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“I mean it. You followed your gut, you saved someone’s life, and you did nothing wrong.”
Bailey clenched his jaw as those words slammed into him and tried to fight back the overwhelming need to vomit. Then Sean was clapping him on the shoulder and letting him go. They straightened up and shifted apart in the squad car.
Sean cleared his throat. “They’re gonna wanna talk to you back at the station. Go over this. Make sure you call your union rep just to be safe. There’ll be an investigation until it’s officially cleared, but I doubt it’ll take long.”
“Right.” Bailey rubbed a hand over his face as he glanced at the clock on the dashboard, knowing his morning was about to get a whole lot longer and complicated over the next few hours. “God, this is so not how I saw my night going. ”
“Never is. Just do what they say and it’ll be over in a few hours. Once it’s officially cleared, you’ll be back on duty and things will start to feel normal again. The first time is always the worst, Bay. But if you need anything, you call me. Okay?”
Bailey nodded, then looked at his brother. “What about your case? I was going to—”
“Don’t worry about it. And remember what I said: you didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t forget that.”
Sean climbed out of the car, and as he shoved the door shut behind him, the sharp slam made Bailey flinch.
Yeah, somehow, he had a feeling it was going to take a lot more than filing his report and telling himself he didn’t do anything wrong for his world to start going back to normal—if it ever could.
“WELL, WELL, WELL. So glad you could grace me with your presence tonight,” Henri said as Detective Dick stepped out into the cool night air and slammed his car door shut behind him.
This was the first time Henri had seen Dick since the wake-up call at Bailey’s the other day, and Henri would’ve been lying if he said he wasn’t feeling a little antsier than usual. That was the only excuse he really had for the smartass comment that flew off his tongue the second he saw Dick. Well, that, and this was the first time Dick had ever been late.
But as the detective got closer, Henri noticed there was no fuck-you response getting loaded up and ready to be fired. Instead, there was a look of concern marring his face.
“Would’ve been here sooner, but there was a shooting I got called in on. Bailey didn’t call you?”
“To tell me your work schedule? Uh, no,” Henri said, shaking his head. “We got better things to talk about. Shocking, I know.”
Dick let out an irritated sound that Henri figured was about to lead into the whole brotherly lecture thing. But instead, Sean’s eyes narrowed and he said, “Guess you’re wrong about that—talking to each other, that is. Bailey was there tonight, asshole. Thought he might’ve called if you two were hooking up to, you know, bump uglies later or whatever.”
As Dick’s words began to sink in, Henri rewound them and hit play again, and when he got to the part where the words shooting and Bailey met in the middle, Henri’s pulse skipped a couple of beats and then fired off like he’d been injected with a shot of adrenaline.
He shoved off the car and straightened. “Bailey was in a shooting? Tonight? And you just left him there? Is he okay? Where is he now?”
Dick raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. “Take a fucking breath, Boudreaux. He’s just fine. He wasn’t hit. Someone else was.”
Oh, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. But even as Dick’s words began to compute, Henri’s heart was still threatening to up and stop on him.
“Do you need to sit down? Take a minute?” Dick asked, and when Henri stared at him blankly, the detective continued, “Well, at least I know my baby brother’s more than just a fuck to you now. That’s a relief.”
Dick’s words snapped Henri back to reality. Before he thought better of it, he got up in the detective’s face and said, “You should watch your fucking mouth.”
“Oh yeah? And if I don’t? What are you gonna do about it?”
Knowing that this particular moment was probably the most important one Henri would have with Dick regarding his baby brother, it was imperative that the detective knew that Henri wasn’t going away anytime soon, and he wouldn’t be goaded into a fight.
Henri gritted his teeth and balled his fists by his sides as he faced off with the eldest Bailey brother, and reminded himself that hitting the fucker might make him feel better, but in the long run would likely cause more problems than it would solve.
“I’m not gonna do anything. But how do you think Bailey would feel if he heard the way you were just talking about him?”
