Nodding, DB rubbed his jaw. “Cevdet Gjorka was spotted by Hurst in town about an hour before all of this went down. He pulled over to the side of the road and called us but lost where the asshole went. We told him to stand down, but then he put two and two together and decided to do a little hunting.
“Just as I was hanging up to call you, I got notified that the FBI and CIA were now involved in Gjorka’s case, and he has a whole list of shit they want to talk to him about,” he snickered, shaking his head. “What a dumb fuck. They also froze his accounts and assets, leaving him with just the clothes on his back and the money in his pocket. His associates did what good little rats do and ran when for safety when they heard about his situation. They don’t want the eyes of the Feds on them for any reason, and they also like getting paid for the job they’re doing.”
Holding a hand up, Tamsin said, “I thought he just did that hedge fund thingy.”
“Oh, he does,” DB nodded, “but not for ethical reasons. He’s importing illegal weapons into the US and funding it with the money from the hedge fund, as well as paying gangs to sell them for him. The DEA and Homeland Security will also be involved in discussions with him after they found out exactly how far his web was woven.”
This was too much for my brain right now.
“So, basically, he’s a bad guy?” Tamsin drawled, and I wanted to kiss her with gratitude for being the one to say it.
“He’s up shit creek,” DB agreed. “He’s involved in so much that everyone wants a word with him, including the British intelligence service.”
“Damn,” I whistled. “Why was he so set on Tamsin?”
“He genuinely loved his daughter,” DB shrugged. “Rather than accept he held any responsibility for her death, he deflected the blame onto everyone he could. Your parents haven’t had an easy time of it, but he seemed more set on an eye-for-an-eye by targeting you.”
Tamsin looked relieved by the news, but she also looked saddened by it. “Are my parents okay?”
A wicked grin appeared on DB’s face as he winked at me. “You’ll get to ask them yourself soon because they’re on their way here to see you. There’s a Jawesomesauce Crusaders not far from here that Wilton—otherwise known as Will, by the way—Waite has wanted to meet for a while. They even have their own boat!” The tone he used to say the last bit was false excitement, but he was way too happy about this visit for my liking.
“Why are you so happy about this?” I asked suspiciously, glancing at Raoul and seeing him wearing a shit-eating grin, too.
“Because you’re about to meet the in-laws, and they’re fucking whacked,” he replied bluntly. “Then again, Rose’s aren’t exactly normal.” I swear he was blushing as he said that.
Another knock on the door had everyone’s heads turning to look toward it, as Jarrod stuck his head around it. “Yo, got room for more?”
I was starting to wish I’d stayed asleep as he held the door open for his brothers, Katy, his parents, and hers.
“We just thought we’d stop by to see how you are and check if you needed anything?” Katy’s mom, Katherine, asked, smiling softly at Tamsin. “Sorry you had to go through that, honey, but your man’s a hero no matter what profession he’s in, it seems.”
Jarrod’s mom opened her mouth to say something, but he put his hand over it. “No, Mom, you can’t ask to see the bullet. We discussed this on the way here.”
He might be the tallest guy I’d ever met, but she could still level him with the glare she shot him.
“Anyway,” Bond clapped his hands. “We came to check on y’all, see if Tamsin was ready to leave you for a real man yet, and to say congrats on surviving a bullet. I think that’s it?” he looked at Canon for confirmation.
It was a fleeting visit, but those two minutes exhausted me more than the rundown from DB had. By the time they waved goodbye, my eyes were starting to droop, and I was in agony with my shoulder.
“Might wanna call in Nurse O’Tits out there to give you some pain medication, man,” Raoul frowned. Then, not waiting for me to say yes or no, he hit the call button and smiled widely at me. “Oops.”
Yes, they stuck around to watch her talk me through the morphine pump that was attached to me already, something no one had thought to mention before then. After I’d been pressured into pressing the button, I lay back and waited for sleep to hit, with Tamsin sitting on the edge of the bed stroking my hair.
As the feeling of some sort of haze taking over my body, making it feel as light as a cloud, happened, I started laughing. See, everything had disappeared, and I was left on a cloud with a killer whale.
Snuggling up against it, I took the healing hug of the whale with pride. “Riding on a cloud, hugging my killer whale,” I sang happily, then started laughing. “I can’t call you a killer whale, you’re a big wetty panda.”
And with that, I passed out.
What I didn’t see was Tamsin’s horrified expression as I hugged her ass, calling it a big wetty panda.
Epilogue
Garrett
There were times when my shoulder ached still, but the doctor had warned me that it’d probably be like that for life.
Four years later, and I could conclude, yup, he was right. Moving it this morning was like trying to get an engine running after a hundred years. I was also exhausted from being up all night working on a case with Alex, so that wasn’t helping.
After the shooting, I’d given in to the pressure from DB and my brother to take my Basic Criminal Investigation course so that I could perform both patrol and investigative functions for P.V.P.D. With what I’d done in the USAF, my brain was just wired to do that kind of job, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy with the new duties.
Tamsin had eventually forgiven me for calling her a big wetty panda, especially after her parents arrived and her dad busted a gut when he heard the story. The man reminded me of Hurst mentally but looked scarily like Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts's brother. The resemblance was uncanny, and her mom looked like Blythe Danner. It was strange but awesome when people saw them taking part in one of the reenactments and went nuts!
Apparently, Tamsin’s coloring came from her maternal grandfather, who had Italian heritage. Seeing them all together and how close they were, it was hard to fathom how they’d managed to spend two years apart with zero contact, but it was like it never happened with how chilled the family was. They just picked up where they left off, and that was it.
Her dad had explained it a couple of days after I was released when I’d mentioned it to him.
“Son, seen a whole lot of shit in my time.”—Being an NYPD detective, I had zero doubts he had—“And I’m going to tell you this, and I want you to take it onboard. Life is way too fucking short to regret yesterday. You need to hold onto tomorrow so that you can make it to the day after. Fucking right we’ve been through some shit because of that dickwad, but if we hold onto what we didn’t have, we’re not going to see what we do have. Am I right?”
He was fucking right, and those words would be my mantra for the rest of my life.