Fatal Reckoning (Fatal #14)(99)

She cried until there were no tears left, until his shirt was damp under her face, until her body ached like it’d been run over.

“Let me take you home.”

She knew she ought to stay, to see this through to the end, but there was nothing left for her to do. “Okay but give me a minute.” She didn’t want her colleagues to see her red-faced and unhinged.

He handed her a monogrammed handkerchief. “Take all the time you need.”

Sam breathed in the familiar scent of starch and citrus-scented cologne as she wiped the dampness from her face. She took the bottle of water he handed her and drank half of it while wondering how he always seemed to have exactly what she needed when she needed it.

“Thank you.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “No need to thank me.”

“Yes, there is. The only reason why I’m holding it together at all right now is because of you.”

“I always want to be where you are, especially at a time like this.”

“Didn’t you have a thing at the White House tonight?”

He shrugged. “I called in sick.”

“Can you do that?”

“Well, I did it. I guess we’ll find out if I’m allowed to.”

She smiled up at him, surprised that she could smile, but leave it to him. “You’re the best.”

“I love you, and I ache for you over this.”

“I love you too. I’ll get through this knowing that the people who killed him and Steven, and those who let them get away with it, are going to pay.”

“That’s what really matters.”

She released her hair from the clip that held it up while she was working and ran her fingers through it, attempting to bring order to it. “I need to call Celia and my sisters.”

“Go ahead. I’m sure they’re anxious to hear from you.”

She called all three of them, went through the facts of what had been uncovered and talked them through their tears of outrage and despair.

“It’s so unreal,” Celia said. “It’s just unreal.”

“I know. It’ll take me years to wrap my head around this, but at least now we know.”

“Yes, for all the good it does.”

“I’m going to start a grief group for people like us who’re the victims of violent crime. I want you to be part of it. It might help.”

“I’ll think about that. Come see me when you get home?”

“I will. For sure.”

Angela and Tracy had expressed similar disbelief and had cried when Sam told them about the connection to the owner of O’Leary’s. That detail had been difficult for all of them to hear, knowing how much their father had loved that place. After she ended the call with Tracy, she turned to Nick. “I need to see Alice.”

“Alice Fitzgerald?”

Sam nodded. “She’s waited far longer than we have for this news.”

“I’ll ask Brant to get us there. Give me one minute.”

After he left the room to confer with Brant, Sam tuned back into the TV. The local news was on fire over the long-awaited arrest in the shooting of Deputy Chief Holland. They hadn’t yet made the connection to the Coyne case, so Alice still didn’t know.

“Babe.” Nick stuck his gorgeous face through the door. “Let’s go.”

She took his outstretched hand, made a quick stop in her office to get her keys and walked with him through the winding halls that led to the morgue exit, where his motorcade was parked. Along the way, she ignored the curious stares of her coworkers, who had to be reeling right along with her. And if they weren’t, they ought to be. He helped her into the backseat of one of the black SUVs and then followed her in. When he was settled, he reached for her and Sam curled up to him.

“It’s amazing.”

“What is?”

“That I was as agitated as I’ve ever been, and then you show up and make everything better.”

“That’s my job.”

“You do it exceptionally well.”

“Why, thank you. I try.”

She tipped her head so she could see his face. “Now we know.”

“Now we know.”

“I want it to change everything, but it doesn’t.”

“No, because it can’t bring him back or undo the nightmare of the last four years.”

“And it can’t bring back Steven. In all this time, never once did it ever occur to me that their shootings were related.”

“Why would it? They happened decades apart. There was never any reason to suspect they were related, was there?”

Sam shook her head. “Still… It’s so hard to know that the answers were right under our noses all this time.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that, babe. You were betrayed by someone you thought you could trust.”

“True. And get this—one of Gallagher’s cohorts owns O’Leary’s.”

“Wow.”

“It makes me sick. My dad put that place on the map by making it a favored bar for MPD officers, and this is the thanks he gets?”

“It’s so disgusting. Every bit of it.”

“I wish I had a dollar for every time greed was the motive in one of my cases. I could retire early.”