Walker (Cordell Walker x Female!Reader)

Hold Me Now

The soft warm glow of the morning sun shines in through Cordell's bedroom window. He lets out small grunts as he stretches and instinctively reaches beside him, only to find the other half of the bed empty.

He lets out a grunt of disappointment and looks over at his nightstand, his eyes falling on the journal. He pulls the blanket off him as he sits up in the bed and grabs his phone to begin texting (Name).

5:36 PM
Cordell: Good thing I have my Library card because I'm checking you out. 😘
(Name): You're such a dork. 😆

7:55 AM
(Name): Morning cowboy! Sorry to run out on you before breakfast but your dad needed help on the ranch ASAP. Have a great day at work. Love you to the moon & back! 🚀🌕
Cordell: Morning! No worries just don't work too hard, babygirl. Love you to Pluto & back. ❤️

Seconds after Cordell pressed sent, (Name) hearted his message making him smile. He lightly taps his phone against his chin as he looks over at the journal then sets his phone down, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Outside the room, August is walking down the stairs with a duffel bag and goes to open the door when Cordell came out of the bedroom with the journal. "Hey!" He greeted, looking up from the pages.

"Hey." August said, taking his hand off the doorknob. "Where, uh... where you heading off to so early?" Cordell asked, closing the journal and setting it down on the counter. "Oh, you said I could borrow the van, remember?" August reminded him.

"You got time for breakfast, right?" Cordell asked, taking out a carton of eggs and pack of bacon. "Not really. I'm-I'm supposed to meet up with Stel and then I have Boot camp Readiness. I-I really can't afford to be late to that again, so..." August explained. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. Don't be. Um, but curfew still stands: home before 5:00."

"Of course. Boot camp ends at 3:00." August stated. "Great." Cordell said and August turns to leave only to turn back to his father. "Hey, um, I was talking to Stel about, you know, maybe you want to do, like, a... I don't know, like, a makeup dinner? We're game, obviously, and, uh, again, I'm really sorry about missing last week."

"No, I know. And, you know, maybe I was a bit off the mark, too. Uh, thought you kids had an issue with (Name) and me." Cordell confesses, making his son scoff softly and shake his head.

"Uh... Anyhow. Uh, yeah, have a good day." Cordell told him. "Thank you." August said, opening the door and heading outside. "Yep." Cordell muttered, putting the food away.

He then grabs a box of cornflakes off the top of the fridge and grab a bowl out of the cabinet. He moves the journal onto the island counter and open it to resume it as he pours himself some cereal.

At Ranger HQ, everyone gathered in the conference room with Cordell now taking the lead on the investigation like he agreed. "Okay, so, before the Jackal's trail went cold five years ago, his kills ramped up in frequency. Which means every day we don't catch him could be another life he takes."

"Yeah, and, uh, Captain James mentioned that he'd continue to oversee the case, but he will not be boots on the ground with us." Cassie said to Beau and Brianna, filling them in on why James isn't here today.

"That is correct. I'm running point on this. So I hope you all wore your good boots, 'cause we got a lot of shoe leather to run down with the new list of suspects Trey put together." Cordell said, pointing at the binders Trey brought.

"Ooh, smooth segue." Trey remarked, passing the binders out. "Ah. Thank you." Cordell said, accepting his binder. "All right, so this is a list of convicts whose mugshots are near matches to the partial image of the Jackal suspect we recovered from the surveillance footage."