Chapter 12

Chrissy

I watched the city go by through the dark glass of the SUV’s tinted window and felt tears slide down my face. I was one big ball of hurt, my injuries aching and overtaxed by the hustle to get out of there, but I would be lying if I said that was the only reason why I was crying.

Parnell and Tony were both silent in the front seat and their silence was a sober one. Traffic was awful at this hour and every time we stopped, I would turn my face from the glass, afraid someone might be able to see in, might point me out to the other people crowding the corner waiting to cross the street or stop the other people bustling back and forth on the sidewalk.

I was so absorbed with not being seen that I didn’t even notice when we pulled up in front of my building. I flinched when Tony opened the back door and he murmured, “Easy, I’ve got you.”

He helped me down carefully after hefting my bags and getting down was far easier than getting up had been. Hitching the totes higher on his shoulder, he kept me in front of him, herding me quickly and efficiently inside, and I blinked, surprised that Parnell was already there, holding the door to the elevator open. We went up to the second floor and hustled to my front door. I pulled the keys out of my purse in the top of my bag while Tony grimaced saying, “Should have had you get those out. My bad.”

I unlocked my door, we rushed inside and shut it tightly behind us, and I flipped on the light.

Total destruction.

“Son of a fucking bitch.” His voice was somewhere between disbelief and incendiary rage, while I? I felt nothing but pure, unadulterated, defeat.

Fluff from my chair’s ripped open cushions littered the room, my couch was just gone. Glass littered the floor, crunching under Tony’s boots as he un-holstered his big black gun. He checked the bathroom, my bedroom, and all the closets and put it up, once he was satisfied we were alone. I simply stared.

Stupid bitch, was scrawled across my living room wall in black spray paint. Pictures of me were piled in a drift, some torn, others with my eyes burned out with a cigarette. I stood there, feeling hot, feeling cold, feeling empty and feeling so full that all I wanted to do was scream and I couldn’t do anything… nothing at all. My whole life was just like this room was now. Utterly destroyed.

I listened to Tony talk on the phone, his voice a distant buzz in my ears as I surveyed the damage from my fixed point in the room. He ended his call, sticking the phone in his back pocket and I slowly raised my eyes to meet his.

“I have no place else to go…” I said, and the panic and the fear and the ‘oh god, what am I going to do now?’ welled up from the center of my being like blood from a cut, spilling out my eyes in a hot rush. Tony’s grim expression turned resigned and he shook his head.

“Never mind that now. You got a suitcase?”

“Hall closet,” I murmured.

“Good, let’s pack your shit.”

We went into my bedroom which had a lot of my things ripped from hangars and piled on the floor. The strong smell of urine assaulted my nose and I went to find the things that were still hanging and left in my drawers. My bed had been shredded, the ticking from the mattress welling out of the open wounds and it was a decent visual representation of how I was feeling.

“Take anything that’s important to you, anything that’s sentimental,” he ordered gently.

I handed him things and he carefully put them away. His phone buzzed and he checked the screen and said, “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

He went out to the living room and let people into my home. I didn’t care… I mean… it wasn’t really my home anymore, was it? They’d taken everything from me. My best friend, my sense of safety, my home… just everything.

I didn’t cry anymore. I didn’t feel anything. I just numbly moved through the room and let Tony take the lead. Just gathered every little salvageable remaining bit of precious that I had. The photos I had left of me and my parents. The pictures of me and Sami. The jewelry they’d dropped when they’d been hastily stuffing their pockets. I gripped my mother’s locket in my good fist. Somehow they’d dropped it. I pressed that fist to my mouth and tried so very hard not to let the dam break in front of all these people but in the end, it all came rushing up, the bottle I’d kept stuffing all my feelings into broke and I ended up shaking and crying and generally looking like a total mad woman.

But then he was there, shielding me from all of those eyes. Giving me a place to take shelter from the storm, even though the storm raged inside of me. I pressed my forehead to Tony’s shoulder and just cried and cried, because what the hell else was I going to do?

***

One of the police officers pressed a cup of coffee into my good hand and I automatically took a sip, wincing at the bitterness. There was a crime scene unit dusting every available surface for prints while Tony, his partner, and their captain stood to the side.

They were talking about me, arguing, and I couldn’t find it in me to really even care for the time being. I was perched carefully on the edge of my ruined living room chair and couldn’t really say how long I’d been sitting here like this.

Tony came over and knelt in front of me and put his hands on my knees. He looked up at me, searching my face, eyes tracking back and forth, catching mine.

“You in there, Chrissy?” he asked, voice low and careful.

“I’m here,” I said.

“We’re gonna move you to a safe house, outside the city.”

“Okay.”

“You trust me?”

“Yeah, why?”

He smiled and it wasn’t necessarily a pleasant one. More derisive than anything but I could tell it wasn’t directed at me, more at himself and maybe the police’s inability to do anything. He was frustrated, like me, but this was the system we lived with and it wasn’t perfect. It never would be, but it was what we had, and despite all of this horror show, I still believed in it.

God, I must be delusional.

“Haven’t been doing the best here,” he admitted.

“You’ve done all you could within the confines of your protocols and the law… I get that.”

“Okay,” he nodded and looked thoughtful. “Okay, baby. Gimme just a few more minutes and we’ll get the fuck out of here, okay?”

I nodded and his captain looked me over, calling out, “You’re sure about this?”

I looked up at him and swallowed hard, nodding and asking, “Where else am I going to go?”

He took a deep breath and let it out and nodded, his hands on his hips and said, “Okay.”

Tony shouldered my bags and let one of the uniforms take my suitcase and motioned for me to follow him out. The uniformed officer fell in behind me and we went for the elevator. Out on the street, it was full dark already, and Tony hustled me into the front seat of a waiting sedan. I got in and he closed the door, going around back and dropping my bags in the trunk. He lifted my suitcase back there and shut the trunk lid and he and the officer traded some words.

The officer disappeared back inside and Tony dropped into the driver’s seat behind the wheel. He reached over and took the cup of coffee from my hand, and put it in the cup holder and then helped me to buckle up.

I said nothing as he took us out of the city. If anything, I felt as if a weight lifted from my shoulders. The further across the Bay Bridge we got, the better I started to feel. The rush of pavement beneath the sedan’s tires lulling me until I fought to keep my chin off my chest. I was so tired, the crash after all that adrenaline something fierce. Exhaustion crept in and I fought to keep my eyes open, but it was a battle I was destined to lose.

“Chrissy. Chrissy, come on now, wake up for me.”

I jolted, opening my eyes and drawing in a deep breath. We were stopped, and I sat up and stretched what little I could carefully in my seat. I looked up to Tony, standing outside the open door to the car. A house was behind him, the front door standing open, a golden rectangle of light spilling out onto the porch, stretching out beyond it onto the gravel walkway and grass.

“Where are we?”

“We’re here, we’re safe.”

I unbuckled myself, reaching across with my right hand to hit the catch on the belt. Tony held down a hand and I put mine into his, letting him help me to my feet.

“Where’s here?”

“My place,” he said quietly and I blinked.

“Your place? As in your house?”

“Yep.”

“I thought we were going to a safe house.”

“Ain’t no place safer,” he said.

“Am I even allowed to be here?”

He chuckled, “You’re an adult, the Captain couldn’t get it cleared to take you to an ICPD run safe house because of the city’s damn budget crisis, and I wasn’t about to put you in some crappy hotel. It’ll be fine. You’ll have your own room here,” he swung the car door shut and I jumped, “and the guys will cover for me. We all agree, this shit ain’t right.”

This was a huge personal risk for Tony, and he had to trust me immensely to do it but all he’d asked of me was to trust him.

I looked up at him and swallowed hard, choking up with tears again, but this time of gratitude and said, “Thank you.”

“Let’s get you inside, come on.”

I let him lead me into his home and he closed the front door behind us. He tugged gently on my good hand and I drifted along behind him, up the staircase and down the hall. He touched a door and it swung open revealing a slightly outdated but clean bathroom.

“Bathroom for when you need it,” he murmured and then led me past two more doors before nudging in a third, “and this’ll be your room.”

It was a neatly made up guest room. The bed a queen, my suitcase and bags neatly placed beside the dresser. A set of my pajamas had been neatly laid on the bed and he asked, “Need help, still?”

I did but… “Won’t that get you in trouble?”

“Just you and me here, you sayin’ you’d tell?”

“What? No!”

He chuckled, “Okay then.”

I shivered and he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I…”

He waited me out and I took a deep breath and said without looking at him, “Self-conscious about the scars I guess.”

“Won’t look,” he murmured, his blunt fingers already working gently at the straps on my sling. He took it gently from me and laid it aside and then asked, “Okay, how do we do this?”

“Um, I need to get my right arm out, and then the neck over my head and then down off my left. It’s sort of easier getting in than out…”

He chuckled and it sounded a bit nervous, “I can see that.” His fingertips grazed my skin here and there and I felt it grow heated, an ache starting that had nothing to do with my injuries and everything to do with it had just been too damn long…

He was as good as his word, fixing his gaze on what he was doing, not looking, making what should have been a more than slightly embarrassing process that much more bearable. Of course, I’d had weeks of strangers dressing and undressing me, so this should be simple, right?

Not so much. I was acutely aware that not only was this a man I was attracted to, but also a man I had kissed before. I swallowed and he pulled me closer into the circle of his arms, his eyes fixing on mine as he carefully followed the band of my bra around my back and unhooked it by feel.

He dragged it from my arms, carefully, fingertips barely ghosting along the skin of my arms, raising goosebumps on my flesh as he tossed it behind me on the bed. I took a step back, my good arm across my breasts as he unbuttoned my burgundy pajama top and eased my bad arm down into the sleeve.

The whole process of undressing then dressing me was beyond intimate, and by the time he’d finished easing the last button through its respective button hole, I was just ready to die from the want and desire I had to kiss him. I bit my lips together to keep myself in check and sat on the edge of the bed when he ordered me to.

He took off my boots, and I watched him. He was so careful of me, incredibly respectful and so, so gentle. He had me stand and peeled my jeans down my legs, letting me steady myself with my good hand on his shoulder while I balanced on my bad leg to pull my good one free. I stepped into the satin pajama bottom and he pulled them up for me.

“Tomorrow, you can go through your stuff and figure out what more you need.”

“They left quite a bit unscathed, what I have should be fine.”

“Me and some of the guys from the Knights will go over to your apartment and clean shit up. I’ll see if I can scare up some boxes, but the clothes and shit might end up in trash bags. I’m sorry for that in advance.”

“It’s alright. I just want out of there now.”

“Yeah. I can understand that.”

He pulled together the things I’d been wearing and set them on top of my suitcase before he came back to me. He pulled back the blankets on the bed and asked, “Was I supposed to put you back in your sling?”

“No, I just need a pillow to put under this arm.”

“Right, be right back.”

He left the room and I tucked myself into the bed, he came back and I lifted the bad arm as best I could and he eased a pillow beneath it.

“That good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, uh… Oh, shit, I forgot to ask. Are you allergic to cats?”

“No, why?”

“Uh, you might have a furry visitor at some point, Roscoe, my cat. All gray, short fur, real bruiser looking but a sweet disposition. That going to be okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the heads up.”

“No problem.”

A long silence stretched between us while we just looked at one another. The tension was real, a palpable thing, and it was as if any second the whole world would shatter into a million pieces. He bent and reached up to the lamp which had been on when we’d come in and smiled down at me.

“Good night,” he murmured.

“Good night,” I whispered back, and he twisted the little black knob. With a click we were plunged into darkness, and I could no longer see his face, backlit as he was from the light out in the hall. He straightened and turned, leaving quietly and closing the door. I closed my eyes and let out a shuddering sigh.

He was something else…