“Yes, shit.” He grabbed his phone and I reached for mine. We both stepped away from each other and the building, and answered as quietly as we could.
“Ryan.”
“Hey, Ryan, it’s Detective Browning in Homicide.”
My heart skipped painful beats as I waited for him to continue. Not now, she couldn’t be dead when we were so close.
“We had a shooting outside an underage nightclub. One dead, three en route to the hospital in critical condition. From what the witnesses that were on scene are saying, gangs were involved, and it all started after people had been yelling about their territories. But everyone we’ve talked to so far doesn’t know who the shooters were, doesn’t know what gangs they’re in, and doesn’t know what the shootout was for exactly. You know, the usual. We need you to come over here, and help us sort through some things if you could.”
No. No, I can’t.
“Ryan? You still there?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Can you meet us in homicide, we have the witnesses over there.”
I gritted my teeth and was suddenly spun around by Mason. “Tell him you’ll be there.” I shook my head and Mason gripped my shoulder roughly in his hand. “Tell him you’ll be there.”
Hanging my head, I choked out, “Yeah, on my way.”
After hitting the END button, I looked up at Mason and tried to calm myself so I wouldn’t react against him.
“This is our job, someone just died, and three are in critical. We have to go help them.”
“But, Rachel—”
“Will still be there later. I know this is hard, Kash. After all this time, I know it’s hard. But we need to do our job.”
I flung my arm out and tried to keep my voice at a normal level. “Three in critical, one dead. That is going to be hours gone. At the very least we’re going to be gone for five, probably nine or twelve. I can’t be gone that long, I have a bad feeling about this, something is going to happen to her!”
“Maybe your bad feeling was about these people, did you think about that?”
“No, it’s her. I know it’s her.”
“People are dying and one already died, we have to—”
“And Rachel might die tonight if we don’t do this now.”
Mason exhaled roughly and spun on his heel to walk away before walking back to me. “No matter what we decide right now, neither one is the right choice. If we stay here and go in and get Rachel, it’s the right choice for us and for her. If we go and do our job, it’s the right choice for our job, and for the families of the deceased and wounded. We made a commitment to serve and protect. We need to help the detectives find out what started this so they can find out who shot these people so the family of the deceased can find some sort of peace in all of this. Okay?”
I was shaking my head, I needed to get Rachel. We’d barely sat on the house long enough, but I knew we needed to go in there now.
“Why don’t we call backup, have SWAT go in there?”
I looked at him like he was insane. “And then what, Mase? Both get kicked off the department for doing exactly what we were ordered not to do? For all we know, they wouldn’t even send backup because they’re going to think I’m just losing my fucking mind trying to find her. They’d tell us to stand down, or demand that we go to the department to have a meeting with Chief for all this. Do you not remember last year when you tried to take down Blake and save Rachel? How many times the chief from the Austin department told me to back off? The only reason he even listened to me was because I’d talked to Rach and her goddamn car was there. We have nothing right now other than instinct. Unless we have proof, we’re fucking screwed.”
Mase’s hands raked roughly through his hair as he groaned. “Okay, okay. I got it. But we can’t skip out on our job because of an instinct either. Kash, if we decide not to take this call, and she ends up not being in there, we’d end up in more trouble than if we called for backup right now. As soon as we’re done, we’ll come right back here, and we’ll go in that building. I swear to you.”
Looking at the building, I was completely torn. I knew I couldn’t go in there alone, and I knew Mason was about to leave, with or without me. A part of me knew this was my job. I loved my job, I loved helping people, and while death was a very unfortunate part of my job, we still had to deal with it. But at the moment, I just couldn’t see past what was right in front of me.
“As soon as we get back?”
“I swear.”
With one more look, I growled and turned toward Mason’s truck.
16