The gunshots stopped.
It took me a few moments to feel reasonably confident that the shootings were over. It wasn’t like there was an announcement on the bullhorn that justice had been served. There was just the long pause of no gunfire. The sirens still sounded, but the sirens were my friends—they were the sound that protection was being rendered.
And then the doors opened, and someone boomed, “Police!” I took the risk of peering around the corner. There was a man in an officer’s uniform—and three more followed.
“Location is secure. You all are safe.”
I let out a breath.
But I knew this wasn’t the end of the effects of what had happened.
* * *
Less than two hours later, I had a phone blown up with texts—though not from Sonny—news alerts about something I’d seen firsthand, and my ass in a conference room as Carl addressed what had happened. Carl looked like he had pissed himself.
“The cops told us that they haven’t established a motive yet, but the good news is that no one is hurt,” he said.
But as soon as he said that, I stopped listening and started to wonder. That was an awful lot of gunshots to go off for not hurting anyone. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said someone was trying to send as loud a message as possible without getting in serious trouble. Someone could unload an entire clip of ammo into a wall and not be in nearly as much trouble as one bullet that killed one person.
Who were they trying to send the message to, though? It couldn’t have just been me. Perhaps it was to the entire town of Phoenix, somehow. The more I thought on those lines…
The more it made sense.
What little I knew of the King’s Men and the Devil’s Patriot fight was that the King’s Men weren’t local—they were from out of town. If the city cracked down on crime, they weren’t the ones suffering. Sonny, his father, and Corey were. Cause some trouble and let someone else deal with the consequences.
I didn’t pretend I was a detective, but of all of the ideas that came to my mind, that one seemed like it made the most sense.
Sonny had surely already thought through that possibility, but I felt I owed it to him accordingly.
I reached under the table while Carl rambled, waited until he turned to do something with his computer for his presentation, and texted Sonny. He was right in one respect—I’d been the one to reach out to him.
“Sure you saw the shooting at my office. Be careful.”
I hesitated momentarily in writing the next words, but the burden of doing it quickly worked in my favor.
“When we meet, we shouldn’t go out. Just go to your place or mine.”
When.
Not if.
I sent the message and pretended to pay attention again to whatever Carl had to say. A minute later, I felt my phone buzz. I waited until another lull in the speech to check my phone.
“Got it.”
That was…it?
I guess I shouldn’t have expected much from him. He was a biker, not a therapist. He wasn’t going to ask me how I was feeling, at least not over text.
But for now, it would work.
For now.
If things kept happening like they did today…
Some thoughts aren’t worth giving weight to, Leigh.
