Entangled Heart (Ashby Crime Family)

Texting with Madison was a recent thing since the wedding just a few months ago. But in that time, she’d become a good friend, checking in on me regularly or just giving me a hard time, because it seemed to be her favorite hobby. So, I wasn’t surprised when the phone rang interrupting our texts. I smiled before I even glanced down at the screen. This, too, was a Madison thing. Texting for starters and then a phone call. “Yeah?”

“What do you mean you think you’re handling it? What’s going on?” The outrage mixed with concern was classic Maddie, and I smiled even though she couldn’t see me, maybe because she couldn’t see me.

“Who said anything’s going on? Maybe I’m trying to check the giant ego you accused me of having?”

“Oh, that’s bullshit. That ego is as much a part of you as those gray eyes and that annoying sense of right and wrong. Spill it, Jamie.”

I groaned and dropped my face into one hand. “I don’t know who the hell this Jamie character is, so I can’t help you Maddie.”

She let out a frustrated growl. “Are you failing your shooting class? Does the gun have too much kickback or whatever for you?”

“No.” I looked at the phone, brows dipped in confusion. I grew up on a shooting range. Guns were nothing new to me.

“Okay. Is the crime scene stuff tripping you up? If so, I can help. I watch so much true crime that I’m basically like a cop.”

“You mean I could have skipped the academy by watching TV?” I laughed into my phone. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You joke,” she said, totally unaffected by my sarcasm. “But I’m serious. Sometimes all you need are fresh eyes.”

“Maddie, you are not a cop.”

“Duh and thank fuck for that, no offense. Where are you struggling?”

“That’s the weird part, I’m not.” Admitting that made me feel like a dick—no, like an arrogant fucking prick. “I’m confident that I’m at the top of the class so far, and I have no plans to let that change anytime soon.”

“Ah, there he is!” She laughed to herself for a full minute. “Okay, big man on campus, tell me this; why do you want to be a cop anyway?”

How many times would I have to answer that question before I graduated from the Academy? “You really want to know?”

“I do, unless you have some prepared beauty pageant answer, then I don’t give a damn.”

I drew a painful breath before I dug into the story. “I had a friend, Luke Cassidy, back when I was a kid. We were hanging out at The Hot Plate. Best fried chicken in Nevada. Anyway, we were sitting outside eating this chicken, talking and laughing and a car whizzed by shooting at something. We got caught up in it and Luke took a bullet straight to his neck, he was dead before he fell over. No one was ever arrested for it. Ever.” That shit still pissed me off when I thought about it, which I did, often.

“Damn, you didn’t get shot or anything?”

“Nope. Just Luke.”

“And no suspects at all?”

“Nope. Not even to this day. It was a beef between gangbangers, but none of them would give up the gunman. Collateral damage, they called it.” Collateral fucking damage, as if that made it better that a kid had died for nothing.

“Wow. That’s horrible. I’m so sorry you had to live through that.”

“Thanks,” I sighed, feeling the anger bubble up inside of me until I wanted to burst.

“So you’re doing this for a noble reason,” she said with a sigh.

“Why do you sound disappointed by that?” Did she think I was doing this to become a dirty cop? An inside man for my brother?

“Because.” Maddie’s long pause made me nervous, but I didn’t realize it until that moment. “Because I don’t want to see you disappointed. You know, you can always do your best and still won’t always get the right outcome. Get justice.”

“I know, and the idea of that fucking makes my stomach churn, but what’s the alternative?”

“Be someone other than the good guy you are?” She let out a bubble of laughter, and I could see her in my mind, covering her eyes in that slightly embarrassed way she did sometimes. “Impossible, I know. But it’s the best I got for you, dude.”

“I’m not that good,” I grumbled at her. “Not always.”

She barked out a laugh so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “You are. I’ve known lots of scumbags, so you can take my word for it. But I have another question that you totally don’t have to answer if you feel uncomfortable.”

“Shoot.”

“Are you sure none of this, not even a teeny tiny piece, has to do with your family operating on both sides of the law?”