Page 76 of Take the Fall
“Doing what?”
“Building the whole disaster before anyone’s said a word.” And he kissed me, there in the cold between the two buildings, unhurried, like there was nowhere either of us had to be, and the disaster I’d been building went quiet.
He pulled back an inch.
“I love you,” he said. Plain. The way he’d taught himself to. “Whatever Murphy wants, we handle it. Same as we’ve handled every other thing that came at us so far. We find the way through. Our own one. We always have.”
“And if they split the posting. Move one of us.”
“Then we deal with that too. I’m not doing this without you, program or no program.” His thumb moved along my cheek once. “You signed away a kingdom to keep me. I think I can survive a conversation with my own inspector. And I doubt said inspector would throw you out after going the extra mile to save you.”
I let out a breath I’d been holding.
“Okay,” I said.
We stepped back out into the light and kept walking.
“There’s a practical problem,” I said. “My father took back the Yorkville condo. The family owned it, I just had the lease. I haven’t got a place to land if our 402 goes.”
“I sublet my apartment to do the program. So I’ve got nothing either.” He shrugged, easy. “We’re a matched set.”
“A matched set of homeless cops. Very romantic.”
“We stay at 402 a while longer. Both of us.” He said it like it was already settled, which I suppose it was. “If the program’s done and they want the unit back, we ask Murphy. He’s bent harder rules than a lease for us already.”
“You think he’d help with that?”
Luke drank the last of his coffee. “The man’s terrible at pretending he doesn’t care. We ask him.”
And it came out clean, as we walked the rest of the way toward the division like two men with nowhere they’d rather be, which, for once, was the simple truth of it.
51 Division was the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in a long time. I came through the side door with Luke a step behind me, and the bullpen rolled through its morning noise, and for one second nobody clocked me, and then somebody did.
Reid was first. He came up out of his chair so fast it rolled back and hit the desk behind him, and he crossed the floor with that whole open face of his doing something it couldn’t decide on, and stopped just short of me like he’d run out of plan halfway.
“You’re back,” he said.
“I’m back, Reid. Officially this time.”
“They gave it back.” He looked at the badge on my belt and his throat worked.
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it the way I hadn’t been able to mean anything upstairs. “Truly. For more than today.”
He went red and looked at his shoes.
Karen Chen was next, unhurried, the way she does everything. She didn’t make a production of it. She just stopped by me on her way to somewhere, gave me the once-over she gives everyone, and let the smallest approval into her face.
“Carlson.” A nod. “I don’t care who you were at 52, you know that. Here it’s what you do that counts.” She let a beat go. “You did all right. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Sergeant.”
“You would. But you’ll keep it in line.” And she went, which from Chen was a parade.
Saunders was at his desk pretending he hadn’t noticed any of it, which was how I knew he’d noticed all of it. Greg Saunders, who’d called me Golden Boy and Pretty Boy and Poster Boy across this bullpen since I arrived, who’d needled me on the worst mornings of my life because his cousin got passed over for the job I got and lost. I couldn’t help it. I was back, my name was clean, and the old performing part of me, the part that had kept me upright through worse rooms than this, came right back up.
“Saunders,” I called over. “Nothing? No welcome back? After everything we’ve been to each other?”
I expected the sneer. The line about cologne, about Bay Street, about whether I was sure I was in the right division. I’d have welcomed it. It would have meant the world was the right shape.
