“You said it was my choice.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d pick the ‘blow up your career’ option.”
Kellen’s bloodshot eyes blazed. “You’re holding a freezer-bagged finger that was hand-delivered to your house, Santiago. We’re calling it in.”
Nick felt a familiar frustration building. He and Kellen had always butted heads. There were reasons why Kellen was still a cop straitjacketed with regulations and procedures while Nick had left to make his own rules. “Look. I know this is a shitty situation. But give me twenty-four hours, and I’ll get this straightened out.”
“What are you going to do in twenty-four hours, Nicky? Find Beth or Sesame or whoever the hell she is and march her into an interrogation room? We looked for six years. If she’s in the wind again, we’re not going to fucking find her.” Kellen covered his face with his hands. “I have such a headache right now.”
“We’ll find her,” Nick insisted. “Or Tommy. Or the muscle with the finger. Give me twenty-four hours. If I don’t have one of them by then, I’ll drive your ass downtown myself so you can do your penance or whatever the hell your rule-abiding ass calls it.”
“You and your ‘I know better than everyone’ attitude,” Kellen snapped, his voice rising.
“I do know better,” Nick argued. “Not everything is black and white. Most of life is a whole lot of gray. You can’t live by some generic rule book that doesn’t take the gray into account.”
“What am I not taking into account, Nicky?” he demanded. “I let myself be manipulated. I didn’t tell my bosses that Beth was back. I didn’t drag her down to the station and force her to give a statement. Hell, I didn’t even push her for answers. The only way to clean this up is to call it in and deal with the consequences.”
“This is probably why she didn’t trust you in the first place,” Nick said. It was a cheap shot, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking it.
“Maybe,” Kellen said with a shrug. “But guess what? She didn’t trust you either. So you can cut the vigilante hero bullshit.”
“Look, we don’t know what really went down—”
Kellen slammed his hands on the counter. “That’s the point. We’re never going to know what went down. She didn’t trust either one of us enough to tell us then, and she sure as hell isn’t being honest now. You know what gets me? Even after she left, she knew everyone thought she was missing and she still didn’t reach out and let us know she was at least alive and safe. She made her choice. She was done with me then, so now it’s only fair that I’m done with her.”
“She came back, man,” Nick pointed out. “So maybe she hasn’t gotten around to being honest, but when she got into trouble, when the chips were down, she came home to you.”
Kellen’s jaw clenched. “And that’s why I need to do this the right way. I need to do the right thing. I fucked up. I should have insisted on taking her in, getting her statement the second she showed up in town. It was my mistake, and I’ll pay for it.”
Nick was already shaking his head. “You’re willing to put your career on the line because of some bullshit rulebook. Everything you worked for, you’re just going to kiss it goodbye because you didn’t follow procedure?”
“Rules exist for a reason. And not just so you have something to break for fun,” Kellen said wearily.
Nick rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. It was the same damn argument they’d had six long years ago. Nick hadn’t wanted Beth to be a witness in the arson case, not with its connection to the Harrisburg drug trade. He hadn’t seen the point in opening her up to the danger when it had been completely unnecessary. Kellen had been just as emphatic that she should have “done the right thing” and testified. And while they’d stubbornly dug in on opposite sides, Beth had vanished.
He’d lost a job and a partner over it.
Not that Nick would ever admit it to anyone, but he’d missed Kellen. Missed their friendship, their ribbing, their patented opposition to each other. Just when they were starting to get along again, the same old shit headed for the same old fan.
The question was—had either of them learned from it?
“Fine,” Nick said quietly.
“Fine, what?”
“Fine, call in the fucking badges and do what you need to do.”
Kellen stared at him for a long beat, then nodded. “Thanks, Nicky.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t expect me to be happy about it. And don’t expect me to stay the fuck out of it either. Some Hulk in a bad suit threatened people I care about on my own doorstep. I’m not gonna sit back and take up knitting while the cops fuck everything up. I’m working this thing with or without you.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Kellen said, scrolling through his contacts.
“Don’t get in my way, Weber,” Nick warned him.
Kellen’s bleary gaze landed on him. “Same team, Santiago.”
* * *
