Bryan
Fuck, why wasn’t Lexis answering his texts? Bryan paced outside the interrogation room, as he had been for the last hour since he sent the original text. It had been a shitty day of little to no answers on any of the investigations they had been working on.
The girl they picked up at the pharmacy had stonewalled them something fierce. She hadn’t said more than two words the entire time they’d held her, and since they couldn’t charge her with anything other than a misdemeanor count of fleeing from police, they couldn’t hold her any longer and had been forced to let her go.
Strangely, the girl had looked almost more afraid to be leaving the confines of the police station than she had when they arrested her. A car with dark tinted windows picked her up outside the station, and the chief had taken one look at her as she passed him in the bullpen and demanded they put an officer on her tail. It was unlike Chief Gallo to bark out orders like that. But he seemed to take one look at her defeated expression, and anger took over his whole body.
Add that to the mystery of Lexis’ neighbors, and Bryan’s day had gone from bad to worse. A property owner search had turned up nothing but the name of an out-of-state corporation, and he was at a dead end on that front as well.
But if there was one thing Bryan trusted even more than his brothers in blue, it was his gut. And his gut told him that the men he’d seen in the driveway that morning were bad news, and that Lexis and Ash were not safe as long as they were living next to the strange men.
Finally, his phone dinged and vibrated in his hand, as it received a text. Relief coursed through his body as he saw that it was Lexis. But just as quickly, his every muscle tensed again when he read her message.
“Fuck!” His voice boomed through the cavernous room; several people stopped what they were doing to look his way.
“Coy, what the hell is wrong with you?” McCracken came striding out of his office, a file clutched in his hand.
“Worried about Lex. Something is up with her neighbors, and I told her to stay away from her house, but she’s already there.” Bryan raked his fingers through his hair, tugging it a little and trying to get control of his warring emotions.
“I was actually just coming out to ask you something about her.” McCracken opened the file in his hand, looking at the sheet that lay inside. “She lives over on Maple, right? Five hundred block?”
“Yeah, why?” Bryan didn’t like the look on the sergeant’s face one bit. It was stone cold, as if he were trying to detach himself from a case that hit too close to home.
“Dispatch has gotten a bunch of calls in the past half hour about a suspicious smell in that area.” He paused and looked up at Bryan. “Like rotten eggs or cat urine. One person said they thought a sewer main might have broken.”
Bryan spun on his heel, heading for the door, McCracken close at his back.
“I’ve got two cars on the way over to check it out. It might be nothing.” McCracken’s voice was unnaturally even, and Bryan hated it. He wanted to spin around and punch his commanding officer in the face, get him to feel the urgency and panic clawing inside his own veins.
“It’s not nothing, and you know it.” Bryan slammed open the door to the back parking lot and rushed to his car. They both slid into their seats, and just as they pulled out onto the road, a boom sounded in the distance, followed by a plume of dark smoke over the trees. “Shit.”
Bryan flipped on the sirens and tore down the street like a street racer on crack. “A fucking meth lab has been in the house next to my woman and her son for a fucking week, and I had no clue.” He pounded his fist against the steering wheel, anger at himself and the assholes ruining his town taking over his body.
“There is no way you could have known, Coy.” McCracken tried to reason. “You know just as well as I do that these guys are fucking smart. They’ve been cooking this stuff in houses all over town, and we never find out until they’ve already moved locations.”
“I should have made sure they were safe. I should’ve moved them into my house months ago. Why did I wait so long to take what’s mine?”
Another gut wrenching explosion, and then a quick third echoed through the valley, and Bryan had to fight to keep his lunch down, imagining what they would find as he pulled onto the street filled with smoke and chaos. People ran away from the house that was now engulfed in flames, and the wail of nearby fire trucks grew closer.
But Bryan couldn’t wait for them to arrive. He leapt from the car and sprinted toward the house he had spent the past six months keeping safe from careless drivers. But never had he thought there might be something far more dangerous so close.
“Officer Coy, stop. Wait for fire and hazmat, godammit.” McCracken’s commanding voice did no good.
It didn’t matter if Bryan got fired, hell if he died. He would get to his woman and bring her and her son to safety, screw the consequences.
His eyes burned from the chemical-laden smoke filling the air. As he charged up to the house, he saw that the flames from next door hadn’t made it to Lexis’ place yet, thank god. But several windows and a wall on the side closest to the meth house had been blown out.
Next door, only a few walls and the guts of the house still stood. And even those were totally overrun with fire. The heat of it hit Bryan in the face, and sweat quickly ran down his face and soaked his shirt. His lungs heaved with the effort of running in the polluted air, but he kept going.
The door to her house had been blown off one of the hinges and hung precariously in his way. Bryan kicked it the rest of the way down and stormed into the house. Struggling to see around the black smoke hanging in the air, he dropped to all fours and crawled under the smoke to try to see better. Finally, his eyes rested on the sweetest face he’d ever seen. Lexis was sprawled across the stairs, a pile of vomit nearby, and her skin pale.
Shouting her name, he scuttled across the tile to her side. Her chest rose and fell with effort, but just seeing the movement nearly made him cry with relief. Drawing her closer to him, she roused a little with the movement.
“Ash.” Her voice was raw and hoarse, panicked, despite her tenuous grip on consciousness.
Bryan wildly looked around the room, but saw no sign of the boy. Then it dawned on him; Lexis had been trying to get up the stairs to reach Ash. Indecision warred in his head. He needed to get Lexis to safety. God only knew the house could blow again at any minute, or the fire could spread. But he also knew Lexis would never forgive him if he sacrificed her boy for her.
Mind made up. Bryan dragged Lexis a little closer to the door and sprang up the stairs, three at a time. He called for Ashton over and over, but couldn’t get a response. Opening each door one-by-one, Bryan searched frantically for Ash, his heart firmly lodged in his throat the entire time.
The kid wasn’t in his room, nor the bathroom across the hall from his room. Barging into Lexis’ room, his knees nearly went out from under him as he took in the gaping hole where the wall behind the bed used to be. Images of what could have happened if Lexis and been lying there when the explosion happened forced their way into his mind.
Shutting those thoughts down, he continued on his search for Ash. Finally, Bryan ran into the master bathroom to find a shaking and pale Ash curled into a ball in the tub. He was awake, but obviously in shock. Bryan grabbed him in a football hold and sprinted for the stairs. With a momentary pause, he scooped up Lexis and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold.
Both the people that meant the most to him in the world now secure in his grip, Bryan escaped the house and ran toward the ambulances lining the street at a safe distance from the fire. Fire crews worked to contain the flames next door, but the house the meth lab had been in was a complete loss, no point in trying to save it at that point. Across the street, hazmat suited up and prepared to investigate the remnants of the house once the fire got knocked down. But they all knew what would be discovered.
Four paramedics raced across the lawn, meeting Bryan halfway. As much as it pained him to do so, he laid down Ash and Lexis on the grass and let the people that knew what they were doing get to work. One tried to check him out as well, but he blew him off. At worst Bryan would have some smoke inhalation; he’d had far worse over the course of his career. The only things on earth that mattered at that point were the two people lying prone at his feet. He paced back and forth, listening as the EMTs shouted terminology back and forth that he couldn’t understand.
“Are they okay? Will they be okay?” The desperation his voice couldn’t be masked, and he didn’t even try. He felt the edges of his sanity fraying as he waited to hear whether or not his whole world would collapse in the matter of minutes.
“They’re stable.” A paramedic that gave off the aura of a seasoned first responder spoke in clear but quick words. “The woman has a nasty concussion, a most likely broken wrist, smoke inhalation and some chemical burns. The boy is in shock, also has smoke inhalation, but appears to be otherwise fine. Where did you find him?”
“He was in the bathtub.” A small amount of relief allowed his muscles to ease. They were going to be okay.
The paramedic nodded his head, considering this new information. “That kid is either incredibly smart or incredibly lucky. That tub probably saved his life.”
Bryan braced his hands on his knees as raw emotion bore down on him. Tears pricked at his eyes, and his heart slammed in his chest. He almost lost them. He didn’t even really have them yet, and he’d almost lost them.
Looking back at the house that almost ended the love of his life before it could really go anywhere, Bryan sincerely hoped the fuckers that had been cooking some of the worst drugs known to man in this quiet residential neighborhood hadn’t made it out of the explosion. Because if they did, he wouldn’t stop until they were made to pay.
***
Normally the smell of hospitals made Bryan nauseous. He hated the mix of disinfectant and disease that hung in the air. But he would take it over the chemical perfumed smoke he had just come from.
It had taken some convincing, but he had somehow gotten the hospital to allow Lexis and Ashton to share a room. They would need each other nearby once they came to. Bryan alternated between beds, first holding Lexis’s hand and stroking her cheek, then brushing Ashton’s hair off his face and holding his hand as well.
The consensus seemed to be that they both just needed rest. After several tests on both of them, there didn’t appear to be any major internal injuries. But Lexis’ head injury would take time to heal itself, and they had put her under a medically induced coma to give her that time. Ashton had fallen into a deep sleep shortly after being admitted, and had yet to stir. The doctors insisted he was simply sleeping, and wasn’t in a coma or anything of the sort.
The door to their room swung open almost silently, and in walked Chief Gallo, the man who had served as more of a mentor and father figure than any other man in Bryan’s life ever had.
Bryan stood out of habit and respect, but the Chief waved at him to return to his seat. “How are they doing?”
“Okay. Both resting, but they’ll be okay.” Bryan fought to keep his voice even, when all he wanted to do was fall apart. “What about these low-life meth cookers? Were they in the house?”
The Chief pulled up a chair and sat it between the two beds as well, facing Bryan. “No. It appears they intentionally rigged the place to blow. Our best guess? They got spooked at the idea of a cop being around the neighborhood so much and decided to move shop early; getting rid of the evidence in a fire is pretty standard for these dimwits.”
“Fuck.” Bryan planted his elbows on his knees and buried his hands in his hair. “It was my presence that put them in danger. If I had just left Lexis alone, none of this would have happened.”
“Stop that.” Chief Gallo stretched one foot out and kicked at Bryan’s foot to get his attention. Once Bryan looked up to return his friend’s intense stare, the Chief continued. “The only people to blame in this scenario are the assholes trying to take our town down one drug at a time. If not for your love for these two, they’d be dead right now. You saved them. You focus on that. And bringing these fuckers down.”
A gasp from the bed to Bryan’s left made both their heads swing to the little boy lying there, now wide awake.
Ashton glanced over at Bryan, eyes round as saucers. “He said a bad word.” The kid signed and spoke at the same time, and his face scrunched up in confusion as he felt behind his ears for the missing hearing aids.
Bryan leaned over Ashton’s bed, making sure to make eye contact with him as he haltingly tried to sign the best he could. “Your hearing aids broke because of the explosion.”
Ashton nodded, then looking over at his mom, signed to ask if she was okay.
“She will be. Don’t worry. And I’ll be here the whole time.”
The small smile Ash managed to give Bryan made his chest crack wide open. The kid was made of tough stuff. And Bryan wanted to help make sure Ashton never had to endure anything like this ever again.