresh pot in the break room.”
“Much obliged, captain.”
Both men stepped past the captain and I, Jacobs tilting his head toward her while rounding the corner, and disappeared down the main hall leading out into the mouth of the precinct. With the interview done and over with, a sense of relief hit me instantly.
We wouldn’t know for a few weeks what was to come out of all of this—even more than that if the rumors about Naomi bringing about a lawsuit were found to be true.
Getting up on a grand stand to plead my case wasn’t exactly what I thought my future would look like here at the 199, nor did I want things to escalate to that point in general.
Then again, walking across the stage at graduation didn’t exactly prepare me for what would come of being stabbed either, so.
“Shit, Bishop.” My captain’s voice was calm, measured. “You were in there for two hours. What the hell were they jabbering on about?”
Turning to her, I let out a soft sigh. “They were pretty thorough. Wanted to know step-by-step what happened, even before we got the call.”
Her short-cropped blonde hair was parted to the side and tucked behind both ears, showing off small twin diamond studs punched into each lobe.
Erin was a tall woman, just under my height by barely a few inches and even less than that when she sported her heeled boots.
Her broad shoulders and steely gaze commanded attention, exuded authority, with the way she usually stood in a room.
Her wardrobe was strictly utilitarian, crisp lines and tailored pieces that gave her straight figure no illusion to the typical feminine curves of her gender.
She cared little for flamboyance and was as clean-cut as they came, unwavering in her discipline and intensity when it came to running a department like ours.
I respected the hell out of her and her unabashed, unapologetic nature against a world that hardly ever favored people like her.
“They only kept Riviera for an hour.” Her stance widened as she shifted her posture.
“Seemed to me like they were being extra precautious. That lawsuit may have them spooked.”
She nodded, her lips thinning at the mention of it. “What a shit show. Take one cop killer down and suddenly the rest of the town is up in arms about it.”
That was interesting. “The news spread already?”
“The girlfriend hasn’t been quiet about it, no.”
Flashing back to how scared Naomi seemed when we found her huddled on the stoop of her house, that took me a bit off guard.
I could understand the desire for answers—everyone needed those in times of crisis—but she would be on my short list of people who understood the gravity of what we were walking into that night.
If not us, then she would’ve been the one with a few more holes punched in her body, which I doubted she would’ve survived from given how out of his mind her boyfriend was at the time of the incident.
IAB handling the case was both a blessing and an omen. Rarely, were they ever willing to listen to anyone outside of their organization, and even less so when it came to affairs that brought negatively from the public.
TJ and I had done what we could on that call.
The tragedy of losing someone, even if they had willingly put their life on the line by threatening another, wasn’t anything to dismiss so casually with a few drafts of paperwork filed with the town court.
A person, a living breathing soul, had left this Earth in the worst of circumstances.
No one wanted their child or loved one to go out that way, no matter how ‘deserved’ the actions had been deemed by my coworkers that ultimately resulted in how everything played out.
“Hey.” She slapped my shoulder blade with enough force that I could feel the slight sting of her palm through my shirt. “Go home and get some rest. I’ll update you once I hear back from IAB. Don’t get yourself worked up about any of this. I can already see those gears turning in there.”
I smiled a little. “Thanks. Good news, I walked up the stairs out back without wincing.”
“Keep at it, Bishop. I want you ready to run a small marathon by the time you get back.”