and said, “Come on, Detective Oliver, let’s go in.”
• • •
Guns drawn, Andrew and Toni moved quietly around the back of the house and slowly up the steps, staying away from the window. Then they heard voices—that of an older man begging for his life, and then a teenager’s telling the man just what he planned to do.
Andrew figured the voices were coming from what appeared to be the dining room. He hoped like hell the back door was unlocked and they could get inside without being detected. He reached out and slowly tested the doorknob and let out a silent sigh of relief when it gave way.
Glancing over at Toni, he cocked his head to the door and silently mouthed the words, “We’re going in.” She nodded her understanding.
Andrew slowly opened the door, grateful that it did not squeak. He then entered the house. Toni following close behind him. Once inside, he quickly surveyed his surroundings and knew she was doing the same. In an instant, this place reminded him of the home he’d grown up in. One that was always neat and clean...except for the empty whiskey bottles and beer cans that, thanks to his old man, littered the area where the garbage cans were.
He cocked his head. The voices were getting louder, and he knew what his next move had to be. He tried to push out of his mind the pleading look in Renita Horsley’s blue eyes when she made her plea… Please, don’t hurt my boy.
Glancing over at Toni, he mouthed the words, “Let’s go. NUF.” No unnecessary force. He then raised his gun after holding up three fingers, and mouthed the count… “One…two…three.”
Andrew kicked open the door, and suddenly, they were in the dining room. The teenage boy, who looked more like fourteen than sixteen, was holding a gun on a slovenly man who appeared to be in his forties.
“Drop it!” Andrew ordered the kid.
“No! He has to pay for what he did to my sister.”
“He will pay. Hell, he’s paying now,” Andrew said, cocking his head over to the man named Sam. “Look. You made him piss in his pants. There’s no need to make him shit in them, too.”
He saw the grin the kid tried to hide. “I should blow his brains out. He deserves it.”
“There’s no need to waste a bullet. If you pull the trigger, he’ll be dead, and you’ll be in jail. Then, who will look out for your sister?”
“Mama will take care of her.”
“And who will take care of your mom?”
The boy slowly took his eyes off the older man and glanced over at Andrew. “You don’t know how much I wanted to protect them from him.”
“Trust me, I know.”
Then, knowing Toni had his back, Andrew lowered his gun. He knew she had to be wondering what the hell he was doing since his actions were definitely not by the book. At least, not by the cops’ rule book. But he saw a lot of himself in Ellis. Too damn much.
Pulling out a dining room chair, Andrew sat down, as if he had all the time in the world and stretched out his legs. He could tell by the look on the kid’s face that he was confused. Good.
“Okay, Ellis. Sam’s a piece of shit, I got that. He probably deserves to get his head blown off. I got that, too. But what I don’t get is why you’d waste your life and let one bullet—that will splatter his brains all over this floor—get you time in prison when your mom and sister need you. Trust me. Prison isn’t somewhere you’d want to go. Especially if it’s for the rest of your life.”
The boy lifted a defiant chin. “You’re a cop. How the hell would you know what prison is like?”
Andrew leaned forward in his chair and stared into the kid’s eyes that were the same shade of blue as his mother’s. “Yeah, I’m a cop now, but I wasn’t always. I know because I did nearly six years at Glenworth for armed robbery. And I was just a kid myself. Hell, I hadn’t even finished high school yet.” There was no need to tell the kid that he’d eventually been exonerated. The fact still remained that he’d lost his freedom for six years.
“Glenworth?”
Andrew figured everyone had heard of Glenworth. He nodded.
“How old were you when you went in?” Ellis asked.
“Seventeen. And I had a bastard for a father who treated my mother like shit. More than once,