The Off Season (8 page)

Decision made, Christina glanced down at Lilly, only to find the toddler’s clear, blue gaze holding hers with an intensity that made her breath catch.

“Hurt Jacob,” Lilly said, as plainly as if she were talking about a dropped egg or a worn-out toy. But did she mean it as a statement of fact or a confession?

“He—he
fell
,” Christina corrected, pushing the words past the hard knot in her throat. “But everyone here is working very hard to make him better.”

“All gone,” the child said without the slightest emotion, her high voice echoing like an angel’s in the confined space. “Like Katie-Mommy. Broken.”

The green tile whirled around Christina, though somehow she remained on her feet, gaping. Had her daughter really said what she’d heard, and what had she meant by it? But with nausea flapping great bats’ wings in her stomach, Christina couldn’t remember how to speak, much less form the one question overwhelming all the others.

How do you know about Katie? How could you possibly know?

CHAPTER SEVEN

Harris’s day passed in a hellish blur, much of it spent waiting for test results and consultations with a pediatrician and the neurologist Christina had arranged for. Waiting for his son to sit up, ready to play or to annihilate his favorite fries and chicken nuggets, instead of lying so unnaturally still beneath a sterile sheet with machines monitoring his vitals.

Intent on keeping her from plunging off the deep end again, Harris stuck close to his ex-wife, a woman he found himself once more bound to, out of fear this time, rather than what they’d both once foolishly believed could pass for love.

Others came and went. Renee’s mom, who’d hugged him without a moment’s hesitation and then wept against his chest until Renee, incapable of handling so much raw emotion, had called her aunt to take her mother home. Nearly all the men and women of his department also stopped by to meet him in the hallway, there to show that whatever stresses and strains the job brought, they would always support a brother in blue. There were friends as well, including some from the veterans’ group he now led, guys assuring him they’d be there for anything he needed, anything he could bring himself to ask.

He hadn’t been surprised, though, when he’d spotted Christina, quietly slipping out with Lilly and a slightly younger woman whose wheat-blonde, waist-length hair was pulled back in a clip. He’d crossed paths with Annie Wallace on calls a few times, a flashier version of her sister, with her full lips, eyes as clear and blue as Lilly’s, and a set of curves that had sparked more than one fight at the Shell Pile, where she tended bar during the tourist season.

When he’d stepped in to cover for one of his officers during a short-handed shift last summer, he’d quickly realized that the thirty-year-old didn’t deliberately instigate these brawls. A smile here, a kind word there, a few of those half-insightful, half-flaky philosophies of hers, and before she knew what was happening, she was once more inciting mayhem among the bar’s well-lubricated crowd.

If she were half as perceptive as her sister, she’d figure it out and tone down the wattage a bit. But as Fiorelli had once put it, “With all the attention that girl’s getting, ain’t never gonna happen.”

As if feeling the weight of his stare, Christina had stopped short of the exit. She’d turned to look back to where he stood just outside the exam room, an apology in her warm brown eyes. Breathtaking eyes—or maybe it was just him, the old attraction stirring before he remembered to crush it.

She was holding Lilly’s hand, looking nervously past him as if she feared Renee would burst out from behind him and charge the two of them. Harris still couldn’t believe that whatever had happened at the Kid Zone had been intentional, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to talk to them, to tear himself from his duty to his own child.

After gently explaining to one of Renee’s friends that his ex didn’t wish to be disturbed now, Harris started back to check on Jacob when a familiar voice behind him froze him in his tracks.

“Chief Bowers, you missed our meeting.”

Hearing the disdain in the man’s voice, the thinnest veneer of civility—though he knew the forty-five-year-old could lay it on thick when talking to investors for the waterfront development he was angling to build on a protected wetland—Harris counted slowly to five before he dared to turn around. And willed himself not to let City Councilman Reginald Edgewood provoke him into flattening his hawklike nose.

But face-to-face with an expensive suit, silver-tipped high-dollar haircut, and oddly patrician features for a man who’d grown up in the same rough neighborhood as he had, Harris couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “As much as I’d love to spend two hours justifying my every bowel movement since this vandalism started, you may have heard my son’s had a serious accident.”

“There’s no need to be coarse,” said Edgewood, his mouth twisting as if he’d bitten into something rancid. Probably bad caviar on the silver spoon he liked to pretend he’d been born with. But Harris had seen another side of him, a side reeking of whiskey and stumbling through a field-sobriety test. A night that Reg Edge would forever hate him for witnessing, not to mention holding him to account for. “Naturally, I’m sorry about the boy. Jacob? Isn’t that his name?”

Jaws clenched, Harris stared down the smaller man.
Don’t you dare pretend you feel compassion, not when you’ve been doing everything you can this past year to make it impossible for me to do my job.

“I just thought you might’ve called my office, that’s all, to let my secretary know that you’ve been—”

“I hope to hell you never have to see your own son lying helpless when there’s not a damned thing you can do. Because I wouldn’t wish that on
anybody
.” Not even a man angling to get his brother-in-law, Frank Fiorelli, appointed chief in Harris’s place so he could twist the laws to his own benefit.

“Understandable you’re upset. A terrible thing,” Edgewood murmured. “Have you considered—if you want, we could name an interim chief for the time being. To take the burden off you, just until your boy’s feeling better.”

Harris had never been so tempted to pistol-whip anyone into a grease spot, not even the vilest lowlife. But he knew that others on the council, at least a couple of them, saw right through Edgewood’s sudden need to
turn my life around and give back to the community that has given me so much.
Besides, Fiorelli might be a good cop when the mood struck, but given his special talent for offending everyone he came in contact with, the mayor and veteran council members had to know that Edge’s brother-in-law would be a huge liability as chief.

Reminding himself that assaulting Edgewood would only play into his hands, Harris said, “Thanks, but that’s not necessary. I promise, though, you’ll be the first to know if anything changes. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

Without waiting for a reply, Harris turned and headed back to the four-bed pediatric ICU where Jacob was currently the only patient. As his ex-wife stood sentry, watching every breath their son took, Harris claimed a spot near the window, where he focused his gaze on the sun as it dipped beneath a distant, low ridge covered by a mix of dark-green pines and bare-limbed oaks.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring before he heard a woman speak behind him. “How are you holding up?”

Turning, he saw the neurologist they’d spoken to earlier. A large woman with thin, reddish braids pulled into a twisted updo, Dr. Marshall’s bright smile and white lab coat stood out against her warm brown skin.

“Still standing so far,” he answered, though he felt as likely to tumble as the skeletal remains of a bombed-out structure. “But like I keep asking everyone who’ll listen, shouldn’t he have opened his eyes by now? I mean, you told us before, the scans looked encouraging, and he was—you said he might—”

“Let’s take a look, shall we?” she asked gently as she approached the spot where Renee was rooted. “May I?”

Nodding mutely, his ex stepped out of the doctor’s way, looking so pale and shaky that Harris reflexively reached for her hand. Avoiding his touch, Renee stepped away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, watching Dr. Marshall’s every move.

Though the neurologist explained what she was doing, it was tough to watch her peeling back his son’s eyes, shining a flashlight into each pupil. Tougher still when Jacob squirmed and tried to push her hand away as she checked his pain responses.

When he began to whine and fuss, Renee burst out, “Stop it, can’t you? Stop tormenting him.”

“I’ll only be a few more minutes,” said Dr. Marshall gently. “If you could step back, please, Mrs. Bowers.”

“We’re not married,” Renee blurted. “I only kept the name for my child’s sake. I thought—”

Jacob cried out.

“Leave him be!”

“Renee,”
warned Harris, his hand barely touching her arm before she jerked away.

“Don’t you
Renee
me. Don’t you dare, after everything you’ve—”

“Mama?”

Barely louder than a whisper, the voice froze all three adults in their places.

Dr. Marshall, the first to recover, said, “Your mother’s right here, Jacob. Can you open your eyes for her?”

Harris stood frozen, his heart crashing like a wrecking ball through his chest.

Jacob’s eyelids twitched, cracking open slightly.

“Daddy,” he murmured, a single word that nearly drove Harris to his knees.

Except that afterward, Jacob said nothing, lapsing back into a deeper sleep.

“It’s often like this,” Dr. Marshall assured them. “Different than you might see on TV or in a movie. People don’t just pop out of comas, with all the lights flipped back on. It’s usually more gradual, like a big house with one or two bulbs being screwed back in at a time.”

“But this is a good sign, right?” Harris scarcely recognized his own voice, the quiet, desperate hope clashing with a crushing fear. “A sign that he’ll recover fully.”

“An excellent sign, yes, and children in his age group can be surprisingly resilient. But as for a full recovery, we won’t know for some time yet. There may need to be some therapy, and—”

“He’s going to get better,” Renee insisted. “He’ll be my sweet boy again, just like always.”

Dr. Marshall nodded pleasantly before completing her examination. And in her silence, Harris understood that his ex’s hope-fueled vision of their son’s future wasn’t necessarily the one they had in store.

Once she’d left, Harris said to Renee, “We should head down to the cafeteria for a quick meal. The nurse told me they close at seven, and I know you haven’t eaten anything all day.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Renee insisted. “But if you’re hungry, go on.”

“Let me bring you something.”

“Do whatever makes you happy. You always do,” she said in a voice that told him she would probably pitch anything he bought into the trash out of spite.

He should have walked then, gotten out while he could, but something made him say, “Renee, you have to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

“Lashing out at everyone who wants to help. Pushing away your family and Christina, treating a toddler like some kind of agent of evil—”

“So you’re defending her now,” she said, her face hardening, “after what that child did to our son? I should sue the woman.”

“Christina, you mean?” he asked. “Your
friend
?”

“Who knows what all of this is going to cost?” Renee gestured around the room. “And she’s got money, plenty of it. Besides, if she were raising that child of hers better—”

“Can’t you hear yourself?” he asked, wishing her mother or her aunt would come back and talk some sense into her. Earlier, she’d made similar statements about suing the Kid Zone for not having a secure play area, no matter how many times he’d assured her he would deal with whatever the insurance didn’t cover later. “I told you, forget about who’s to blame. At least for right now, let’s stay focused on getting Jacob better.”

“What do you even care?” she started, prompting him to throw his hands up. “You’ve never cared. You’ve always wished I’d never gotten pregnant.”

The fact that she’d conceived, only two months after they’d started dating and despite his use of protection, had certainly not been in their plans. But from the moment he’d first heard his unborn son’s heartbeat, he had made his choice—one he had never once regretted.

“Fine,” he said, knowing better than to argue. “If you need to make me out to be the bad guy to get through this, go ahead and do it.” He, at least, was better equipped than a two-year-old to deal with her wrath. For one thing, he’d had a hell of a lot more practice. “But right now, I’m heading downstairs. And I
will
bring you back something, whether or not you choose to eat it.”

He walked out, his appetite gone, though his pounding head and churning gut reminded him that he needed fuel to get him through this. On his way to the cafeteria, he ran into the one department cop he hadn’t yet seen—Fiorelli, in uniform for the shift that would be starting in less than an hour. He wore his usual scowl, but his brown eyes were sympathetic as he offered Harris his hand.

“Chief,” he said. “A hell of a thing. The poor kid. Anything I can do?”

“Thanks for coming, Frank.” Harris returned the man’s firm grip, reminding himself not to hold Edgewood’s earlier behavior against the councilman’s in-law. “It means a lot, you showing up here.” It did mean a lot, with Harris knowing how little use his most senior officer had for him.

“Would’ve made it over sooner, but I was late hittin’ the rack this morning and never saw any of the messages till the wife woke me up an hour ago.”

“At least one of us is rested.” After leaving Christina’s this morning, Harris had grabbed a few hours’ sleep before the call came, but at this point, he was running on a heady mix of frayed nerves and bad coffee.

“If you don’t mind my saying, you look like hammered shit.”

Harris snorted. “See how you look hanging out all day at your kid’s bedside with the woman you divorced nine months ago.”

Fiorelli winced. “That’s a real ballbuster.”

“New definition of hell,” Harris affirmed. He was collecting them. Put this one on the list, right after getting blown to pieces five years back.

They talked briefly about Jacob’s condition, and Fiorelli surprised him by saying, “I made a couple calls. Got everybody in the parish prayin’ for him, for you and Renee, and her family.”

“Thanks, man.” Harris was surprised to hear that Fiorelli was religious. But when the chips were down, most cops were, especially when it came to family. “That means a whole lot to me. Just like you being here. But if I want to make the cafeteria before it closes . . .”

“Okay if I walk with you?”

“Sure thing,” said Harris, realizing that Fiorelli had another reason for coming here before his shift. Maybe something his brother-in-law Edge had put him up to. “You hungry?”

“For hospital food? Hell, no, but . . .”

“Spit it out, Frank. What’s up?” His temper rising, Harris braced himself to hear Fiorelli, too, suggest appointing him interim chief for the duration.