White Night

Chapter 51

Connors slid the object out of her pocket and onto the captain's desk.

"What's this?" Reyes asked, eyeing the contents of the plastic bag.

Grinair's face fell.

"It's a phone I found in a drain two blocks from the parts store we escaped from yesterday."

"I don't understand." Reyes shifted glances between Grinair and Connors.

"But you do, don't you, Rory?" Connors turned to him.

Grinair was pale as Connors continued. "Captain, this phone was called by Nikolai yesterday when he was running from Detective Ross and me, just before the Colombians ambushed us."

"So?"

"It has Detective Grinair's fingerprints on it and a message from Nikolai asking him where he is."

The captain sat down quickly. "Detective Grinair?"

His face told them both it was all over. He collapsed back into his chair, his eyes closed tightly.

"Detective Grinair?" Reyes repeated.

"He helped me," said Grinair with a sigh. "Years ago when I brought him in to question him about the club, he was his usual confident, arrogant self, and after a totally useless interrogation, he said something to me."

"What was that?" Reyes asked softly.

"He said, 'You look tired, Detective,'" said Grinair with a slight smile. "'If I can ever help you, just let me know.' I brushed it off at the time, just assumed he was being a regular asshole. Twelve months later, I got a dad pimping out his daughter to his creepy friends, no proof and nothing to get a warrant. I question him and the smug scumbag says nothing, but the kid's eyes tell me everything."

Reyes sighed softly. Connors couldn't take her eyes off her mentor, his grey eyes watering.

"Can't go undercover as he's only offering the kid out to his friends," he said desperately. "So I called Nikolai and he arranged a break-in. The dad righteously had the crap beat out of him and the 'burglars' found the kid in a back room with a 'friend,' bruised and half-naked. Anonymous call to the cops sees both the dad and the friend in jail."

Reyes shook her head. "We can't—"

"The kid's safe, the perps are locked up, and the friend has his arms broken a week later so he won't be touching anyone else for a while." Grinair smirked. He wasn't sorry, how could he be?

"Couple of times after that I called him again when I was stuck and had to get a result."

Reyes didn't attempt to speak.

"Captain, with the online communication these days and the privacy laws, I practically have to have a confession to get a warrant on these guys. So I sit back while the kids go through hell? Not for a million bucks."

Reyes dropped her head into her hands.

"You have no idea what it is like to see the things these guys do every day and not be able to stop them." He leaned forward, trying to tell her. "I left him alone and he got kids out of danger–that wasn't wrong." Grinair leaned back.

"Until he wanted you to kill," Connors added and Reyes looked up quickly.

"I would have just found the construction guy," he said, grabbing his nose and looking away.

"And let Nikolai's men kill him? Same difference, you know that."

Grinair's shoulders sank.

"You started the fire that night in the building?" Connors asked.

Grinair nodded. "My blood was on the floor. The construction guy got me right in the face..."

Grinair's bloodied nose at the scene...

"What happened that night with Weston?" she asked.

"They had me pick Weston up."

"Why you?"

"They didn't want him to run. He didn't know me."

"Did he know where you were taking him?"

"He figured it out and starts talking to me."

"What about?" Reyes asked.

"About White Night. He'd done the money transfers for the supplies, paid the bomber."

Connors' body was on fire. "What? Who?"

"Magnesium turnings and thermite. Bomber was just an account number in Eastern Europe."

"Where?" she asked.

"No idea."

She stared hard at him.

"No idea," he repeated firmly.

"What else did Weston say?"

"He said he was going to be a father. He'd split from the mom to keep her safe, but he wanted to be back with her, raise his kid."

"But you didn't let him go," Connors said quietly.

Grinair swallowed. "Wouldn't have made any difference. If I let him go, they'd find him anyway, and then my wife gets her throat slit too."

Connors rubbed her brow.

"They weren't going to kill him. Just warn him, but then Weston starts spouting that he wants out and he's gonna contact the Romanos. Grensky grabs him, but he slips away and flies at Nikolai. The Russian asshole panics—his first shot's high and hits the construction worker in the building. Two more shots and Weston's dead."

"What was Weston doing for Nikolai?" she asked.

"Some sort of computer hacking. Like computer kidnapping—they hack the computer and throw up a message that they ain't gonna release the computer unless they receive money."

Ransomware. A perfectly untraceable business for Nikolai, probably setup for him by Weston, but it still didn't explain White Night.

She asked her last question: "It was you at the parts store, wasn't it? You drew the gunmen away from us."

"I couldn't let cops die."

Connors felt pressure building in her chest. She looked at Reyes. The captain's eyes reflected her heartbreak. A good cop, a decorated veteran, crossed every line, but the thin blue one still held for him in the end.

"I don't care about going to jail," he said softly.

Reyes shook her head slowly. She knew Grinair was going to jail and she knew what was waiting for a cop there.

"This is gonna crush my wife, but I had to do it. She'll understand that at least," Grinair said to himself, staring into space. "We never had kids, these kids...they were my kids, my responsibility."

He'd almost gotten them killed telling Nikolai about Michael's transfer and initiated the attack on Marco, but she still couldn't hate him.

"Detective Connors, can you excuse us please?" Reyes asked her, sliding the personnel file into her desk.

She couldn't wait to get out of there. Grinair's career, his life, was over, and she'd pulled the plug on him to protect her partner and herself.

As she walked across the squad room, Perez shouted, "Bye-bye, Connors. Enjoy your time off."

She didn't bother responding. He'd know soon enough and she'd have to watch her back. Grinair was well liked, respected as a solid guy and a good cop. Justified or not, she was about to lose the little respect she had in the department. She'd turned on a fellow officer and even if she transferred, it would follow her for the rest of her working life.

Maybe it was best. Her leg was worse than ever, her head pounded from a night spent investigating Grinair and searching a five-block radius for the cell phone instead of sleeping, and now she would be hated on sight by her brothers and sisters in blue.

A girlcould only take so much...