Chapter 4 #2
He drove to the clubhouse straight from the grove, later than he'd meant to stay, and found Knox still up, going over the week's receipts at the bar like he did most nights when sleep wasn't cooperating.
"You look like a man with a problem," Knox said, not looking up.
"Simone's supervisor rejected her clean finding. Wants her to manufacture something against us."
That got Knox's full attention fast. He set the receipts down. "Manufacture how?"
"She didn't have details yet. Just that he wants a case, and he doesn't much care whether there's evidence for one."
"That's not just bad for her. That's bad for us. If the county wants us dirty badly enough to lean on their own detective, they'll find someone else to lean on when she says no."
"She's not going to say yes, Knox. I'd bet everything I own on that."
"I believe you. I also believe a man that determined to manufacture a case doesn't stop just because the first detective he tries won't cooperate." Knox rubbed a hand over his jaw, thinking. "You trust her?"
"Completely."
"That was fast."
"I've had weeks to get there. Feels fast from the outside. Doesn't feel fast from where I'm sitting."
Knox studied him a long moment, the way he studied everything, weighing consequences Elliot could practically see stacking up behind his eyes.
"All right," Knox said finally. "If it comes to it, this club backs her. Quietly, carefully, by the book — but we back her. We didn't build ten years of clean records just to watch someone burn her career trying to protect them."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. This isn't finished. Whoever's leaning on her supervisor isn't going to just walk away because one detective told the truth." Knox picked the receipts back up, though Elliot doubted he was actually reading them anymore. "Get some sleep, Bishop. You're going to need it."
Elliot didn't sleep much that night. He lay awake running the whole situation like a chess position that had suddenly acquired several new pieces he hadn't accounted for, trying to see far enough ahead to know which move protected Simone, protected the club, and didn't require sacrificing either one to save the other.
He still hadn't found that move by morning. But he'd found something almost as useful — a certainty, solid and unshakable, that whatever happened next, he wasn't going to let her face it alone.
He went to see Dominic first thing the next morning, because if the county was leaning on Simone hard enough to reject a clean finding, Dominic was the one man in the club with the most to lose if that pressure turned into something worse.
He found him out behind the garage, working on a bike that didn't look like it needed the amount of attention Dominic was giving it, which was usually a sign Dominic had something on his mind he wasn't ready to say out loud yet.
"Heard about the detective's report getting kicked back," Dominic said, before Elliot could open his mouth. "News travels fast around here."
"It does. You doing okay with all this?"
"Would've asked you the same thing." Dominic set his wrench down, wiped his hands on a rag that had seen better decades.
"I know what it means if the county decides they want us dirty bad enough to manufacture something.
I know what it means for me specifically, better than most people in this club. "
"I'm not going to let that happen."
"You can't promise that, Bishop. Not really."
"No," Elliot admitted. "I can't promise the outcome. I can promise I'm not going to stop trying to protect it, and I can promise Simone Adler isn't the kind of cop who folds just because someone above her applies pressure."
Dominic studied him a long moment, something unreadable in his expression. "You sure about her?"
"I'm sure."
"That's not the same as being right."
"No," Elliot said. "But it's the only thing I've got to go on right now, and it's more than I've had certainty about in a long time."
Dominic nodded slowly, picked his wrench back up, and went back to the bike that didn't need fixing, which Elliot understood, in the particular language the two of them had built over a decade of brotherhood, as a kind of tentative, wary trust.
It would have to be enough for now. Elliot drove back toward town with the weight of the whole situation settling into something he could actually work with — not solved, not yet, but no longer just a private ache he was carrying alone in the dark at a grove nobody else knew about.
Whatever came next, he had his club behind him. He suspected, before this was over, Simone was going to need that as much as he did.
He texted her on the drive back, something he rarely did, preferring the grove and its unhurried conversations to anything typed on a screen.
Talked to Knox. Talked to Dominic. Whatever this turns into, you're not facing it without backup. Ours, if you'll take it.
Her reply came twenty minutes later, longer than her usual clipped responses.
I don't know how to accept help from people I'm supposed to be investigating. It's not exactly standard procedure.
Neither is a detective finding a clean club and getting punished for saying so. Nothing about this is standard. Might as well stop pretending it is.
There was a longer pause this time before her reply came through.
Thank you, Elliot.
He read it twice, sitting in his truck in the clubhouse parking lot, and felt something settle into place that he hadn't realized had been unsteady until that exact moment.
Whatever happened next, they were in it together now. That was, he suspected, more dangerous than either of them had planned for, and considerably harder to walk back than either of them had bargained for when they'd first agreed, so carefully, to simply wait.
Elliot found he didn't mind the danger nearly as much as he probably should have.