#// they are really so unserious and they have so much back pain from carrying hell!!!

[rent-day-blues]

Rent Day Blues

4

[previous]

Gordon entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him before leaning back against the wall. He pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes and took a deep breath. Then another, forcing himself to keep them even and slow.

Now wasn't the time for this.

God, but he was tired.

No doubt Scott was in the waiting room, wearing a hole in the floor from his pacing. John and Virgil were probably there, or maybe one of them had stayed home with Grandma. The waiting room wasn't the ideal pace for her to be resting, especially with how bad the pain had been recently.

He wanted nothing more to just sink down to the floor, but he knew he had to let his brothers know how it had gone. How incredibly lucky their dumbass little brother was. He pushed himself off the wall and turned on the sink, splashing his face with cold water. Then he dried his face and left the bathroom before he gave into the urge to yell.

Scott and John weren't hard to find; Scott was still in uniform, and the two of them were both so stupidly tall it would have been impossible for Gordon to miss them. He didn't see Virgil anywhere.

Scott spotted him first and immediately headed towards him, pulling John after him. Scott looked like he'd aged twenty years since the last time Gordon had seen him. John's face was carefully neutral, but the tightness around his eyes told Gordon that he, too, was reaching his breaking point.

"How is he?"Scott asked before he'd even fully reached Gordon.

"He's out of surgery," Gordon said. He held his hands up to stop them from speaking. "There were clear signs of internal bleeding, they needed to open him up to stop it. He has a few broken ribs and there's been some associated damage to his liver. They're going to keep an eye on it, but for the moment it's under control."

"And?"John prompted.

"From what it looks like, he hit the door pretty hard and dislocated his left shoulder," Gordon said. "He's got a pretty nasty bruise from his seatbelt, he probably has whiplash. They were talking about taking x-rays of his collar bone. He has a concussion, but...it could have been a lot worse. He had a helmet on. The visor broke and left a nasty cut above his eye, but the helmet probably saved his life."

Definitely saved his life. From the looks on their faces, Scott and John knew that as well as Gordon did. He quickly added, "He woke up on the way here. He was disoriented, but he was responsive and he recognized me. I don't think he remembered what happened."

"I'd rather he didn't remember," Scott said. His expression darkened. "After I get out of him who put him in that car."

"Did your rookie find anything?" Gordon asked.

"She's still looking," Scott said, running a hand through his hair. "Can we see Alan?"

"Not yet," Gordon said. "They have to do a CT scan, and more x-rays. It'll be soon, I think. Grandma and Virgil at home?"

Scott and John glanced at each other, and Gordon felt his stomach sink. "What?"

"Grandma's with Penny," John said. Gordon narrowed his eyes.

"Where's Virgil?"he asked.

"We don't know," John admitted. "He was out looking for Alan. He's not answering his phone."

"Oh," Gordon said, keeping his voice steady through sheer force of will. He really wanted to yell. Virgil didn't usually disappear like this. Virgil always answered the phone. Always. He was somewhat neurotic about it. Something was wrong.

All three of them jumped as Scott's phone started ringing. Scott snatched it up, looking at the caller ID before he sighed.

"Kayo."

Gordon tried not to feel disappointed as Scott answered the call. He stepped away from them.

"You should sit down," John said, and it took Gordon a second to realize he was talking to him.

"Huh?"

"You look like you're about to fall over," John said. "You should sit down."

"I'm still on call," Gordon said.

"No, you're not," John said. "You're officially off the clock as of an hour ago. I called. One of the guys dropped your stuff off about twenty minutes ago. Here," he pushed Gordon's phone into his hand. "Someone needs to call Penny and Grandma and tell them what happened."

"Wait, they don't know?" Gordon said, his eyes widening.

"Gordon, I didn't even know what had actually happened until I got here," John said. "All Scott told me over the phone was, 'Alan's hurt bad, come to the hospital'. "

Gordon grimaced. "Ah. Grandma's going to kill you, you do realize that, right?"

"Yeah. I know."

Her phone sits on top of the quilt, spread over Ruth Tracy's lap, and Penny's just lost her third hand of canasta. John had said, before he'd left, that he'd given his grandmother a pill for the pain she was in, but whatever it was seems only to have sharpened the woman's card sense, because Penelope's been beaten soundly each time.

She wonders, as she peers at her cards, if Gordon's brothers ask the obvious question of just where the pain meds come from. They must know better than to ask. Or they must not want to know. Scott would have to look so far the other way he'd probably just about snap his neck.

Penny had rumbled him the first time he'd come over to spend the night. They'd been out a few times before that, the sort of airy, unserious sorts of dates that could be afforded by a waitress and a paramedic. A movie, though what they could agree upon was nothing either of them were especially interested in. Coffee, once, though it had been in the same coffeeshop where Penny spends her workday, and so there'd been the awkward reality of all her co-workers grinning at her the whole way through. A picnic in the park, a walk along the river, and the sort of conversation that had been the clincher, because neither of them had talked around their problems. There'd been an intensity to the honest exchange of circumstances that had only served to pull them that much closer.

It had been after that particular conversation that she'd suggested that maybe the last flight of stairs up to his place might not be worth the trouble, and that maybe he ought to come in. There'd been a certain absence of ambiguity about her motives, and she was hardly too proud to admit that this was more or less what she'd been after in the first place. He'd gone to shower and she'd gone to sit on the bed in her room, where he'd left his bag.

And, well. If he hadn't wanted to get caught at it, then he probably shouldn't have left a full bottle of painkillers sitting so near to the top of his duffel bag. She'd only been curious to find out if he habitually carried condoms, or whether there was going to be a mad and embarrassing dash to the drug store down the street.

If he hadn't caught her, catching him, she wonders sometimes if she would have left it alone. If she would have been desperate and lonely enough to look the other way, to draw the wrong conclusion entirely about Gordon Tracy, and the reasons he managed to stay so cheerful and buoyant and sunshiney, despite his job and despite his circumstances. Instead she'd looked up at the sound of an awkward cough from her bedroom doorway, with a pill bottle clasped in her hand and an expression of surprise.

And if he hadn't been naked but for the towel around his waist and grinning at her sheepishly, Penny might have been afraid to have been caught by him.

But instead he'd just crossed the room and sat down on the bed, and had reached over to take the little bottle out of her hand and stash it back in his bag. "You don't have to believe me," he'd told her, and she'd done her damnedest to meet his eyes instead of being distracted by the curve of his torso, the way his towel sat just below his hips— "I've got about a million problems, Pen, and if the fact that I'm the worst kinda drug-stealing, cowardly, hypocritical bastard is one of 'em, then at least being a drug addict isn't. I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb."

"For your grandmother?" she'd asked softly. She'd swallowed and hoped that she knew what the answer would be.

He'd nodded and sighed. "Yeah. Umm. John, once in a while, he gets the most wicked migraines, poor bastard. If, uh. If we get to be a thing—and I'm not saying...I'm not saying we are...unless you wanna be, but you know, that's just whatever, because that's a whole other thing—anyway. You should come meet her sometime. Either way, even if we don't keep doing...uh. This. You should still meet my grandma. She's a hell of a lady. You'd like each other."

It was what he'd said next, and the way he'd said it, more than anything, that had made her believe him. I've never known anybody, more than my gran, who deserved just a little less pain.

And he'd been right. Even if she hadn't gone on to lean over and kiss him and run her hands through his still damp hair—when she'd gone on to meet Ruth Tracy, she'd seen the sort of beautiful, strong old soul that could raise five boys into the kind of adults her grandsons were, and still have a smile and a gleam in her eye from the confines of her sickbed.

So now Penelope sat on the end of Ruth's bed, with cards spread out between them, and her phone on the bedspread. When it rings, before she can reach for it, a surprisingly quick hand reached out and caught her wrist. "My dear," Ruth started, and her eyes were sharp and bright when Penny looked up to meet them, "I'm always happy to see you. And I'm glad that you're here now. But if that's one of my boys, you're going to make them tell me just what the hell is going on, or by god, Penelope, I'll stump out of here myself and get on a bus."

She looks down at her phone, but the custom ringtone's already given him away, because the bright and cheerful tones of Walking on Sunshine have filled the room. This is probably a question best put to Gordon, anyway, though in her heart she dreads the answer. "...Yes, ma'am."

Technically, Kayo's shift ended an hour ago, so the fact that she was in plain clothes wasn't, technically, against regs. And Tracy had told her to follow her nose, and he was her TO, so technically this was an authorized operation.

Technically. Kayo was comfortable with technically.

Out of uniform, in skinny jeans and an old band shirt she'd found at the back of her closet, her leather jacket over the top covering her service weapon tucked away in its holster, she could still just pass as one of them. She knew the language of the street, even if these weren't the streets she learned it on. Regardless of the city, the basics were the same.

Kayo smiled at the kid they called Shifty as she passed, letting him get a good look at her. There was always a kid called Shifty, and he always knew the score. She knew from the gossip in the breakroom that this town's Shifty hung out by the gas station on Third, at the point where strip mall shops turned into small workshops and storehouses, the street running down to where the bigger warehouses were located.

Shifty was taller than her, but the kind of skinny you only got when meals were few and far between. Kayo went into the gas station, came out a moment later with a fist-full of brightly coloured packages, jerky and twinkies, the kind of things that kept, and could be crammed in a hoodie pocket. “Hey, Shifty,” she called out, tossing over one of the packages as her price of entry into this conversation. “What's the deal with that crash tonight?”

A brief conversation and the rest of her snacks later, and Kayo was walking confidently down towards the warehouses. Half the street lights in this area were out, knocked out or just never replaced, and Kayo hooked her hands in her belt loops, flexed and ready to reach for her gun.

The word on the street was fear. Shifty had counseled she lie low, that 'The Boss,' whoever that was, was on the warpath, pissed that the big race had quite literally gone sideways into a ditch.

That there was a Boss calling the shots worried her. This wasn't just a bunch of kids in hot cars, blowing off steam and hormones late at night, dangerous but innocent.

This was organized. That meant there was an organizer, and a reason.

Kayo slowed, ears pricking. She could just make out the faintest susurrations of voices, the tone implying a debate was in full flow. There was light, just visible under the transom of the human sized door set into the larger, hangar-style sliders.

Every other warehouse was dark, felt empty. Kayo circled her target, looking for another way in. She found it out the back, a broken window badly covered with a sheet of pressboard. A moment's work, and she was climbing inside.

Inside was a large workshop, mostly empty but for a few cars up on roller racks so that mechanics could get at the underbelly. The arrangement of the room suggested to her that this space normally was crammed with vehicles.

This was where the race started.

Kayo flicked open her jacket, ready to draw, as she crept closer to the light pooling out onto the concrete from a little shack made of flimsy plywood and pressboard, built against the far wall.

The voices were clearer here, and Kayo listened, getting a bead on the argument.

One voice was trying to persuade the other...to do what, she wasn't sure. The debate had descended into pleas and bargaining. She crept up to the window that looked out over the workshop and peered inside. Half-turned towards her, a small skinny figure in glasses was glancing between monitors propped up on a makeshift desk.

The figure with his back to her was bigger, taller, stronger. Kayo's lips pursed, judging her odds of taking him in a fight. In a confined space, a gun was more a liability than a threat, but big guys fell hard if you had the leverage.

And there was a tyre iron, propped up on the wall beside her.

Kayo smiled in the dark, tucked her badge into the waist of her jeans so her shield showed, hefted her weapon and stepped into makeshift office.

“Police! Hands in the...Virgil?”

Virgil already had his hands half-up, an automatic reaction. Even so, the other figure was faster, hands almost stretching for the sky. “Kayo?” Virgil asked, blinking hard.

She lowered her weapon. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Virgil shrugged. “Same as you, I suspect.” He turned back towards the other figure, still with his hands in the air, his eyes darting between them behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “Officer Kyrano, let me introduce you to Brains.” Virgil sighed, sounding tired. “I think he knows what's going on.”

Technically, she didn't have enough evidence for probable cause, not enough of the pieces to make an arrest. But, she wondered, did Brains know that. She tapped her nails against her badge, an idle, casual gesture that caught and held his attention. “I think it would be in Mr Brains' best interests if he started talking.” She let the tyre iron drag on the concrete floor as she took a step forward, saw Brains' eyes widen.

Technically, this type of interrogation wasn't illegal.

Technically.

[to be continued]