“The boring part.” Nick kept going until he was able to pull into the lot of a corner gas and convenience store. He stopped at the pump. “Might as well fill up.”
While the gas was pumping, he copied the two addresses into his phone. “The vandalism always happens in the evenings, between dusk and midnight or so. No particular day of the week. I figure if we split surveillance, one of us can find out where he goes in the daytime, and who he knows. One of us can do evenings and see if he heads out to make trouble.”
“The days had better be me,” Charlie said. “He knows you on sight.” He smiled. “Of course, that leaves you to explain to Brian why you’re planning to spend every evening not going to bed with him.”
“Brian knows that I’m…” He wasn’t sure exactly how to put it.
“Meddling? Playing cop without a badge? Putting a big fat target on your gay face?”
“You’re welcome to bow out.”
“Hell, no. Most fun I’ve had since… well, a while. Not counting that unscheduled boat ride.” Charlie sobered. “Which wasn’t fun, by the way. I have nightmares about the damned yacht blowing up.”
Nick clenched his jaw. They hadn’t talked about that, not once, but they both knew the truth. He’d dragged Charlie into it. I did that to Charlie, the most honest man I know. I put him there on that boat and forced him to choose between two deadly killers— between the man who kidnapped innocents, and the one who blew them up. He’d seen the look on Charlie’s face, as the boat full of Turov’s crew burned and sank. He knew it was for his sake that Charlie had let Damon walk away afterward, unchallenged, free as a bird. That had to still be eating at Charlie’s gut.
Nick had those nightmares too, his sleep haunted by the moments of chaos, bullets pinging past, of Damon fumbling the control for the bomb. In his dreams, the explosion happened far closer at hand and the air was full of bleeding body parts in a rain of death.
For Brian, Nick would do it again a thousand times. Charlie’d done it for him. “Sorry. Thank you.” How fucking inadequate is that?
“Yeah. Well.” Charlie stared out the windshield. “I hate being that far over the edge of legal. Of… moral. But there was the girl, the baby, Brian caught in the middle, and no time to find a better way.”
“I know. It was all shit.”
“I know that sometimes you have to use violence to stop violence, but… we could’ve let them go the whole trip on the boat, no sinking. Damon knew where they were headed. If we’d gone down there to get them out later, on dry land—”
“Might’ve still turned into a bloodbath in some South American place where we don’t even speak the language. I’d bet there was a well-armed force on any property Turov lived in, and he had government backing down there. Might’ve been a lot worse for Lori and Brian, before we could get them out.”
Charlie nodded. “Might. Fuck.” He didn’t look at Nick, but his shoulders eventually slumped. “Too late now. Stick it in with every other screw-up in my career.”
“There weren’t many,” Nick protested. “You were a hell of a cop.”
“Sometimes I wish I could go back, do everything differently.” Charlie hesitated, then managed a twisted smile. “But then, I figure I could just make new and bigger mistakes. I could end up two feet farther back in that intersection, and that drunk bastard might’ve hit my door dead center. Hell, we’re here, we’re not dead yet, and I even get to watch you screw up a relationship. It’s all good.”
The gas pump clicked off. Nick got out to hang it up. The air had a softness more like spring than winter. Deliberately, as he’d done so often before, he pushed his own regrets from the past into a box in his mind and closed the lid. Turov’s shit was over. I fucking hope it’s over.
The excitement of a new case and something useful to do with his time buoyed him up. Later, Brian would be waiting for a ride home, and they’d eat and he’d explain where the case was leading. Then they’d have sex, him and Brian together in their own bed… Charlie was right. There were a lot worse places his life could’ve ended up than this.