Fallen (16 page)

Faith wanted her mother. She wanted to put her head on Evelyn’s shoulder and feel her wiry, strong hands patting her back as she whispered that everything was going to be all right. She wanted to watch her mother tease Jeremy about his long hair and bounce Emma on her knee. Most of all, she wanted to talk to her mother about how awful today had been, to get her advice on whether or not to trust the union rep who was telling her she didn’t need a lawyer, or to listen to the lawyer who was telling her the union rep was too tight with the Atlanta force.

“Oh, God,” she breathed into Emma’s neck. Faith needed her mother.

Tears flooded into her eyes, and for once she did not try to stop them. She was alone for the first time since she’d stepped foot inside her mother’s house hours ago. She wanted to fall apart. She
needed
to fall apart. But Jeremy wanted his mother, too. He needed Faith to be strong. Her son needed to believe her when she said that she would do whatever it took to get his grandmother back in one piece.

Judging by the cars, there were at least three cops waiting inside with her son. Jeremy had been crying when she called him from the
station—confused, worried, terrified for his grandmother as well as his mother. Amanda’s warning came back to Faith. Standing in Mrs. Levy’s living room, Faith had been surprised by Amanda’s hug, but not by her words, whispered in a low warning: “You’ve got two minutes to pull yourself together. If these men see you cry, all you will be to them for the rest of your career is a useless woman.”

Sometimes Faith thought that Amanda was fighting a battle that had been waged long ago, but sometimes she realized her boss was right. Faith used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes. She pushed open the car door and slipped her purse onto her free shoulder. Emma shifted, startled by the cold air. Faith pulled up her blanket and pressed her lips to the top of the baby’s head. Her skin was warm. The fine hairs tickled Faith’s lips as she walked up the driveway.

She thought of all the things she had to do before she could go to bed. The house would need to be straightened, no matter the circumstances. Emma needed to be put to bed. Jeremy would need reassurances, and probably dinner. She would have to talk to her brother Zeke at some point. If there was any grace in the world, he was somewhere over the Atlantic right now, flying home from Germany, so she wouldn’t have to speak with him tonight. Their relationship had never been good. Thankfully, Amanda had handled the phone calls or Faith would’ve wasted most of the afternoon yelling at Zeke rather than talking to the Atlanta police. Faith felt a modicum of relief as she climbed the front stairs. Only the threat of having to talk to her brother could make the way she’d spent the last six hours look inviting. She reached for the doorknob just as the door swung open.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Faith stood with her mouth open, staring up at her brother Zeke. “How did you—”

“What happened, Faith? What did you do?”

“How—” Faith felt incapable of forming a complete sentence.

“Dude, chill.” Jeremy pushed past his uncle and took Emma from Faith’s arms. “You okay, Mom?”

“I’m fine,” she told him, but it was Zeke who had her attention. “Did you come from Germany?”

Jeremy supplied, “He’s living in Florida now.” He pulled Faith into the house. “Did you eat? I can make you something.”

“Yes—I mean, no. I’m fine.” She stopped worrying about Zeke for a moment and concentrated on her son. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but she saw he was putting on a brave face.

Faith tried to pull him closer, but he didn’t budge, probably because Zeke was watching their every move. She told Jeremy, “I want you to stay here with me tonight.”

He shrugged.
No big deal
. “Sure.”

“We’re going to get her back, Jaybird. I promise you.”

Jeremy looked down at Emma, jostling her in his arms. “Jaybird” had been Evelyn’s name for him until his entire elementary school heard her use it one day and teased him into tears. He said, “Aunt Mandy told me the same thing when she called. That she’ll get Grammy back.”

“Well, you know Aunt Mandy doesn’t lie.”

He tried to make a joke of it. “I’d hate to be those guys when she finds them.”

Faith put her hand to Jeremy’s cheek. There was stubble there, something she would never get used to. Her little boy was taller than her, but she knew that he wasn’t as strong. “Grandma’s tough. You know she’s a fighter. And you know she’ll do whatever it takes to get back to you. To us.”

Zeke made a disgusted sound, and Faith gave him a nasty look over Jeremy’s shoulder. He said, “Victor wants you to call him. You remember Victor, right?”

Victor Martinez was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to right now. She told Jeremy, “Go put Emma down for me, all right? And turn out some of those lights. Georgia Power doesn’t need all of my paycheck.”

“You sound like Grandpa.”

“Go.”

Jeremy glanced back at Zeke, reluctant to leave. His instinct had always been to protect Faith.

“Now,” she told him, gently pushing him toward the stairs.

Zeke at least had the decency to wait until Jeremy was out of earshot. He crossed his arms over his chest, puffing up his already sizable frame. “What the hell kind of mess did you get Mom into?”

“Glad to see you, too.” She pushed past him and walked down the hall toward the kitchen. Despite what she’d told Jeremy, Faith hadn’t eaten anything of substance since two o’clock, and she could feel that familiar throbbing headache and wave of nausea that signaled something wasn’t right.

“If anything happens to Mom—”

“What, Zeke?” Faith spun around to face him. He had always been a bully, and just like all of his kind, standing up to him was the only way to stop it. “What are you going to do to me? Throw away my dolls? Give me an Indian burn?”

“I didn’t—”

“I’ve spent the last six hours being grilled by assholes who think I got my mother kidnapped and went on a murderous rampage. I don’t need the same kind of crap from my asshole brother.”

She turned back around and walked toward the kitchen. There was a ginger-haired young man sitting at her table. His jacket was off. A Smith and Wesson M&P hung out of his tactical-style shoulder holster like a black tongue. The straps were tight around his chest, making his shirt blouse out. He was thumbing through the Lands’ End catalogue that had come in the mail yesterday, pretending he hadn’t just heard Faith screaming at the top of her lungs. He stood when she entered the room. “Agent Mitchell, I’m Derrick Connor with the APD hostage negotiation task force.”

“Thank you for being here.” She hoped her tone sounded genuine. “I take it there haven’t been any phone calls?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Any updates?”

“No, ma’am, but you’ll be the first to hear.”

Faith doubted that very seriously. Ginger wasn’t just here to catch phone calls. Until the brass said otherwise, Faith had a dark cloud hanging over her head. “There’s another officer here?”

“Detective Taylor. He’s checking the perimeter. I can get him for you if—”

“I’d just like some privacy, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right outside if you need me.” Connor nodded to Zeke before leaving by the sliding glass door.

Faith groaned as she sat down at the table, feeling like she’d been on her feet for hours, even though she’d been sitting for most of the day. Zeke still had his arms crossed over his chest. He was blocking the doorway as if he thought she might try to bolt.

She asked, “Are you still in the Air Force?”

“I got transferred to Eglin four months ago.”

Right around the time Emma was born. “In Florida?”

“Last time I checked.” Her questions were obviously ratcheting up his anger. “I’m in the middle of a two-week in-service at the VA hospital on Clairmont. It’s a good thing I just happened to be in town or Jeremy would’ve been alone all day.”

Faith stared at her brother. Zeke Mitchell had always looked like he was standing at attention. Even at ten years old, he’d acted like an Air Force major, which was to say that he had been born with a giant steel rod shoved up his ass.

She asked, “Does Mom know you were stateside?”

“Of course she does. We were supposed to have dinner tomorrow night.”

“You didn’t think to tell me?”

“I didn’t want the drama.”

Faith let out a long sigh as she sat back in the chair. There it was—the defining word of their relationship. Faith had brought
drama
to Zeke’s senior year by getting pregnant. Her
drama
had forced him to leave high school early and sign away ten years of his life to the military. There was more
drama
when she decided to keep Jeremy, and a
heaping pile of
drama
when she’d cried uncontrollably at their father’s funeral.

“I’ve been watching the news.” He said it like an indictment.

Faith pushed herself up from the table. “Then you know I killed two men today.”

“Where were you?”

Her hands shook as she opened the cabinet and took out a nutrition bar. She had said it like it was nothing—she had killed two men today. Faith had noticed during the interrogation that the more she talked about it, the more anesthetized she became to the reality of the act, so that saying it now only made her feel numb.

Zeke repeated, “I asked you a question, Faith. Where were you when Mom needed you?”

“Where were
you
?” She tossed the bar onto the table. Her mind was spinning out again. She should test her blood sugar before she ate anything. “I was at a training seminar.”

“You were late.”

She assumed he was making a lucky guess. “I wasn’t late.”

“I talked to Mom this morning.”

Faith felt her senses sharpen. “What time? Did you tell the police?”

“Of course I told the police. I talked to her around noon.”

Faith had gotten to their mother’s house less than two hours later. “Did she seem okay? What did she say?”

“She said that you were late again, Faith, like you always are. That’s how it is. The world bends to your schedule.”

“Christ,” she whispered. She couldn’t take this right now. She was suspended from work for God only knew how long. Her mother could be dead. Her son was devastated and she couldn’t get her brother out of her face long enough to catch her breath. Adding to the stress, her head felt like it was trapped in a vise. She fished around in her purse for her blood-testing kit. Slipping into a coma, while at the moment an attractive prospect, wasn’t going to help anything.

Faith laid out the kit on the table. She hated being watched when she tested her blood, but Zeke didn’t seem inclined to give her any privacy. Faith changed the needle in the pen, unwrapped a sterile wipe. Zeke watched her like a hawk. He was a doctor. She could almost hear his brain cataloguing the wrong way she was doing things.

Faith squeezed some blood onto the strip. The number flashed up. She showed Zeke the LED because she knew that he would ask.

He said, “When was your last meal?”

“I had some cheese crackers at the station.”

“That’s not enough.”

She got up and opened the refrigerator. “I know.”

“It’s high. Probably from the stress.”

“I know that, too.”

“What’s your last A1C?”

“Six point one.”

He sat down at the table. “That’s not bad.”

“No,” she agreed, getting her insulin out of the fridge door. It was actually a hair above her target, which was pretty damn good considering Faith had just had a baby.

“Do you really think what you said?” He paused, and she could tell it took a lot out of him to ask the question. “Do you think we’ll get her back?”

She sat back down. “I don’t know.”

“Was she injured?”

Faith shook her head and shrugged at the same time. The police weren’t sharing anything with her.

His chest rose and fell. “Why would someone take her? Are you …” For a change, he tried to be sensitive. “Are you messed up in something?”

“Why are you such a jerk all the time?” She didn’t expect an answer. “Mom ran a narc squad for fifteen years, Zeke. She made enemies. That was part of her job. And you know about the investigation. You know why she retired.”

“That was four years ago.”

“These things don’t have a time limit. Maybe somebody decided they want something from her.”

“Like what? Money? She doesn’t have any. I’m on all her accounts. She’s got her pension from the city, some of Dad’s retirement, and that’s it. Not even Social Security yet.”

“It has to be related to a case.” Faith drew the insulin into the syringe. “Her entire team went to prison. A lot of very bad people were pissed off to see their bought-and-paid-for cops taken out of the game.”

“You think Mom’s guys are involved in this?”

Faith shook her head. They had always called Evelyn’s team “Mom’s guys,” mostly because it was easier to keep track of them that way. “I have no idea who’s involved or why.”

“Are you looking into all their old cases and interviewing perps?”

“ ‘Perps’? Where the hell did you get that from?” Faith lifted up her shirt just enough to jab the needle into her belly. There was no immediate rush; the drug didn’t work that way. Still, Faith closed her eyes, willing the nausea to pass. “I’m suspended, Zeke. They took my badge and my gun and told me to go home. Tell me what you want me to do.”

He folded his hands on the table and stared at his thumbs. “Can you make some phone calls? Work some sources? I don’t know, Faith. You’ve been a cop for twenty years. Call in some favors.”

“Fifteen years, and there’s no one to call. I killed two men today. Did you not see the way that cop was looking at me? They think I’m involved in this. No one is going to do me any favors.”

His jaw worked. He was used to his orders being followed. “Mom still has friends.”

“And they’re all probably shitting their pants right now worried that whatever she’s messed up in that got her kidnapped is going to blow back on them.”

He didn’t like that. His chin tucked into his chest. “All right. I guess there’s nothing you can do. We’re helpless. And so is Mom.”