Here With Me (Adair Family 1)

“I can’t hear you.” Autry scowled out the window. “I am no longer in the car. I am someplace where the world is good and right and the Celtics are winning the season.”

“So the land of make-believe, then?”

“Don’t you come at the Celtics.”

I chuckled, opening my mouth to continue teasing him when the radio crackled.

“Domestic disturbance. Lexington Street, apartment 302B. Neighbor called it in.”

Autry reached for the radio. “Gold 1-67. Three minutes out.”

“Roger that.”

I’d already started the engine and was swinging the car into traffic.

“What do you think it is this time?” I asked.

“Affair.”

“You always guess that.”

“Because I’m nearly always right.”

“Last time you were wrong.”

“What was last time?”

“Oh, Davis, you’re getting old,” I teased. “Girlfriend found out boyfriend had gambled all her savings. She beat the shit out of him.”

“Oh yeah. That was a nasty one. That man will never be able to have children after what she did to him.”

Unfortunately, probably true. I winced at the memory.

Only a few minutes later, we pulled up to the apartment building on the corner of Lexington. It had the same architecture as all the buildings in this part of Boston—narrow with wooden shingle siding. This one was painted white years ago and was in dire need of a repaint. It had two entrances, one for the downstairs apartment and the other for the upstairs. A woman in bright yellow pajamas, her hair covered with a matching bandana, stood outside the first-floor apartment door. She approached us as we got out of the car.

“They’ve been yelling up there for the last thirty minutes, and then I heard things crashing and she started screaming and crying.” The neighbor looked shaken. “He’s shiesty as fuck, that one. Think he’s into drugs. Thought I better call it in.”

I gave her a reassuring smile and was about to speak when a terrified shriek sounded from above. Autry hurried to the door. Turning back to the neighbor, I ordered, “Please return to your apartment, ma’am.”

As I watched her do this, Autry banged on the door to the upstairs apartment. “Boston PD, open up!”

An angry male voice could be heard yelling obscenities upstairs. I caught “fucking bitch” in among the rambling, followed by loud sobbing broken by intermittent, garbled screaming.

Autry looked at me, face grim, and my hand went to my holster.

I nodded.

He turned the handle on the front door and it opened.

As we moved into the cramped hall, to the stairs leading steeply up to the next floor, I followed Autry and took out my gun. The occupants of the apartment no doubt couldn’t hear us over their argument. As we climbed the stairs, it became apparent, from what I could make out, that this altercation was about drugs. He seemed to think she was skimming money off the top while selling his product. Not an average domestic disturbance call after all.

I steeled myself.

The stairs led to a hallway with two doorways opposite each other. We peeked in one and saw it was the bedroom; it appeared empty. Then we moved just beyond the door into the other, which took us into a small kitchen/living space. The place was trashed. Coffee table on its side, TV smashed, photographs falling out of broken frames and glass littered in their midst. A stool at the mini breakfast bar lay on its side.

A young woman huddled on the sofa, face streaked with mascara, fear in her liquid eyes as she stared up at a tall, skinny guy who held a handgun in her face.

We raised our guns.

“Boston PD. Lower your weapon,” Autry demanded.

The man looked at us without doing as warned. He scowled. “What the fuck are you fuckin’ bastards doing here? This ain’t your business. Did that nosy cunt downstairs call the cops?”

His pupils were dilated, his speech slurred.

The guy was high.

This situation just got better and better.

I repeated, “Sir, lower your weapon.”

“Or what?”

“If you do not lower your weapon, it will be construed as a threat and I will shoot you,” Autry warned.

“I didn’t understand half that shit.” The gun wavered dangerously in his hand.

“Davis,” I murmured and turned my head ever so slightly to look up at my partner—

Movement flashed in my peripheral. Adrenaline shot through me as another guy came charging into the room, handgun raised and pointed at Autry’s back, finger on the trigger.

There was no time for anything but to move in front of my partner.

To shield him.

With threats front and back, I had no choice but to fire at the threat from behind. Two gunshots sounded, louder than a clap of thunder above the building. The sound ricocheted through my head at almost the same time that the sharp, burning sensation ripped through my chest.

Another bang. Another burn. And another.

I slumped into Autry as more gunfire sounded above my head.

There was noise. Groaning. Screaming.

Autry’s voice calmly telling me I would be okay.