The Guilty (38 page)

She laughed. ‘Now that’s just plain dirty.’

She kissed him gently at first, then harder and with an open mouth, her tongue sliding against his lips, tickling his tongue. Striker reached up, removed the scrunchie from her ponytail, and her
long dark hair spilled around her shoulders. Striker wrapped his fingers in it, pulled her close, breathed her in.

‘I love you,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he replied.

She smirked as she pushed herself down against his hardness.

Striker held her there. Reached up and pulled the yellow T-shirt from her caramel skin and threw it on the floor. With both his hands, he grabbed her breasts, and felt her breathing quicken.

She pulled slightly back from him.

‘Bed?’ she asked.

He just nodded and smiled and felt good. For a small brief moment, his worries and concerns all melted away, and it was no longer a world of bombs or bullets or dirty cops. There was just him
and Felicia and their cosy private bedroom.

Nothing else really mattered.

Striker had no idea what time it was when he woke up, but he came to with a jolt. His pulse was racing, friggin’ skyrocketing, and all he could see was the fiery image of
Chad Koda in the police cruiser, Harry sprawled out helplessly on the ground, and the two shooters encroaching on them.

Closer, closer,
closer
. . .

He blinked away the lingering nightmare. Told himself it was just a dream, a mishmash of bad memories.

But it did little good.

Covered in a thin film of sweat, and with his mouth dust-dry, Striker climbed out of bed – gently so as to not wake Felicia – and walked down the hall to the washroom. He poured
himself a glass of tap water, then hopped in the shower for a cool rinse. When he got out, it was obvious that sleep would not come. So he wrapped a robe around himself and returned to the living
room to go over the Chipotle files.

To his surprise, Felicia was already going through them.

‘You’re up,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘No, you’re still dreaming, I’m afraid.’

‘I tried not to wake you.’

‘You’re like a baby elephant rampaging through the house.’ He sat down beside her, and she handed him a file. ‘Get reading.’

Striker did. Twenty minutes later, when he had found nothing relevant, and was considering going back to bed, Felicia made an excited sound. She held up a thin folder for him to see. On the tab
was an old file number, and beside it someone had written:
Lottery Ticket Thefts – 7-Eleven.

‘Look what momma found,’ she said.

Striker saw it. ‘I read that file already; Chipotle’s listed as a suspect. So what? It’s a minor theft.’

‘You read it, did you? Well, you obviously read the electronic file on the
computer
and didn’t look in the folder.’

Striker gave her a curious look. ‘What you find?’

She pulled out the paperwork from inside. It was about an inch thick, and divided into two sections by a pair of paper clips. She handed Striker the first section, which had a front page
detailing the address of the 7-Eleven store where the lottery tickets had been stolen during a standard smash-and-grab.

Striker shrugged. It was just a printout of the exact same report he’d read on the computer.

But when Felicia showed him the second section of the report, something clicked. For one, the address was different. For two, the role code was wrong. The numbers there were 4169. Not a theft,
but . . .

‘A
homicide
?’

Felicia nodded. ‘It’s the police shooting of Chipotle. Someone put it in the wrong folder – one file number away.’

Striker smiled. ‘You’re a god.’

‘God
dess,
darling. God
dess.
’

Felicia spread the pages out on the coffee table.

The first thing Striker noticed was that the report was oddly
basic.
The synopsis told the elementary details of what had occurred: Chipotle had been killed in a shootout with
integrated forces. The shooting had happened on the Vancouver-Burnaby border, just up from the Fraser River. And Chipotle had ended up dying on the same day as his wife and daughters, who had been
blown up only a few hours earlier by the bomb Sleeves had set.

This had all led to speculation of Chipotle’s death being a suicide-by-cop mission from a grieving father suffering from cocaine psychosis. To reinforce that belief, the subsequent autopsy
revealed cocaine levels of .643 mg/L.

Striker read that number and whistled.

‘That a lot?’ Felicia asked.

‘Enough to kill Keith Richards.’

He flipped past the synopsis, then through the rest of the pages – the investigative summary, police statement pages, witness statements, and so forth. The shooting seemed pretty
straightforward.

Gunman called in.

Police attended.

And Chipotle started shooting.

It was exactly what Striker had expected. And then he spotted one ordinary detail that changed everything – the name of the cop responsible for shooting Chipotle.

Striker read that name and slumped back against the couch. Slowly, horrifyingly, the information sank in. And connections started falling into place.

Chipotle had been killed, not by a standard hollow jacket round, but by a bullet from a police-issued sniper rifle. That rifle was registered to a member on the Emergency Response Team. To
Striker’s one-time mentor and now closest friend.

Mike Rothschild.

The room was hot, so unbelievably hot, and yet he could not stop shaking. His teeth chattered, his body trembled, he couldn’t catch his breath. He lay stretched out on a
cot that Molly had unfolded, staring at the blue and red pipes that crisscrossed the low ceiling of the command room. The pipes hummed loudly, constantly, like the distant rumble of a coming
freight train.

To his left, a pot of water began boiling over onto the kerosene stove. Molly removed it, poured the water into a bucket, and a puff of steam filled the air. She grabbed the antibiotic ointment
and sanitized the scalpel, then turned to face him.

Her approach made him shiver. And for the briefest of moments, she looked like the tiny nurse with the paper hat.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s just me.’

He tried to lift his head off the table, struggled. ‘The news release . . .’

‘Chad Koda and Harry Eckhart are dead.’

The bomber closed his eyes, as if in relief. He let his head fall back to the table.

‘Done,’ he whispered. ‘. . . it’s almost done.’

Molly said nothing, she just got to work.

She removed the tape and packing gauze from his shoulder, then applied another coat of lidocaine cream before using the scalpel to scrape away the remaining grime, which was still embedded in
the entry wound. She rolled him onto his side and did the exact same to the exit wound. Once complete, she added a final rise of saline and covered both wounds with gauze.

‘You’re killing me,’ he said.

‘Oh hush,’ she said softly. ‘You’re lucky it was a through-and-through. The clavicle may have broken, but the bone didn’t splinter through the subclavian.’
She felt his wrist, and smiled. ‘Your pulse is still strong. But you need rest.’

He tried to catch his breath. ‘You need to put lidocaine—’

‘I just did that.
Rest.
’

He looked at her, confused.

‘I can do this job on my own,’ Molly said.

‘
No.’

He struggled to sit forward. As he did, the room tilted on him, and he had to grab on to the wall with his good hand. Small beads of sweat trickled down his neck and back, and he felt like he
was floating there in the room, kind of hovering above the cot. An apparition.

So hot . . . so goddam
hot.

‘You need rest, love.’

He struggled through the haze. ‘I’m finishing this mission – with or without you.’

Molly said nothing. She just nodded and grabbed the medical tape. Firmly, almost roughly, she began tightening the tape around the shoulder joint and clavicle in order to stop it from
moving.

He let out a pained sound as she did this, but that was okay. Everything was okay.

The operation was almost done.

For Striker, the night had been a long one.

After seeing Rothschild’s name on Chipotle’s homicide report, he’d made the decision to bring Mike and the kids over to stay at his place, and had gone and gotten them himself.
It was the only action that had made sense. After all, if the bombers had found Rothschild’s old house, how long before they found his new one too?

Safety was everything.

Once the family was at his own house, Striker felt better. They all got back to bed at sometime after three, and the remainder of the night had been uneasy and restless.

Now, just five o’clock, Striker lay in bed, listening to the creaks and groans of the old house. With Courtney on the other side of the world, it felt like his home was half empty. And to
be honest, ever since Amanda had died, the place had never felt whole again. There was always a sadness in his heart. A deep ache that would never go away.

He tried not to think about it, but it was always there.

The relationship he had with Felicia helped. It helped greatly. Striker loved her. But that didn’t change a thing. Loving another person with all your heart didn’t nullify the love
you had felt – and still felt – for another.

Life could be hard.

From down the hall, Cody called out amid his dreams. Striker was sure the boy was half-asleep, but his thoughts played havoc on his mind. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he
checked on the boy, Striker climbed out of bed. He snuck down the hall and peered into the guest bedroom.

The room was still and covered with different shades of black and grey. Rothschild was asleep on the left half of the bed, snoring like an old bear, and Cody and Shana were on the right,
snuggled together like a pair of Pringles chips.

Safe and sound.

For now.

Striker returned to his bedroom. He slowly eased back into the bed and grabbed the comforters. Then Felicia spoke: ‘The house alarm works fine, Jacob. You don’t need to check on the
kids for a tenth time.’

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘You’re lucky we got dental.’

‘Why? You gonna knock my teeth out?’

She laughed softly. ‘No. But you’ve been grinding your teeth all night.’

Striker said nothing, but he reached up and felt his right jaw joint. He’d suffered from TMJ for years; it was probably one of the reasons he got so many headaches. The joint was sore as
hell.

‘I must have kept you up all night.’

Felicia rolled over to face him and smirked. ‘I didn’t mind for part of it.’

Striker tried to smile but couldn’t. As good as Felicia was at compartmentalizing things in her mind, he was equally bad. The case was
always
there. Breaking through his defences
with glaring brightness, like sun through cloud.

‘The Prowlers are some bad people,’ he said. ‘But do you honestly think they’d go after a cop? They usually respect our professional boundaries. And why would they care
anyway? I mean really, so what if Rothschild shot Chipotle? The guy was already on the gang’s hit list. It makes no sense.’

Felicia rubbed his chest. ‘It’s just one more theory we have to work through.’

‘Yeah, well, my mind’s not working through it very well.’

She smiled weakly. ‘That’s because you’ve had only eight hours’ sleep in three nights. Close your eyes and get some slumber. We can worry about it in the
morning.’

‘Sure, sure,’ he replied.

But fifteen minutes later, he climbed out of bed, then threw on a pair of old blue jeans and a wrinkled baseball shirt. With Felicia fast asleep again, Striker returned to the den to read
through some more of the files.

He had to.

They were missing something.

The work was agonizing. Even the most minimal of movements tore his shoulder apart. But the bomber pushed through the pain. Performed the required task. And now it was
done.

The bomb was set.

He retreated across the road to a small hole in the hedge bushes of the neighbouring yard. It was a perfect place of concealment – hidden, dark, with a full view of the target residence.
It also had the wooden backing of the fence to support him, and he needed that.

Sweat dripped from every pore of his skin, so much that the remote detonator felt slippery in his hands. He tightened his grip, slumped back against the fence, and smelled the putrid stink of
his own body odour. He smelled like something that had gone bad.

Old meat in the sun,
as his former sergeant often said.

High above, the sky was slowly lightening, the stars turning more and more invisible in the softening blue. The moon was all but gone now, dropped down to her nightly bed, and in the east, the
morning sun was rising like a waking fiery beast. The sight made him smile.

It wouldn’t be long now.

They were one step closer to the completion of their mission.

One step closer to retribution.

Striker read through an Assault report – a CBH, or a Causing Bodily Harm – in which Chipotle was one of the main suspects in a gang swarming. As Striker read, he
put on a pot of coffee. He leaned against the counter, waited, and listened to the machine percolate. Soon, the rich aroma filled the entire kitchen.

As if on cue, Rothschild walked sleepily into the kitchen. He was wearing a red-and-green striped robe, was unshaven, and his silvering hair was sticking out all over the place. He took one look
at Striker and nodded.

‘So that’s what your ugly mug looks like in the morning.’

Striker nodded. ‘If I had a few more wrinkles, people would think I was you.’

Rothschild shouldered him aside to get to the counter. Not bothering to wait till the pot was finished brewing, he poured himself a cup. The burner made a hissing sound when the percolating
coffee hit it.