Fallen (9 page)

“It’s not. I should’ve been there for Kristen.” She sounded angry with herself. “She was there for us—”

“She’ll understand. You can call her next week.” Tentatively, he clasped her upper arms, wanting to touch her but half-expecting her to pull away. Instead, she laid her fingers against his shirtfront. Ryan swallowed thickly.

Her delicately arched eyebrows knitted together as she frowned. “I … don’t understand myself sometimes. I’m an ER doctor. I see death every day—”

“Lydia,” he murmured, hushing her as he searched for something he could say to make it all right. As if anything could ever be right for either of them again. But he paused at the figure standing in the threshold of the patio doors. The lights in the tavern’s interior silhouetted Molly’s frame. Reluctantly, he dropped his hands, and Lydia took a self-conscious step away from him, fixing her gaze elsewhere.

“Ryan? I’ll be ready to go in about ten minutes. I just need to split my tips with the other staff and clock out.”

“All right,” he rasped. He looked again at Lydia once the waitress had departed. She’d moved farther from him, forced her usual composure back into place.

“I don’t remember Molly,” she said casually. He figured she’d jumped to conclusions. Ryan recalled how he’d felt finding out about Rick Varek.

“She’s new here, sort of. Maybe three or four months.”

“She’s pretty.” Her eyes met his for a bare, searching second, and then she reached for the satin clutch she’d placed on the patio ledge. “And I really have to be going. I’ve got rounds at six thirty in the morning.”

“Let me walk you to your car.” He felt there was more to be said between them.

“You’re making a habit of that,” she pointed out, forcing a smile. “It isn’t necessary—”

“It’s late and this isn’t the safest area at night. But wait here a minute? I need to take care of something.”

She sighed softly but gave a faint nod. Ryan went inside and spotted Adam, who sat at the bar with two others watching ESPN and snacking on pistachios, apparently in no hurry to go home. “Do something for me?”

“That all depends,” Adam said tersely. “Does it have to do with Lydia showing up?”

He had noticed his brother hadn’t come over to say hello. “She knew Nate. And for the record, I
invited
her—”

“I guess she left the surgeon at home tonight.” Adam cracked another shell and shook his head at him. Ryan regretted having mentioned Varek. But he’d blurted it out Sunday night when Adam had come by the house to do his laundry.

“Do you want to help or not?”

“All right,” Adam sighed. “What?”

He’d already looked around the bar and no longer saw Seth Kimmel. He might have left, but Ryan didn’t want to take any chances. He asked Adam to wait for Molly near the kitchen and make sure she got to the rail station without interference.

He didn’t seem displeased with the assignment. “Sure. But if you ask me, you’re missing a real opportunity.”

“I didn’t ask.” Bracing his hand on Adam’s shoulder in thanks, he headed back to the patio but slowed as he neared its doors. He could already see it was unoccupied. Deflated, he walked onto it anyway, knowing in his gut she’d slipped out rather than going into the bar to wait for him. Lydia had an independent streak a mile wide. He figured Molly’s statement about when she was getting off from work had left a lot open to interpretation, too. His ego had kept him from setting her straight. Only her empty wine glass remained. Its rim bore the faint smudge of her lipstick. The goblet sat on one of the bar’s paper napkins, anchoring it against the breeze that had begun to pick up and hinted of an approaching rain.

I’m fine, Ryan. Good night,
she’d written with an ink pen on the paper. He wasn’t so sure, and he wondered if he could still catch up to her, or even in what direction she might have parked.

But a voice inside him said to just let her go.

He stared briefly out over the park in resignation. Then he went into the tavern’s vestibule and took his navy dress coat from a row of wooden pegs behind the hostess desk, deciding to leave things as he had with Adam seeing Molly to the station. The barroom noise floated around him. Folding the coat over his arm, he stepped out onto the sidewalk. Thunder rumbled, the air sticky and warm, and a pitchfork of lightning lit the distant sky. The storm was moving in from the west.

The downtown’s Luckie Marietta District was a walkable community of restaurants and bars, although there was currently little foot traffic due to the late hour and impending rain. Passing the church-turned-music venue known as The Tabernacle and reaching the street where he’d parallel parked, Ryan stood at his SUV, fishing inside his pants pocket for his keys. At that same moment, his attention was drawn to the street corner. A shadowed figure wearing an oversize hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head despite the heat stood there. It was too dark, and he was too far away to see his face, but he appeared to be watching Ryan. He turned and disappeared onto a side street as an APD squad car rolled past.

Getting into his vehicle and starting the engine, Ryan made a U-turn and went in the same direction, his curiosity piqued. The first raindrops hit his windshield as he drove up Spring Street.

The sidewalk was abandoned. Whoever it was, was gone.

Chapter Seven

You’re a cop.
Stay calm.

He called out again, turning in a circle to view all areas of the compact backyard. His breath fogged in the biting cold.

Find him.

Still calling as he paced farther out, he scanned the line of shrubbery marking the property’s border. Brown, dead leaves blanketed the bushes’ tops. He searched for a flash of blue pajamas against the iron-gray morning. A small head of unruly dark hair, a hand covering a giggling mouth. Tyler loved to play.

Not the time for it, buddy.

“This isn’t a game,” Ryan called loudly, a growing unease inside him. “This isn’t hide-and-seek. Come out now.”

Everything in the small room remained the same. The twin big-boy bed with its cheerful patchwork quilt, toys arranged on shelves and piled high inside a painted chest. A mobile of rocket ships floated in midair, although the nightlight that projected stars onto the ceiling had burned out months ago.

Tired of chasing sleep, Ryan often ended up here.

He had never been able to pack up Tyler’s things, instead maintaining a connection to him through those items that proved his existence. In this place, he could almost hear his raspy little laugh, could still smell the warm vanilla scent of his skin. Throat thickened by the memory, Ryan became aware of another heavy roll of thunder overhead. A storm—the second tonight—moving across the city.

It was what had originally awakened him from his troubled sleep.

Absently turning one of Tyler’s stuffed animals around in his palms, he wandered to the room’s blue-curtained window. Through it he saw lights burning in the small apartment over the detached garage. Chest bare, wearing only pajama bottoms, Ryan peered out through the rain at the soft glow.

Tess kept late hours, or early ones, depending on how you looked at it. A station wagon parked on the street with Florida tags indicated she again had an overnight guest. Ryan had seen him before, a silver-haired gentleman who came through town every few months.

Good for her
, he thought.

No one should be completely alone.

For a time, he stood in this too-quiet place and watched the downpour, again grappling with whether he’d done the right thing in not going after Lydia last night. Ryan had believed—God, he had hoped—that giving her the freedom she wanted would allow her to begin healing. That distance from him and their crushing tragedy would let her start over, somehow.

But after her rare openness with him at the bar and the fragility she had allowed him to see, he wondered now if that was simply what he had wanted to believe.

Maybe no one ever really recovered from this kind of loss.

Somberly, he took a last look around the room before placing the toy back against the pillows and closing the door behind him. Returning to his own bed, he lay down again, for a time staring at the high white ceiling. Then he turned on the room’s television, still restless and unable to sleep. His alarm would start ringing in another hour or so, anyway.

He’d begun flipping channels, looking for something besides infomercials and
Law & Order
reruns, when his cell phone vibrated on the nightstand. He’d turned off the sound for Nate’s interment. In his profession, calls late at night and in the early-morning hours weren’t unusual, but they rarely brought good news. Reaching for the phone, he squinted at its screen in the TV’s silvered light.

“Yeah.” Despite his time awake, his voice sounded rough from disuse.

“I just heard from Narco,” Mateo said. “A CI gave information on a meth shipment being housed at the Purvis Street property. It arrived last night. They roused a judge out of bed an hour ago to sign the warrant.”

Adrenaline kicked in. Ryan sat up, dislodging an offended Max from the spot he’d taken on the coverlet. Their plan was to piggyback off the warrant. A drug bust would provide the opportunity to get inside the house and identify possible evidence. If they were supremely lucky, they’d find the gun used in both murders. Already, he was walking toward the shower. “When?”

“Gangstas like to stay up late and party, right? The strike team wants to get the drop on them, hit early while the bastards are still snug in their beds.”

Ryan heard Evie’s sleepy voice in the background. Mateo spoke to her in hushed Spanish, then returned to the call.

“Bring your Kevlar, amigo. We strike at the ass-crack of dawn.”

*

DEA agents had begun referring to Atlanta as the “new Miami” due to its growing repute as the central hub for drug trafficking along the East Coast. And while Hispanic cartels were becoming predominant, urban youth gangs still thrived in the trade, as well. A confidential informant had offered knowledge of the shotgun being used as a temporary stash house, until the methamphetamine could be processed and distributed.

It had stopped raining, the first hint of daybreak casting the decaying street in a grainy haze. Boots thudded softly over wet concrete as SWAT officers crept onto the property and around the sides of the old house to seal off possible exits. Keeping low, Ryan moved cautiously forward, in-step with Mateo and several Narcotics detectives charged with bringing up the rear once the specialized team had entered. Humid air filled his lungs. He wore sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt, his gold detective’s badge on a chain around his neck and his Glock held ready. Like the other plainclothes, his vest marked him clearly as APD.

Above him, four of their men had climbed noiselessly onto the porch. Outfitted in riot gear, the unit’s lead gave the signal to commence. The no-knock warrant would hopefully allow them to catch the occupants off guard.

“Police!” Two blows with a battering ram, and the door flew open. Officers burst inside. Ryan advanced with the swarm, its ranks flowing to the left and right of the shotgun’s narrow interior, more men ascending a rickety staircase to a second level. The house jolted to life. Shouts and the sounds of scurrying feet filled the rooms. The piss-colored light that had been on in the first floor went out as occupants scrambled.

In front of him, Mateo laid hands on a fleeing male—probably no more than sixteen—grabbing him by the back of an oversize athletic jersey. “Where’re you goin’?”

He shoved him face-first to the interior’s peeling wallpaper. Ryan stepped in to help, holding the combative youth in place until Mateo could bring his arms back and snap handcuffs on his wrists. They laid him stomach-down on the floor. The kid cursed at them, his right cheek against the filthy carpet runner.

“You got him?”

“Yeah, go. You have anything that’ll stick me?” Mateo barked, straddling the teenager as he prepared to check the pockets of his baggy jeans for weapons.

Ryan moved past, heading up the stairs toward the commotion on the second floor. Halfway up, the sharp pop of gunshots above him sent electricity tingling over his skin. His back against the paneled stairwell, gun gripped in both hands, he hastened his climb to the top. The second floor was poorly lit, as well. A SWAT officer on the landing stood over a bare-chested, tattooed male who lay sprawled on the battered wood flooring. A high-powered flashlight held by another of the officers illuminated a mortal wound to his skull and a gun on the floor near his hand. Blood bloomed beneath his head, his eyes staring blankly upward. Ryan recalled him as one of the gang members who’d come out on the porch with the pit bull two days earlier.

Around him, other gangbangers were on their knees, handcuffed. The first of them was yanked up and escorted down the stairs.

“All rooms clear,” an officer in back announced loudly. Ryan holstered his gun.

“We got six. The ones you see here and two more in back,” Sam Jankowski, a muscled ex-Marine and the SWAT team leader, told him. “Same number downstairs.”