Archer
ARCHER
“ T he street is filling.” I see my beautiful wife. The terror in her eyes, and the fury beating right behind it. But then I look to Phil, the dude who no longer wants to live, and stay right here. “We knew it would, right?”
“I could have jumped already.” His voice trembles with fear. Not necessarily the cold, though snow slowly drifts down and settles in our laps. “It didn’t have to become this huge thing where everyone came out to watch.”
“They’re not here to watch you. They’re here to help you.” I gift him my kindest smile and watch, from the corner of my eyes, as Micah and Felix lean into each other to talk. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised they’re right here in Copeland. Felix asked for Thanksgiving, and so, he’s taking Thanksgiving. “These people want you to live.” I give him my attention. My eyes. My trust that he won’t jump and pull me over with him. “These feelings you’re experiencing are temporary. Jumping…” I sigh. “Isn’t.”
“But I’m already dying,” he cries. It’s soft and sad and so fucking pathetic, it tugs at my soul. “They’ve given me three months.”
“So live your three months.” I wrap my hand around the lip of the hospital roof and lean to my left, gently knocking his shoulder with mine. “They could be your worst three months. Or your best,” I offer. “They’re whatever you make of them. But jumping means there’s just nothing. It’s lights out.”
“They won’t be three good months,” he sniffles. “They’ll be painful and expensive. They’ll end with me unable to walk or talk or go to the toilet.” He noisily swallows the lump in his throat. “They’ll end with a massive debt for my daughter to take care of.”
“They won’t. You deserve?—”
“ My daughter deserves ! We don’t have insurance, Malone. It’s gone. My job is gone. My savings are gone. Bella’s mother took the house and the dog and my car and everything else she could get her hands on. She took my daughter. I’m dying, and if I do it the way you’re saying I should, then the hospital bills will roll in and her last memories will be of me… rotting in my own skin and dying in a shitty bed. My legacy will be debt collectors digging away at whatever scrap of value I still have. My baby deserves better.”
“She deserves these three months with you. She chose her mom. For whatever reason, she made that choice. But it’s one she’ll regret once you’re gone.”
“But—”
“You have the chance of being in her life before it’s too late. Besides, science isn’t perfect. You might have six months, or a year, or forever. You can’t know, and if you jump, it’ll always be a question unanswered.”
“If I stay, I condemn my daughter to poverty for the rest of her life.”
“We’re not that high up!” Frustrated, I gesture to the street. “If you jump, you’ll probably just break your legs and need surgery. You won’t be dead enough for them not to resuscitate you, so they’ll bring you back, you’ll still get your three months, but now you’ll have additional debt piling on top because of the leg thing. You’ll drag me down, too.” I lift our joined hands and jiggle the steel holding us together. “Then you’ll be responsible for my debt, too. I have a beautiful wife. I have a really great family.” I look down at a fuming Minka and wink. “She’s not as mean as she looks.”
He follows my gaze and studies Minka’s mean-mugging expression. Her folded arms and the tap-tap-tap of her bare foot as she works through her anxiety.
“She’s yours? The one in the hoodie?”
I drag my lip between my teeth and nod. “She’s my everything.”
“She’s not wearing shoes. She must be freezing.”
I chuckle and bring my eyes back to him. “Yeah. I’ll tear her up for that later. Then I’ll wrap her in blankets and remind her why she said yes to me at our weddings.”
Curious, his brows pinch together. “Weddings?”
“Two of them. She married me twice. Which either makes her incredibly devoted, or ridiculously stupid. She’s chief medical examiner down at the George Stanley, which implies she’s not stupid at all, so…”
“Lucky you,” he grumbles. “Makes you a very fortunate man.”
“Luck you, too. Because if you jump and have the good fortune to die, you’ll have the best M.E. this city has to offer. And since she’s already on site, she’ll get to you before the snow cools your body.”
“You’re not very good at this.” He looks down at the street. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me how brave and kind and wanted I am?”
“Am I?”
“Instead, you tell me about the M.E. who’ll cut me up.” He brings red-rimmed eyes to mine. “She’ll find cancer in there. Lots of it.”
“Yeah.” I draw a long sigh and think of my dad, the murderous bastard. He, too, died of cancer. “If that’s what your doctors said, then I suppose you’re right. She’ll find cancer. Doesn’t mean you should die today. There are some folks inside this hospital who are flatlining right now. Bet they wish they had three more months.”
He sniffs and swipes tears from the tip of his nose.
“Bet their families wish they could have three more months.” I frown when Micah and Felix cut right, stalking under the driveway overhang where ambulances pull up to offload their patients. Then Minka follows, disappearing from my sight and heading inside the building below me to cause trouble.
They’ll make the news in the next twenty minutes. I just know it.
“It’s just you and me up here right now, Phil. But there are a fuck ton of cops and firefighters down there. Once they come up, this is all over and you’re gonna be in trouble.”
“I’m gonna be in trouble because of you! You turned this into a whole thing. If you’d let me jump, it would all be over by now. No hospital bills. No jail time for me. And my baby will be insulated from what would have been the worst three months of her life.”
“You being dead doesn’t insulate her! It just means her grief begins sooner. It means she’s robbed of a chance to choose you. It means no closure. No opportunity to say goodbye. No chance to tell you she loves you, or worse, to hear you say the same back.”
“I do love her.” Fresh, fat tears burst from his eyes. “I love her more than anyone else on the planet.”
“And to express that, you pancake yourself on the concrete on Thanksgiving? So now you’re not only giving her daddy issues for the rest of her life— why didn’t he love me enough to stay? Was he mad I went to live with Mom? I’m so sad I never got to tell him I love him —But oops, there go the holidays, too. She can’t enjoy those. For the rest of her existence, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be a time of grief. So you fucked those up.”
“You’re supposed to be nice to me! You’re supposed to tell me I’m valued and loved and blah blah blah .”
“I never pursued a psych degree, and I was the son of a murderous motherfucker who showed affection with his fists. I’m more of a tough love kinda guy, so here’s how things are gonna go…” I hold his stare. “I shoot you. But it’s the non-lethal kind of shot. I drag you off this ledge, put you back in the hospital, rack those bills up, and head home to enjoy the holidays with my family. I bet I have turkey and booze waiting for me, and I know for a damn fact my wife will be there to ring in the holiday.”
“You suck at this.”
“Maybe. But I’m the realest person you’ll ever meet. I could be blowing flowers up your ass and telling you all sorts of pretty things. But that would be a lie.”
His eyes swing across our audience. To the ground. To the additional cop cars that scream into the street.
“Would you rather be shot by a liar?” I ask. “Or by a dude brave enough to give you the truth?”
“I mean…” He clears his throat. “I don’t wanna be shot at all.”
“Why not? You’re dying anyway. Better a clean bullet, through and through, than broken legs, a shattered pelvis, maybe even a crushed skull if it bounces off the concrete. You can be here and have one more Christmas with your baby, or you can die in pain and all alone and with a little girl who thinks you’re weak and selfish. Either way, I get to bang my wife just as soon as I sign off on the incident report.”
“You’re not my friend.” He leans forward, glancing over the ledge and scowling when the firefighters roll out a massive landing pad. It’s not yet inflated, so if he jumps, we’re both fucked. “My daughter can remember me how I am now.” He sniffles and sits back again. “Alive. Healthy. She doesn’t have to know about the cancer, and she never has to see me waste away to nothing.”
“She’ll see you splattered on the street. She could sit with you over the next three months, maybe read you a book and bond with you in the quiet. That’s way better than peeling you off the ground and never being able to understand why . If you do this, she’ll know she chose right in the divorce. It’s clear your ex-wife is more able to regulate her emotions and make safer choices.”
“That bitch slept with my best friend! Then she told the cops I hit her, so they kicked me out of my own house, slapping me with an order not to go back. All because I caught her sucking his dick!”
“Makes her a strategic woman,” I smirk. “The house belongs to whoever plans ahead. You’re mad because you didn’t think of it first.”
“You’re the worst fucking person to sit with a suicidal man. You make me want to jump.”
“You make me want to shoot. So I guess we bring the best out in each other.” I shrug and peer down again as firefighters run around hooking up air pumps. “I can be nice, or I can be truthful. But you can’t have both. And I was born into a world where I got neither. This is the best version of me you’ll ever get.”
“I was coming here for the quiet,” he snarls. “You ruined my peace.”
“Shucks.” I lean to the right and tug my phone from my back pocket. “Guess that makes me the monster. Should we call your daughter? Give her a chance to say goodbye. Then you can jump.”
Horrified, his eyes come back to mine. “What? No! Why would you do that?”
“Because she deserves closure.” I unlock my screen, but I don’t dial. Because I see the woman I want to talk to, staring up at me in front of her soldier husband. But I don’t know her number. She’s never thought to give it to me. “Call me!” I wave my phone and shout over the chatter of cops and firefighters. “Soph! Call my cell.”
Unimpressed with being singled out, she flattens her lips and digs her phone out. Then she dials and brings the device to her ear.
“What are you doing?” Phil trembles at my side. “W-who is that?”
“The last person you want to know on the planet.” I swipe to answer and set our call on speaker. “Hey, Soph. How’s it going?”
“What do you want?” she deadpans. “We’re not chit chat pals, Malone.”
“Why are you in Copeland, anyway? You don’t live here.”
She pulls the phone from her ear and sets me on speaker. “I’m writing up an invoice. For every minute of my time you waste, I’m charging you five hundred bucks. Then I’m charging Phil the Dill, too. Because it’s clearly his fault we’re out in this cold.”
“H-how does she know my name?”
I side eye the man and chuckle. “She knows everything. Listen, Soph. Phil is having a bad day, so he’s contemplating jumping and smooshing his face on the concrete.”
She stands silent for a beat… then, “So?”
“So he has a daughter who deserves to say goodbye. I obviously don’t have her number, but I figure…”
“Yeah, I got you.” She taps at her phone and does the thing she does. “We’re in minute two , by the way. And research costs more. I’m itemizing this invoice.”
“Stop.” Phil shudders and folds back, away from the ledge. “Tell her to stop!”
“Erin Welling,” Soph says anyway. “Only daughter of Phillip and Alana Welling. Seventeen years old. She has her license already, Phil. Good for her. She could probably drive the hearse if you spell that out in your will.” She glances up at us. “You have a will, right? Those are important.”
“Malone!” He tries to yank his hand free of mine. “Stop!”
“I’m texting you her number,” Soph continues. “He’s about to be on prime-time news, though, so you better hurry and make that call before she finds out the hard way.”
I smell her first. I feel her in the air. My lips curl into a smile completely other than everything else happening around me. Then finally, I hear her.
“If you jump, I’ll have to saw your skull open, Mr. Welling.”
Together, we turn as one. But because of his panic, Phil nearly yeets himself off the building in terror.
“Dude!” I yank him back. “Be careful, or you might fall.”
“Intracranial hemorrhage means you’ll be bleeding inside your skull. Even if you live beyond the fall, the pressure will kill you in a few days, anyway. That means I’ll have to take off your skull cap and remove your brain.”
His face turns green in an instant.
“When I’m done and I’ve written the final reports, I’ll have to sew you up again. Because people get really upset when Great Grandpa Joe’s skull falls off during the open casket. It’s happened.” But then she scoffs. “Not to me. But I hear about it in the industry.”
“Y-you’re the coroner.”
“Medical examiner,” she corrects. “Not exactly the same job. But for now?” She wrinkles her nose and nods. “Essentially, yeah.”
“You’re not wearing shoes, Mayet.” I look down at her painted toes, turning blue from the cold. “I’m not pleased.”
“Well, I’m not pleased we have a whole family reunion sizzling over at the apartment. Especially considering the plans I thought we had for the night.” She looks to Phil and firms her lips. “We were going to drink and make out. But now we’re out here in the cold and I think the mayor heard me talking about inappropriate sexual things. Actually,” she looks over the ledge. “I might jump too. Way better than looking that man in the eyes again and thinking about the things I said.”
“You’re not jumping.” I grab her hand, much like I did Phil’s, and yank her away from the edge. Then I look to my captive and try for kindness. “Please do the right thing. Erin deserves better than to watch this shit play out on the news.”
“We’re on minute four, Malone.” Soph’s voice echoes through my phone. “That’s five thousand dollars.”
“You said it was five hundred a minute!”
“I also said research costs more. You knew what would happen when you began this thing.”
I look to the man and grit, “You’re costing me a fortune. I could have given you that money to offset medical bills. Now we’re freezing our nuts off and my ass hurts. Please, can we get down?”
“Your daughter deserves better,” Minka croons, oddly serious and just real enough to tug at my heart. “She deserves answers and a father who loves her enough to not do this.”
“I love her so much. I feel like I have to do this.” He breaks, his shoulders slumping and his breath exploding on devastating sobs. “I love her so much, I want to take away the pain I know she’ll feel when she watches me waste away in the hospital.”
“Well…” Minka considers for a long beat, glancing my way with eyes warmer than melted chocolate. Until finally, with a sigh, she crouches and meets Phil’s stare. “As a girl whose father committed suicide without ever explaining why or leaving a letter or allowing any kind of closure at all…” She gently takes his hand, twining their fingers together so if he jumps, she’s coming too.
That reality almost beats out the stunned devastation strangling my heart.
Her father committed suicide. What ?
“I can tell you she won’t forgive you for doing this. She’ll love you, and she’ll miss you. But she’ll be pissed forever, and she’ll struggle to make healthy, functioning relationships later in life. If a man shows her romantic interest, she’ll question his motives. And if an older man shows her paternal affection, she’ll reject it, even when that love is given freely and without strings attached. She’ll always struggle with vulnerability. Because she’s vulnerable right now, in this moment, and instead of caring for her heart the way you, her father, should, you broke it in your selfish desire to not feel like crap anymore. She deserves answers, Phil, and just maybe, if you can be brave enough not to do this, she won’t be quite so screwed up later in life the way I am.”
“I’m not trying to hurt her,” he hiccups. “I’m trying to make this a clean break.”
“Clean breaks still require extensive time and medical intervention to heal. The bone will always be weaker because of the trauma it sustained, and the site of the injury will always be at risk of future fractures.” She slowly straightens her legs, lifting her hand and dragging him up until he has two choices: stand and go with her, or stay and allow his arm to be elevated over his head. “Don’t be her weak spot. Be her strength and respect her enough to allow her closure.”
“We done?” Micah steps forward, ominous and deadly. He’s pissed, and somehow, as I stand and my cuffs rattle against Phil’s, he presents a key he shouldn’t have and disconnects us with a fast one-two snick. “Go.” He grabs my collar, rough and mean, and yanks me from the ledge. But panic lances up in my blood, because Minka remains back there, holding Phil’s hand. “You, too.” He snags her wrist and tosses her my way. Then he stands over Phil, towering over the man and terrifying him with a single look. “Jump now. Dare you.”
“What?” His shoulders bounce with sobbing shudders. “What do you?—”
“You put my family at risk.” He grabs Phil’s jacket, knocking him back a step until the guy yelps and cries. He shakes him, teeth rattling and skull swaying with the momentum. Then he turns and shoves him toward us. “Not as brave as you thought you were, huh? You wanted attention, not a funeral.”
“Come on.” I release Minka and set her behind my back, but then I grab Phil and carefully turn him. “I have to cuff you until this is all straightened out.”
“What?” Panicked, he stares over his shoulder. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You threatened to jump over a populated area. If you’d landed on someone, they would have died too.”
“What the hell is going on?” Fletch emerges at the top of the stairwell, the door swinging against the brick wall and his breath racing. His chest heaving. His entire fucking youth, gone now that he’s thirty something and a dad. “Detective Malone! Dude?”
“No dead body here.” I snap the cuffs into the place and gently nudge Phil forward until Fletch takes him. “Where’s Mia?”
“With the fuckin’ ballerina on the road!” He looks Phil up and down. “What the hell? It’s Thanksgiving, man.”
“Which is statistically when cases spike and DBs stack up at the morgue.” Minka twines her fingers with mine and tugs until I glance down. Then she stands on her toes and whispers, “I have a teeny, tiny, horrifyingly uncomfortable thong string stuck somewhere in my stomach. Because you made a promise to be home at five-thirty, and having been able to trust your word in the past, I showered and dressed and presented myself like a stuffed roast just out of the oven.”
“I’m sorry.” I press a kiss to her dimpled cheek and hold on for as long as she allows it. But of course, she breaks the moment first. She always does. So I pull back and search her eyes. “Your dad?”
“Thanksgiving, two-thousand and nine.” Her shoulders come up in a gentle, dismissive shrug. “Long time ago. I don’t wanna talk about it today.”
“Are you sure?” I cup her face, while Fletch escorts Phil into the stairwell, and right on his heels, Micah and Felix follow. “I want to support you, Minnnka. Today’s a painful day for you and I didn’t even know it.”
“Today’s a day for family,” she murmurs. “I was trying to make that family about me and you. But then Felix turned up with two dozen of his closest whack jobs. The Mayor. His kids. Cato. Tim is apparently making arrangements. Oh, and we have a turkey in our kitchen, and not nearly enough seats per backside ratio.”
“You’ve been begging for a me and you day for weeks.” I draw her up to her toes. Frozen, no doubt. “I can get rid of them all in under two minutes. I’ll lock them out and throw down the hammer. Felix is a dick when he wants to be, but he listens when it’s important.”
“I guess I’m kinda okay with the idea of stuffing all those people into our tiny apartment.” She lowers to flat feet and starts toward the stairs, dragging me along, though it only takes two steps for me to catch up and move her faster.
I need to get her out of the cold and a pair of fuzzy socks on her feet before she catches pneumonia.
“We can do something with them all tomorrow,” I argue, leading her into the concrete stairwell and down. “They’ll still be in the city, and we can still have tonight for us. You asked for alone time, and now I know what today means, I’ll make?—”
“Oddly…” She wraps her arm around mine and snuggles in to rest her cheek against the ball of my shoulder. “I guess I got a little more closure just now. Something my dad didn’t do for me, Erin’s dad could. What I definitely don’t want…” She glances up with a grin, ignoring Felix’s worried stare as he waits at the next landing. “Is for everyone to make this weird and annoying. I want to drink and fight and eat turkey. I especially want to eat the potato thing Mary sent all the way from New York.”
“She did that for you, Doctor Cutie.” Felix holds the door for us to pass through. “And I’ll make you a deal: I won’t mention the dead dad thing, if you don’t mention how much you hate me. For just a night, pretend you think I’m the shit.”
She rolls her eyes and taps his stomach as we pass. “You are the shit. You’re shit. You’re all the shit.” Then she looks to me. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“Uh…” I reach into my pocket and hand it over. “Sure. Why?”
“Because I made a promise.” She unlocks the screen and jumps to my call log. Hitting a name I shouldn’t be surprised to see, she puts the call on speaker and waits just two rings for the doctor on the other end to answer. “Aubree?”
“I told you you weren’t having a quiet night with .” She walks, her breath racing and the noise around her growing quieter as she gains distance. “Dinner at your place?”
“Did you see us on the news already?” Minka frowns and allows me to lead her downstairs. “That was quick.”
“No. My parents don’t even have the TV on.” She slams a car door, then tosses her phone so the clatter and bang echoes through our call. “Felix there?”
He grins, wide and taunting. “Sure am, Doctor Derrière.”
Aubree grunts. “Ew. Tim there?”
“Allegedly,” Minka answers. “I haven’t seen him yet, but Cato said he’s making arrangements to be at dinner. Come to the apartment. I’ll save you some of the potato stuff.”
“Yes!” She starts the car engine and revs until the sound rolls this way. “Daddy Mayor there, too? He’s so sexy for an old guy.”
I drop my head and shake it side to side. “She’s greedy. Tim and Justin?”
“One is a fantasy that won’t ever come true,” Felix answers. “The other is her future. She doesn’t get a say in it.”
“Mmhm,” Aubree drawls. “See you in ten.”
“Make it twenty,” Minka orders. Then looking to Felix, she slaps her hand to his chest and makes him stop. “Give us twenty. I need to get this underwear out of my ass.”
He presses his palm to the spot she slapped, but his eyes glitter with menace. “Twenty minutes, then we’re walking in whether you’ve finished or not.”
“Deal.” She tightens her hold on my hand, grinning wildly. Then she takes off down the stairs and forces me to run or fall. “Quick!” She laughs, loud and carefree in a way she so rarely allows herself. “We’re on the clock and I was told there would be sex.”
“For fuck’s sake.” But hell if I don’t drop my head and pump my arms to move faster. “Don’t fall down.” I slap her ass and elicit another squeal of delight. “I’ll fuck you even if you break your legs at this point.”
“!” Cackling, she slams against the wall at the next floor landing, only to turn and keep going. “You’re so gross.”
Happy Holidays!
Timothy Malone III was supposed to be the heir to his father’s mafia empire. But it’s not until Aubree Emeri’s life is threatened that he considers accepting the power he was bred for.
He’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.
Grab Lost Kingdom now to find out what happens next.
“When my cop brother asks, ‘ does that boy have a job ?’ am I allowed to answer that you’re a killer, or should I let you take the lead on that?”
When he’s a dangerous enforcer, and she’s town’s most protected little sister, sparks fly just as often as the bullets.
Get Pawns In The Bishop’s Game today!
What happens when the world champ is desperate to spend time with a woman who is unavailable, complicated, and far too shy for her own good? He trains her how to fight, of course, and enjoys every sweaty second they have inside his gym. Go back to the beginning of Emilia’s world and read the story where it all began. Get your copy of Finding Home and dive in.