Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 4

Prior to the end of the shift, Halstead found himself back at Intelligence Unit, where the team had been gathered by Lindsay for a debrief.

"The good news is Tom King was arrested after a relatively short pursuit," she began, although she was clearly a long way from happy. "The bad news is I had you, you and you come out of that house and tell me it was clear." She had pointed at Atwater, Olinsky and Halstead. "The next thing I know, I'm almost being run down by an SUV, and our suspect is escaping. Who wants to tell me how that happened?"

"He wasn't upstairs," Olinsky said with certainty.

"Definitely not," Atwater agreed. "I was standing inside the front door, near the bottom of the stairs, before he did the stuntman routine out of the garage. No one went up or down those stairs apart from me and Al."

Lindsay turned to Halstead, raising her eyebrows in expectation. It was obvious to him that the blame was coming his way.

"I swept the living room and the kitchen. They were both clear, so I let Kevin in and asked him to do the upstairs with Al, leaving me to do the garage. I went in there and checked it out. There was no one there. There was only the SUV in there, and a pile of junk in the corner that wasn't big enough for someone to hide in. I looked all around the SUV, under it, and into it. There was no one there," Jay insisted.

"Did you open the trunk?" Lindsay asked.

Fuck, Halstead thought. No, he hadn't even tried to open the trunk. How had he missed that? If the SUV had been unlocked, which he hadn't tested, King could have been hiding in the trunk. It wouldn't have been a comfortable fit, but he could have done it. Once the coast was clear he could have climbed out and got behind the wheel, ready to flee if necessary. Then Ruzek had come around from the rear garden, shouting something about checking the garage. It must have spooked King into the action he had taken.

"Well?" Lindsay demanded, even more annoyed by his lack of response.

"No, I didn't check the trunk," he admitted reluctantly, feeling embarrassed in front of his colleagues, his friends, his boss, and the woman he loved.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Lindsay shouted at him. To Halstead it seemed like an over the top reaction. "You could have gotten someone killed. You could have blown that whole Vice case, and for what? Because you can't be bothered to open a trunk?"

Halstead felt his blood pressure rising. Erin Lindsay shouting at him after everything she had put him through was too much for him to take. "It's nothing to do with not being bothered!" he shouted back at her. "I just didn't think about it, alright?"

"No, not alright!" Lindsay yelled back at him. They were now in each other's faces. "You'd better get your head in the game, because that kind of lackadaisical bullshit is not acceptable!"

Halstead felt sexual tension like he never had before, even with the rest of the team standing there watching them.

It was Zelina Vega who broke the spell a moment later. "Intelligence Unit, huh?" she said in her strong New York accent, walking off towards her office, casually chewing gum. Her implication was that she couldn't see much intelligence on show.

Lindsay took a step back from Halstead and addressed the group. "Ruzek, Olinsky, Atwater, you can go home. Halstead, I think you'd better join me in my office."

Preparing himself for round two, Jay trudged over to the office. He was determined not to be yelled at like that, whether he had a mistake or not. To his surprise, Olinsky walked in just after Lindsay, stopping her from shutting the door.

"Can I help you?" she asked him.

Olinsky closed the door, looking at each of them in turn. "Look, I know you're the boss now, Lindsay, and Halstead, we're partners. But I'm going to say something to you both. I'm going to say it only once, and you're both going to listen. I know what's going on between you as well as you do. It's obvious, and it's effecting your work. So, you're going to go out tonight, you're going to have a couple of drinks, and you're going to talk it out, properly. And when you show up here tomorrow, no matter what the outcome, you're going to show up ready to work like professionals, not like love shy teenagers at a prom."