Wrecked (Josie Gray Mysteries #3)(102)
“That’s a good idea. I’ve got feelers out everywhere. I’m leaving today, but I’m not off the case. There’s quite a bit of follow-up intel gathering. I’ll be in touch. Daily for a while.”
Josie hesitated.
“What’s going on?” he said.
She struggled to make sense of her thoughts. “We’ve got Dillon home. He’s safe and already recovering physically. The money is in our custody. Wally and Bea Conroy are behind bars. And I still feel like nothing has been resolved.”
“It hasn’t. That’s the bitch of it. It’s the worst part of the job for me. I finish a case and know nothing is resolved. It’s never over. The kidnappings continue. The cartels get bigger, their networks spread around the continent. Around the world.”
Josie shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the dining room chair. “So this feeling never leaves you?”
“Josie.”
She opened her eyes and looked straight into his.
“I only got so many years of doing this job before I hit the brick wall. I know that. My life is this job. I can’t bring a woman into this kind of hell. So I got a few more years and then I retire. Try to live a normal life for a while. Settle down. But you already have a normal life. Don’t you see that?”
She smiled with no humor. She couldn’t see how any of this could be considered a normal life.
“You have someone to love and he loves you back. That’s a life. Learn to separate your cop life from your personal life. Get Dillon counseling, and go with him. Figure out how the two of you can push through this nightmare and come out on the other side.”
His cell phone rang and he answered it, talking on his headset while he packed up his remaining bag. He briefly pushed the headset away from his mouth and shook Josie’s hand, said he’d be in touch, and walked out to his car, resuming his conversation with the person on the other end. He had avoided the good-bye, the awkward exchange of emotion, and in a moment of clarity, Josie saw the parallels between her own life and Nick’s. He would never retire. The job was his safety net: it kept him from having to figure out how to lead a normal life, a messy life with kids and a wife, a family that loved him. Dillon had been trying to provide that life for Josie; he had been patiently leading her to it with love and compassion, but she had never seen that kind of a life as a real possibility until now.
Nick backed out and paused before he put the car into drive, catching Josie’s eye for a beat too long, then drove away to the next family in desperate need of his help.