Police Training Ch. 04

This one isn't as 'happy' as the last chapter. You can yell at me if you like.

Don't forget to vote with the STARS, and comments and emails are always appreciated.

I would say enjoy, but that wouldn't really be accurate.

The next year goes by quickly. Nic and Lizzy talk about once a week, but usually it's texts. His initialisms are still frustrating. WGF – wicked great fuck. WTPSYITN – went to porn site, you're in trouble now. NYN-need you now. Just random shit that she has no idea what it means, so she has to ask him. Of course, she could just let it slide, but that's against her nature. She needs to solve puzzles. He knows this, so that's why he keeps doing it.

We meet maybe once a month. Sometimes he sneaks into her apartment, sometimes they get a hotel room, a few times they didn't make it out of the parking lot. They avoid his place because they never know when it's being watched. The weeks between the rendezvous get harder and harder to endure. Sometimes she just wishes it'd get out. Let the chips fall where they will. She doesn't like lying to her family or friends.

Lizzy's sound asleep when the phone rings. It takes two rings to locate the source and identify the annoyance waking her up. Uuuuugggghhhwlalalalalwlwlal. She swipes the phone on, noticing that it's Malachi disturbing her at 2:14 A.M. "What?" There's no rule that says you have to be nice to family when they wake you up at two in the frickin' morning.

"Liz. Wake up and listen." He sounds nervous. It's not obvious, but she can hear it under the calm he always projects. Malachi never sounds nervous. "Papa's been shot. They're taking him and Young to New York-Presbyterian. Do you understand this?"

Her first thought, hope, prayer, is that this is a joke. But no one in a cop's family would joke about this. There has to be another explanation. "LIZ! Do you understand this?"

She focuses on the phone again. It's so hard to speak. "Ahhh. Yeah. Presbyterian."

Malachi is in charge, do what Malachi says. Just breathe. "Get up. Get dressed. Grab your things. Go to the hospital. Do it now Liz." He waits for my response. When none is heard he shouts her name again and repeats the instructions.

"Yeah. I got it. I'll meet you there." Her body is numb as she tries to get out of bed. She stumbles into the bathroom and stares at the reflection in the mirror. Get it together girl. A fleeting thought; she wants to call Nic, but can't. She dresses hastily and grabs her stuff and begins to make her way to the subway stop. In the haze, she sees red and blue lights. A police unit pulls to a stop in front of her. Without a word she walks toward it. The officer opens the back door and she climbs in. No words are spoken and the identity of the officer is lost in the fog of her mind. Papa's been shot. She doesn't see or hear anything as the squad car drives her somewhere. Papa's been shot.

Turning the corner, the large hospital is brightly lit in the distance. She can see Aiden and Liam jumping out the back of another squad car and bolting into the hospital. Cops are everywhere. Two traffic lights until her escort turns into visitors entrance. She jumps out before the car stops.

All eyes turn toward her. She feels lost, like she can't breathe. An officer comes up and takes her arm. Hallway. Swinging doors. Elevator. Screaming baby. Hallway. Potted plant. More cops. Cops everywhere. Nurses. Door.

The tears start to fall as Liz sees her mom and Peggy Young, the wife of her papa's partner, sitting together on an ugly orange sofa, hands clasped, foreheads pressed together. Grampa, Rogan, and her brothers all look lost, sitting or pacing in the large waiting room. Jim's two boys are clinging to their mother's legs. Their grandma is holding the baby, only 4 months old. "What happened?"

Liz sinks to her knees at her mother's feet. The story comes from everywhere at once, by bits and pieces. Papa and Jim both got shot sitting in their squad car at a traffic light. Motorcycles pulled beside them and lit them up through the open windows. Civilians flooded the area, forming a protective ring around the squad car. Civilians flooded the area, ruining any evidence. Nurses gave aid until paramedics arrived. In surgery now. Two bullets to the chest. Four bullets to the chest. Five bullets to the chest. A whole clip. No one knows much. Papa got shot. Papa's in surgery. Please. Please let him be OK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Time stops. Minutes crawl by. Hours fly by. Nurses come in and give updates. She doesn't know if they're talking about papa or Jimmy. Lung collapse. Lost a lot of blood. Ruptured spleen. Removed a kidney. Lacerated aorta. One time a doctor came in; he was splattered with blood. He says stuff, but Liz doesn't comprehend them. Peggy Young starts screaming. Mom is sitting alone on the sofa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A doctor comes in; he's spattered with blood too. "Neila Bryne?" He looks toward her mom. "I'm sorry Mrs. Byrne, but the extent of the injuries was too great, we couldn't save your husband." He's still talking, but she can't hear his words. She can't hear the screaming, or the crying, just a dull ringing in her ears.

The following days go by in a surreal jumbled stupor. Choosing the casket, and combining the two funerals. Cops, thousands of cops arrive to pay their respects to Quinlan Byrne and James Young. Liz almost loses it at the 21-gun salute. She clings to her grampa and he clings to her; it's the first time she's ever seen him cry.

That night she goes home, for the first time since she got the call. Her own bed. Silent and alone she enters and stands there in the dark. Now what? Papa's gone. She won't hear his voice anymore. She won't get him his favorite aftershave for Christmas. He won't give her any more sage advice or really horrible jokes. She'll never laugh as he shouts at the football games on TV. Papa's gone.

She drops to the floor and cries. A whole week's worth of pent-up tears flow freely in the darkness. An hour later she's still on the floor. The tears have stopped, but she doesn't have the strength to move. A soft knock on the door. She ignores it. Again the knock, only a little louder. There's some scratching sounds and the light from the hallway floods in as the door opens.

The door hits her feet and the silhouette of head peeks in the crack. The door pushes the rest of the way open; Liz lets it push her across the floor instead of moving. It closes and darkness surrounds her again.

Strong solid arms embrace her. She smells him first. Nic calms her and soothes her. She focuses on the deep sultry tones of her lover's voice, letting him hold her together. During the long night, he picks her up, showers her, dresses her, and gets her to bed. Somewhere along the way, he convinces her that the world hasn't ended, that she's strong enough to survive.

She awakes early in the morning and her heart stops. She just stares at the beautiful peaceful face of the man lying in her bed. Lizzy runs her hand across his face to prove that he really does exist. Sleepily he turns toward her and smiles a little smile. He's real.

"Thank you, Nic. I feel better just knowing you're here. I don't know why, but it makes me feel better."

His hand caresses her face as he kisses her forehead. "Your heart was breaking, so I gave you mine. I'll always be here for you Lizzy."

She kisses him. She can't help it. "Please make love to me. I need something to make me feel alive. Please, Nic. Please make me feel alive again."

He's wanted to hear her beg for so long, but not like this. This just breaks his heart. For the next hour he brings her to the edge of bliss. One after another, orgasms crash down around her, drowning out her pain. He tells her how strong she is. How brave she is. How proud he is to know her. He tells her she will survive this, and she believes him. His words and his touch help her find her strength again. It's hard, but she knows she'll make it through this. Life goes on. Her life will go on.

They're lying in bed together, her head resting on his chest. His fingers are gently massaging her scalp. "I've been following the news, but they're not releasing much information. What happened?"

It takes a long time to answer. "We leap-frogged any and every camera we could get our hands on until we found clear shots of the shooters unloading the cycles from a truck. They were Soviet military originally, but they've been East Coast hit men for the last decade or so. Thanks to the CIA we know what banks and what aliases they use, so we're tracking the money right now. We haven't found the shooters yet. Or who paid them. But we will."

"The CIA is helping you?"

"Well, technically it was an anonymous CIA tip. We have a few 'black sheep' in the family who became firefighters, military, and feds, including the CIA. We even have a baker! Muffins, pies, tortes, and cakes. No doughnuts. No doughnuts ever." It feels good to laugh. Lizzy tells Nic about the 'pie-nuts'. The first week that Maggie's bakery was open, all the cops bought a pie, ate out the center, and started shouting 'pie-nuts' in the store. Maggie was getting so angry with everyone.

"It's getting early. I should go." He glances at the first light coming through the window. "Do you need anything?"

A hundred things cross her mind. Ask him to find the shooters. Ask him to offer a reward. Ask him to stay. "I think I'll be fine. Thank you for last night. I felt so lost."

"It was my pleasure. I'll always be here if you need me." He climbs out of bed and gets dressed. "Do me a favor though. Eat something. You look pale and malnourished." Lizzy just nods that she will. A short kiss goodbye and Nic has to leave. He can't be seen around her apartment.

As promised, she has breakfast. Well sorta. Hot Pockets aren't technically breakfast food, but after more than a week-long absence, not much else was salvageable in the kitchen. The morning is spent with nervous activity; a shower and shave, cleaning windows and floors, vacuuming, laundry, etc. Lizzy is not sure that if she sits down, she'll get back up again.

After her place is spotless, she takes the bus to her mom's house. A small smile crosses her lips as she enters. She is her mother's daughter. Mom is cleaning her house as well. They sit and chat, eating bowl after bowl of chicken noodle soup well into the night.

Even though everyone has two weeks off for bereavement leave, updates still find their way into the Byrne household. Carlos checks up on her daily, and most of her information comes from him, she expects the others are getting similar check-ins from their squads.

Everyone is floored when the threads start to come together. A lawyer. A fucking lawyer paid for the hit men to murder two cops. His two entitled snot nosed brats got caught with almost a kilo of pot in their car. Apparently the kids convinced Mr. Genius lawyer that if the arresting officers were not able to testify, the case would be dropped, and they could follow in his footsteps and become lawyers. How fucked up is that!

Reporters swarm us and ask offensive questions trying to get exclusive sound bites for their station. Grampa says we can't shoot them, although she saw him on more than one occasion cleaning his gun and staring at the reporters through the window. The lawyer hires the best defense attorney, and we all dig in for the long judicial process to begin. Even though we have the names and aliases of the shooters, we still can't find them. They could be anywhere.

Mom and grampa go to every hearing and every motion. Anything to do with the case that they are allowed to attend, they're there. The rest of us go as we're available, sometimes for the whole day, sometimes for a part day, and sometimes for a lunch hour. The lawyer and his two sons never even look at any us. The courtroom fills with cops every time.

Delay after delay, and the months drag on. In October, my friends plan to make a girls week in Mexico in January. Candice, Tami, Gem and Jenn can go the whole week, Donna can only make the first few days, and Jackie can only make the last weekend. We book rooms in Puerto Morelos at the Secrets Silversands Riviera Cancun. To save money, we get the rooms that don't have an ocean view.

Time drags on. New York is made up of shades of gray. Dirty snow on top of salt covered cars. The layers of winter sludge covering everything. Work becomes monotonous. The trial becomes monotonous. The reporters become monotonous. My weeks are broken up only by planning the excursions for the trip and my secret rendezvous with Nic. He never once offered to find the shooters, or take care of the lawyers for me. We talk about the case, and what the defense might try, and what tricks might be coming. He always makes me feel better.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are hard. Our first holidays without our papa. Lizzy still bought him his favorite aftershave, but instead of wrapping it, she just opened it and went through the old photo albums, smelling him helped her remember all the great times they had.

A few days before the girls leave for Mexico, Nic is sitting on Lizzy's living room floor, shirtless, and trying to steal shrimp from her pasta dish. Lizzy defends her shrimp with a well-placed breadstick to the back of his hand. They're having a picnic in her apartment and they're both laughing on the floor. She asks him the question she's been wondering about for a while. "Nic, can I ask you something? I don't need anything, and I don't want you to do anything, but I have a question, that's JUST a question."

He cocks his head to the side. "Ummm. Sounds serious."

"Not serious, I just wasn't sure how to ask it."

"You can ask me anything, whether I decide to answer it or not is another thing."

Well, that's as good as she could have expected. "OK. Ummm." How should she word this?

"Just spit it out Lizzy."

She glowers at him. "I just don't want it to sound like an accusation. Here goes. Why haven't you offered to help with the men who murdered my papa?"

Nic smiles. "That was an accusation." She leans in and slaps his chest. He just pulls her into his arms. "First, I have been helping. People all over the world are on the look-out for the shooters. They'll get good money if they find them. Second, I don't think you want my kind of help with the lawyers. You're a good person. You have a kind heart, and you believe in the judicial system. You'd have to believe in it to do your job. Right now, emotionally, you might not be in a good place. If I offered vengeance, and you took the offer, I think it would be something that eventually you'd come to regret. And that might form a wedge between us. I don't want to do anything that might hurt you. Or us. We'll follow this path, because it's the one you need to be on. If something changes, we can always go in a different direction. There are always options, Lizzy."

"I didn't know you were looking for the shooters."

"I doubt we'll find them before the trial is over though. They got paid enough to disappear. And after executing two NYPD officers, they'd do just that. They won't peek out of their hidey-hole until it's over. But we can hope they'll make a mistake."

Lizzy lies on her back and stares at the ceiling for a while. "I probably would have taken the vengeance if you had offered it. For a while, I wanted everyone dead."

Nic leans in and kisses her. "I know. And you would have regretted it after you came back to your senses." Yeah, he's probably right. It's kind of scary how well he knows her. "Before I go, I have a gift for you." He rarely gets her gifts. Her interest is peaked.

Nic gets an envelope from his jacket and sits down besides Lizzy. She eyes up the completely blank envelope before ripping it open. There's an 'I Miss You' card and well wishes for a great vacation. Inside the card is 400 pesos. A little bit of math and that's less than $25 U.S. dollars.

"Oh thanks. Big spender."

He kisses her again. "Trust me, it'll come in handy." Nic rises and starts dressing; it's almost time to go. "You take care and have fun, lots and lots of fun. But remember..."

Lizzy interrupts him. "Yeah. Yeah. No one can fill me as full as you. No one can make me scream as loud as you. You're an arrogant ass, Nic."

"Sassy brat. Have fun." Once last kiss before he goes.

*****

The flight is uneventful. Six girls going on a get-away to Mexico tend to make air travel funner. A shuttle picks us up at the airport and drives us to our hotel. We go to check in, excitement is practically dripping off us. One couple is ahead of us, so we wait to show our reservations to the clerk.

When it's our turn, the lady checks our credit cards, and looks up our rooms. In somewhat decent English, she asks us to wait and calls the manager to the front desk. Candice is first to jump on the possible problem arising. "What's going on, we made reservations over a month ago."

The desk clerk "No problemo. Manger juss want talk you." Candice huffs, whatever is happening won't be settled by yelling at this lady.

The manager comes out of the back. Tami pounces. "What's going on? We have reservations?"

The manager, an older man around fifty raises his hands attempting to prevent any incidents in the main entryway. "No problem. No problem, your reservations are good. We had a cancellation earlier in the day, and our records show you booked as a group. We would like to offer you an upgrade to the cancelled suite."

"Upgrade? What kind of upgrade?" Jenn is interested, but suspicious. Lizzy just sits back and lets them handle it. She's exhausted.

"We have a platinum suite with six attached bedrooms, beachside."

"Beachside?" Now Donna's interested. We couldn't afford beachside.

"Yes. In addition to the all-inclusive drinks and meals, you get unlimited use of hotel water crafts, golf course, horses, and three spa treatments from anything on the platinum list and under."

Tami finds her voice. "How much is this shit going to cost us?" Ever the pessimist.

The manager recoils slightly at the hostility. "Very little. Only 400 pesos."

Why does that sound familiar? Oh Christ. That sneaky little shit. Lizzy digs in her backpack for the card Nic gave her. Tami is still questioning the guy. "Why so little? What's the catch?"

"No catch. Just easier to sell three double rooms than a six-room suite. The extra amenit...."

Lizzy interrupts him and places the 400 pesos on the counter-top. "We'll take it." All five girls turn to look at her. "What? It's 400 pesos. It's beach-side. And I don't want to spend my vacation arguing at the front desk." They all see her logic and quickly we're escorted to our suite.

WOW. The whole wall is windows, clear blue rolling water and gently swaying palm trees in a panoramic view. There are three bedrooms on each side and a kitchenette, living area, and entertainment center in the main part of the suite. The others don't notice, but the manager personally places Lizzy's bags in a front bedroom, while the two other men place the rest of the bags in different rooms. After oohhhing and aaahhhhing for a while we go to our separate room. She sends off a short text to W.G.F. [Thank you. The 400 pesos came in handy]

The response is almost instantaneous. [You're welcome. You deserve the best. Enjoy yourself, Lizzy. IMYA]

Awww. Sweet but frustrating male. What's IMYA mean. [IMYA??]

[I miss you already.] Awwww.

[Me too. See you soon.]

Every day we are out on the beach, in the sand and surf. Every night we dance our cares away. We eat, drink, shop, and laugh our hearts out. She needed this so much. One night, Wednesday possibly, it's very late as we struggle into out beds exhausted. Lizzy comes out of the shower to find Candice lying on her bed. "Wrong room, chickie." She plops down on the bed next to her.