Quadruplets Make Six

“No actually, he’s en route to the hospital. I need to go down there and get a statement, maybe see how similar he is to the other victim.” Alex went all detective-mode and the realization loomed in the air over all of us.

Maybe we were jumping to conclusions, but another incident meant the suspect was escalating, but why would he leave him alive? If it was anything like the old crimes years ago, then it would get worse.

I thought about getting in contact with Keeg again, hoping he might have some insight to who was doing this.

“What else was there?” I asked Alex.

“All the vic said was that the guy was Irish.” He shrugged.

Damn. It didn’t take me long to put them both together. It was definitely a repeat of those crimes from years ago. Keeg didn’t tell me any specifics about the stuff from back then. Just that the Irish were going after some rich businessmen. It didn’t make much sense since the Irish had tons of cash flowing in from their ‘pursuits.’ I wasn’t understanding why they had to shake people down. Maybe they needed some free lawyer or something? I didn’t fucking know.

“Seriously?” Nate said.

“Yeah, I need to go get all the information down.” He posed to leave but Nate called him back.

“You know what this means right? About Rose?”

Alex and I nodded.

“Look, I hadn’t told you guys yet, but someone was watching Rose last night,” Nate explained.

About a thousand scenarios ran through my head. Rose wasn’t safe—that was at the forefront. I knew I had to be worried about it in the beginning, but I never expected it to actually take form. She lived close to the crime scene, so she was already exposed to any connections with the crime. Not to mention her being a primary witness; at that point no one else had seen anything.

We had been keeping tabs on her since the incident, so nothing serious had happened. But obviously, it wasn’t enough to keep her safe.

“What if she needs real witness protection?” I said, my voice graveled at the severity of it.

She would have to change her whole life around, and not to mention she would not ever really feel safe again, even if she was being watched. I didn’t want that for her at all. She had so much life to her. This case—whatever it turned out being, would put a damper on that.

“I don’t know. She might? The guy looked pretty amateur, but he was taking photos of her. That isn’t a good sign.”

We all went silent, doing our own thinking. I had a lot of feelings about Rose but didn’t really know what to do with them. I mean, Rose was beautiful. Really fucking sexy in all the right ways and it kind of drove me mad a little bit, because I wasn’t sure if she was up for what we offered. Rose was really head strong and knew her own way, it was just as intimidating as it was attractive. I didn’t want to change her, and I was afraid putting all that security on her would do that. I was fine keeping tabs on her in my free time, but having extra uniforms would just make her feel…I don’t know.

She definitely couldn’t be changing in the window. That was only for us. Fuck, I knew it was serious when the thought of sex didn’t do anything to stop my thinking.

“Maybe not officially. For now. But if someone is watching her, that’s serious. Obviously, we can’t handle it ourselves. It would be worse for something to slip by us because we didn’t make the right call,” Alex said.

“You just described our job, man. Nothing much different here except our dicks are involved.” Nate said.

“Well, mine is.” Alex cracked a slight smile. “We don’t have to tell her everything. Just let her know we’re just being safe. I just don’t want her to worry.”

“Okay. But it would be worse if she does find out and she thinks we assumed her stupid or something, or couldn’t handle it,” I said.

Alex huffed. “Right.”

“Look, I think we’re getting ahead of shit. Let’s just check out this new vic and go from there. If we link everything together, we’ll make a decision then,” Alex decided.

He could always be the level headed one that made the most logical choice. It sounded good, but my head was still swimming with all the fucking unknowns. Was Rose even safe at that moment? I already worried about her from day one, but just knowing that someone was taking photos of her, that someone could really be planning something…

I almost wish she never made a statement that first day. Never even called the police to begin with.

But then how would I have met her? Of course, it was my fucking luck that the woman who got my wires all crossed was one that could be in danger. I took on a job that required me to protect people all the time, so why was it so hard to protect Rose?

It felt like every choice I was trying to make towards her was wrong. I was second guessing everything and I didn’t like it, because I just wasn’t wired that way. All the cases I worked required some hard choices and a tough gut, so I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t apply that to Rose. Sure, I worked mostly on exploited children cases, but I had the basic skill set of a cop.

Rose had a way of making me forget everything I trained for and stumble around looking for the right answer.

“Sounds good, man. You should head to the hospital…is it the same one Rose works at?” I asked.