Cyrus
Chapter forty-four
Flashing Lights
A burst of white blinds me as Nick and I are dragged up, over the railing. Someone is shouting my name. Radios crackling all at once. Too loud. Too close. Too much.
My boots hit pavement, and my knees nearly buckle.
Rainwater pools beneath me, cold seeping through soaked denim and straight into bone. Somebody’s yelling nearby, voices warped beneath the roar pounding in my ears.
Not rain. Sirens. Flashing red strobes across slick asphalt.
“Caleb!”
My head jerks sideways so fast, my neck protests. He’s there. Half sprawled beside the wreckage. Eyes open. Not blinking. Blood snakes through the rainwater in thin crimson ribbons, disappearing beneath the ambulance lights.
No.
No, no, no—
I lunge forward before rough hands grab my turnout jacket, dragging me backward across the pavement. “Cyrus!” The voice snaps sharply through the chaos. The river. The bridge. Not the highway. Air punches back into my lungs hard enough to hurt.
My hands shake violently as I blink against the storm, boots planted on solid pavement while muddy river water rushes beneath the bridge below.
The kid’s still clinging to me.
Alive.
Everyone’s alive.
But my pulse doesn’t know the difference.
“Cyrus—”
“Cyrus, you good, man? That was fucking insane.”
Jonah’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, dragging me back to the bridge. Back to now. I suck in a sharp breath as Amos and Jonah move in beside us, working quickly to untie the ropes cinched around Nick’s waist and chest.
The kid doesn’t move. He’s frozen solid.
Rain pounds against his helmet, dark strands of hair plastered across his face beneath it, hiding his eyes completely. His entire body trembles so hard it looks painful.
Jesus.
I crouch in front of him, forcing my voice lower, steadier. “Hey,” I murmur. “Lemme get this mess outta your face, kiddo.” The second my fingers brush the wet strands away, he gasps. Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just sharp enough to tell me the adrenaline’s finally crashing into him. Wide pupils stare back at me, fear written all over his face as another violent shudder works through his thin frame. For a second, he looks seconds away from folding in on himself entirely.
I plant my hand firmly on his shoulder. Grounding him. Grounding myself too, maybe. “You’re okay,” I tell him over the storm. “I’ve got you.”
His breathing stutters unevenly while rain and tears track together down his cheeks. Around us, the river still rages beneath the bridge, rescue crews shouting over the weather as lights flash through the darkness.
But right now, my focus narrows to the terrified kid in front of me.
I clear my throat roughly before giving his shoulder one last squeeze and stepping back enough to give him room to breathe. “You did good tonight,” I say, low and certain. “Took guts to hold on through that.”
I get a mumbled, “Thank you.” Squeezing his shoulder once more, paramedics kneel on both sides to examine us.
“How you holding up, Chief?”
Adam’s calm voice cuts through the chaos as he wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. The former Army medic watches me too closely for comfort. I shrug him off with a crooked smirk. “Still prettier than you.”
Anything to keep them from noticing the adrenaline still clawing through my system. If this crew ever realized how badly moments like this rattle me—how close the cracks really are to splintering—there’s no way they’d trust me leading them. Not here. Not in any department.
A few feet away, paramedics load Nick onto a stretcher. The kid’s unconscious now. Too still.
“I’m good, guys.” My voice sounds forced to my own ears. Fuck, I have to pull it together.
“The kid okay?”
Jonah hauls me upright before I can stop him. White-hot pain tears through my right foot the second weight hits it. I grit my teeth hard enough to ache, burying the reaction before anyone notices. Jonah notices anyway.
“Let’s be honest,” he says, rain dripping from the edge of his hood.
“That kid’s gonna need therapy after tonight.
But his daddy’ll get a slap on the wrist, sit through some half-assed parenting class, and send the poor bastard right back into survival mode until he grows up to become a deeply disturbed chief of police like you. ”
Despite myself, I snort.
His expression hardens immediately after.
“But what I’d really like to know,” he continues, “is why my best friend decided to go damn bungee jumping into a flood current instead of letting one of the rescue techs on this bridge handle it.”
I open my mouth.
“Nope.” Jonah points at me. “And before you start with your heroic bullshit—you’re hurt, motherfucker.
Sit down.” He shoves me lightly onto the back of a tailgate.
The movement jars my leg, and agony spikes through my foot so sharply my vision blurs for half a second.
It’s not broken, but defiantly going to have a bruise come tomorrow.
Shit.
I focus hard on the storm instead of the pain.
Instead of the truth. Because I can’t tell him that for one horrifying second down there, I thought I was about to watch another person die in front of me.
I can’t admit that the idea of losing someone else—another friend, another life in my hands—still claws at me badly enough to crack something open inside my chest.
So I stay quiet.
Jonah’s gaze settles on my face, the humor draining out of his expression almost instantly. He tilts his head slightly, studying me too damn carefully. And that’s worse than the questions.
“You want to fill me in on what’s really going on with you?”
I choke—Caleb’s lifeless body, broken, cold. Not wanting to hash out my dirty laundry on a bridge full of people. I choke out.
“If it had to be someone—I didn’t want it to be you.”
“Does this mean we’re going steady now, McCoy?”
“And waste this pretty face on you? You wish.” Jonah wraps an arm around my waist, half-dragging me away from the first responders trucks to where our trucks are parked.
The mayor—who’s full of shit, if you ask me—stomps across the road toward us, umbrella tilted low enough to hide most of his face. I usually show respect to others.
This asshole is now the exception.
Any man who’s spent years making Fallon’s life harder earns my resentment fair and square. Even beneath the miserable glow of the emergency lights, I see his temper brewing. His cheeks are flushed red, jaw locked so tight it looks painful.
How the hell this guy got elected remains one of life’s great mysteries. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Except Fallon’s involved.
So unfortunately, I guess it is my damn circus now.
“Mayor Anderson,” Jonah drawls, the edge in his voice bordering on patronizing, “what brings you out in this lovely weather?” Anderson ignores him completely.
Instead, he marches straight toward me until we’re nearly chest to chest. First fucking mistake. A gloved finger jabs hard into my chest. Second fucking mistake.
Who the hell wears leather gloves in the middle of summer?
My gaze drags over him once—tailored suit, tie pinned perfectly in place, long coat flapping in the storm winds, and an honest-to-God top hat sitting on his head like we’re in some Victorian funeral procession instead of the middle of a damn derecho.
At this hour. In this weather. What the actual fuck?
“Cyrus McCoy, I told council members to hire you. That you could be trusted. Yet, here you are, a rogue cop playing cowboy! Do you have any idea what kind of mess you’ve made for me?
” His face becomes redder with every word; I’m pretty sure the man is close to a heart attack.
His endorsement of my employment is news to me; no wonder he was all smiles in my office two months ago, but none of that matters now.
Not after hearing how he’s treated Fallon over the years.
Either way, he’s about to learn why putting his princess paws on my chest is not in his best interest.
“You get one opportunity to voluntarily remove your finger from my person, or I will remove it for you. My patience determines your future usage of that appendage.”
Jonah readjusts his fire helmet to cover his smirk, leaning his body on the hood of my truck. He crosses his ankles. Probably getting ready for the show. Nosey ass doesn’t ever miss the chance to interject himself in some good gossip.
Anderson realizes his mistake in time to keep his fucking appendage. Flustered but determined to save face, he straightens up, chest puffed. “Explain yourself—what were you doing on that bridge?”
“No comment.”
He looks offended. Good. “No comment? I’m not a fucking reporter.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to try that again?”
“I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation.”
I tug the zipper on the pocket I’d sewn into the lining of my work pants, my fingers closing around my truck keys. Fucking handy man. The alarm beeps as the truck unlocks, Jonah straightens.
“Mayor, what Cyrus is trying to say is that he would never want to risk the lives of the community when he’s equipped and trained to perform search and rescue tasks. Furthermore, he would never risk the integrity and reputation of the local police force by talking about an ongoing investigation.”
What a smooth-talking motherfucker Jonah is.
I avert my gaze, unwilling to let him know how close to the truth he is.
I slide into the truck, place the keys in the ignition, and turn the key.
Ready for this morning to be over and already dreading the paperwork that’s going to have to be filed.
Scrubbing my face, I roll the window down so Jonah can poke his head through.
“Not going to give me some smooches before you leave, Buttercup?”
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. That’s Jonah, though. The man can crack a joke in the middle of an absolute disaster and somehow make breathing feel easier for everyone around him. Hell of a friend to have in a crisis. Not my first pick to bring to a funeral.
“Sorry, Sugar. I told your mother that she and I could go steady. I can’t go back on my word and break her heart by cheating so close to home.”
My truck door pings with the force of Jonah’s weight as he leans back, gripping the frame, anchoring himself to the window, letting rain bounce off his uniform. I’m a confident man, but I can admit that if I didn’t have that confidence, I would hate this fucker on sight. Dude belongs in Hollywood.
“You wound me, and here I thought you were my knight in shining armor.” He tsks.
“Have some dignity, man; begging is beneath you,” I say. The change in his expression is immediate; his face a portrait of feigned sincerity.
“And the hits keep on coming.”
I snatched my cap from the dashboard and yanked it on. Silence holds, then the shock hits. My hands begin to tremble. Jonah’s eyes never leave mine, and the spike in my pulse is a warning: the adrenaline crash is on its way, freezing its way through every limb.
I fucked up. I made a colossal mistake that can jeopardize what’s left of my career.
I let fear fuel my need to be the one to take the risk needed to save that kid.
And we both know it. He’s not called me on my shit yet.
He will. I’m surprised that he hasn’t, appreciating the fuck out of him for not doing exactly what I would do if I were the one in his shoes.
Fuck me, will this ever get easier? Knowing that I could lose the men around me that I fucking care about?
Jonah’s observant, his forest green eyes alight with concern for me…and I am so goddamn unworthy of it.
“Should you be driving with that bad ankle?” he questions, I nod, knowing the shit eating grin on my face is more a mask then reassurance. “It’s not my dominant ankle. I’ll be fine, gonna get home and ice it.”
“Seriously, man, I appreciate what you did out there. Know I’d be fucking devastated too if anything happened to you.”
I roll the window up on him.