Chapter 39 Fireworks and
Final Shots
Bishop
I cross the dock in four steps.
Graham has the gun up not aimed, not yet, the position of a man who pulled a weapon to create space and hasn't decided what to do with it. That's the window. The only window.
I take it.
One hand on his wrist, one on the weapon, the redirect that takes the barrel away from Delilah and toward nothing. His grip is strong range-trained, practiced but knowing how to hold a gun and knowing how to keep one are different skills and I know both.
The gun hits the dock boards.
Graham goes after it.
I don't let him get there.
Thirty seconds. Not clean he lands a hit to my jaw, the same jaw that already took the city's contribution last night, and I feel it in my back teeth. But he goes down. Face-first on the dock with his arms behind him and the gun at the far edge of the boards and Cole arriving at a run from the bar entrance.
Cole takes in the scene without slowing down.
Graham. Me. Delilah with her phone and the recording still running and her jaw set and her hands completely steady.
"I've got him," Cole says.
He takes over.
I get up.
My jaw is going to be spectacular by morning. My ribs from the city are making themselves known again. I stand at the edge of the dock and breathe through it and watch Delilah send the recording from her phone and watch the deputies arrive six minutes later Margo's backup, called before we got to the bar, timed exactly right.
They have Margo's folder.
They have the recording.
They have Daniel Weller's name and enough documentation to make the conversation that follows a short one.
Graham is composed through most of the arrest. That's who he is the composure holds until it doesn't and the going is usually abrupt when it comes. It comes in the back of the county vehicle when the deputy reads the specific charges and names the federal contact Margo has been cultivating for six weeks and Graham understands that his city connections are not going to be the kind of help he thought they were.
I watch the vehicle pull out of the lot.
Then I find Delilah.
She's at the end of the dock. Standing where the water starts. The morning light making everything look cleaner than it is. She's watching the lot. Hands steady. Jaw set. The woman who walked out a back door at five-fifteen in the morning and handled it.
I stop beside her.
She looks at me. At the jaw. At the jacket. At whatever the city and the dock left on me.
"What happened after you walked out of Club Eidolon," she says.
"Two of the capo's men were waiting by the car."
"And."
"And it's handled."
She holds my gaze.
"Together," she says. Not angry. The word as a reminder.
"I know." I don't look away. "I know I broke the promise. I know what it cost. I'm not going to tell you it was worth it because that's your call to make, not mine." I pause. "But I came back. I told you I would."
She looks at the lake.
"You did," she says.
"I'm always going to come back," I say. "That's the one I can keep."
She doesn't say anything for a moment.
Then she turns and wraps both arms around me careful of the ribs, careful of the jaw, the specific care of someone who knows exactly where the damage is and I hold on and the morning does what mornings do and neither of us says anything for a long time.
Margo arrives twenty minutes later.
She has her phone and the expression of a woman whose parallel operations have converged exactly as planned. "The capo received the documentation package forty minutes ago," she says. "Witness statements, communication records, Daniel Weller's full arrangement including the information he provided that enabled the targeting of a pregnant woman and a shot into an occupied residence." A pause. "My federal contact confirmed receipt twenty minutes ago."
"The club," I start.
"Will not be sending anyone else." Her voice is even. Certain. "The capo is not a man who runs toward exposure. Your debt is burned. Not suspended. Not deferred." She looks at me directly. "Burned."
I look at her.
At the woman who spent fifteen years watching and building and waiting for the moment where it would do more than slow things down. Who made the folder while I was running perimeters. Who knew about Daniel for six weeks and waited until she had enough to make it permanent.
"Margo," I say.
"Do the job," she says. "That's the thank you I want."
She goes back to her phone.
The morning moves forward.
Cole finds me at the edge of the dock an hour later.
He stands beside me in the Cole way present before the words, giving the silence room to mean something first. I've known this about him since we were kids. He's always needed the silence to settle before the conversation starts.
I wait.
"You locked her in," he says finally.
"Yes."
"She got out."
"Yes."
"Through the back door you forgot to lock."
"Yes."
He's quiet for a moment. I can feel him working through it the anger that's still there and is going to be there for a while and is his right to have. The other thing underneath it. The thing that kept him calling even when I didn't answer.
"She's going to keep doing that," he says. "Finding the door you forgot to lock. Getting out and handling it herself." He looks at me. The fifteen-year look the one that has everything in it, all of it, and is choosing to be here anyway. "That's who she is."
"I know."
"Then stop trying to lock her in." He holds my gaze. "Not because she can't be hurt. Because she can and she's choosing to be in it anyway and the least you can do is let her make that choice."
I look at my brother.
At the man who said I'll bury you myself and meant it and is standing beside me anyway because both things are true for Cole. He can mean the threat and still show up. He can be furious and still be here.
"I know," I say. "I'm working on it."
He nods. Once. The settling nod.
Then he claps my shoulder the hand on the neck grip we've been using since we were teenagers and goes back to where Delilah is finishing with the deputies. I watch him cross the dock toward her. Watch her look up and say something that makes him almost smile.
The weight of it sits in my chest.
The particular weight of something repaired. Not finished Cole and I have a long way to go, years of missed things to account for, and I know that. But the door is open. The lock isn't thrown.
That's enough.
The fourth of July comes back around.
One year.
One year since the shuttle door opened and she ran through the fireworks crowd and I pulled her out of it before I knew what I was doing. One year since glass in her foot and Cole's name on my phone and the spare room rules I laid down and watched her dismantle one by one.
One year since I was halfway in before she arrived and the rest happened so fast, I'm still catching up.
The private dock at nine PM.
Delilah came out after dinner Cole's cooking, all four of us around the kitchen table, the sound of chosen family filling the house for the first time. She came to watch the fireworks from the lake and I followed her because following her has become the most natural thing I do.
I've been carrying the ring for two weeks.
In my jacket pocket. In my work jacket and my regular jacket because I kept moving it and then stopped moving it and started just keeping it close. A single stone, simple, clean nothing like the one she returned by certified mail. I chose it because it looked like something she would choose for herself. Not something chosen for her.
I've been waiting for the right moment.
I'm done waiting.
She's sitting at the end of the dock with her feet over the edge and her face tipped up at the sky and one hand resting on the curve of her belly. The fireworks doing something gold and enormous over the far shore. The reflection spreading out on the water below us.
I look at her for a long moment.
At the woman who showed up in a wedding dress and trusted me with the worst night of her life. Who came back and claimed the marina and the town and the dock and all of it as hers. Who walked out a back door at five-fifteen in the morning and stood on a public dock with a recording and the lake at her back and handled it herself.
Who is sitting beside me right now, feet over the edge, face tipped up.
I go down on one knee on the dock boards.
She looks down.
Looks at me.
At the ring.
"Marry me," I say. "Not because of the baby. Not because of the club or Cole or anything that's happened in the last year." I hold her gaze. "Because you showed up in a wedding dress and trusted me and I've been catching up to that trust ever since and I'm not done yet." A pause. "Because I was halfway in before I met you and I never want to be on the other side of it again." I look at her. "Let me be yours the right way."
The settled expression. The one I know.
"Yes," she says.
Simple. Certain.
I put the ring on her finger.
She pulls me up by the lapels and kisses me and the fireworks do something spectacular above us and the lake reflects all of it and neither of us is managing anything at all.
Then she pulls back.
Looks down.
Her hand presses to her belly fast, instinctive, the gesture I've been watching since July.
Something crosses her face.
She looks up at me.
Smiling.
Scared.
Both at once, the way she does everything.
"I think it's time," she says.