Raise the Devil
Chapter 1

A light rain tapped on the windshield of her car as she sat in the parking lot looking up at the massive building before her. Years of drought and yet today was one of the rare occasions the skies opened, she could only take that as a bad omen. Not that she was a superstitious person, she didn't have a pair of lucky socks she wore on duty, but she also wasn't completely numb to the foreboding sensation of impending doom either. Her phone buzzed again and she glanced at the screen before scowling, another text from Lucifer. Ever since the debacle with his wings three days ago he'd been driving her crazy and not in his usual way. There was something freed about him, a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and he was going wild with it. It was like he was rebounding to the man she'd first met so many weeks ago, any emotional clarity he'd achieved suddenly gone. Truth be told she'd been waiting for the relapse, change never came without them. The question now was whether he'd could climb out of that dark place again or not.

And if he held another suspect off a roof she was going to arrest him.

Chloe sighed as she turned the device off and put it away, message unread, before slipping out of the car. She wasn't a coward and she needed to talk to Malcolm and not only because he wanted to talk to her too. Even so the guilt of what his family had been through gnawed at her and she wasn't looking forward to this confrontation. As it was, hospitals made her uncomfortable, had since that day she was nineteen and burst through these same doors only to find that her father had died five minutes before in surgery. She still had nightmares about that only now, after her near miss, it was often her that had died and her daughter who was left behind. Like father, like daughter. She shuddered at the thought and took the elevator to the floor she wanted.

Once she reached the room she paused again, he was with his wife. She blew out a breath remembering the last time they'd seen each other and she was hesitant to knock but did it anyway. She didn't have all day to spend on this and she needed to pick up Trixie in an hour from a friend's house. Dan had called her a few minutes after Malcolm and was too busy with his current case to do it like he promised. She scowled at the thought and it gave her the burst of energy she needed to knock on the door.

His wife looked up and then her eyes narrowed before she stormed over to the door, "How dare you-"

"Honey!" her husband called and she looked back at him as he leaned over to look at them, "I called her. Could you go get a coffee while we talk?"

"Malcolm," she said incredulously, "You're not in any condition to be interrogated by this-"

"I'm not here to interrogate him," she said as she made sure to keep her face blank, getting emotional would only exacerbate the situation. "I wouldn't even be here if he hadn't called."

Malcolm nodded and then looked pleadingly at his wife, "I won't get stressed I promise. Please, the two of us need to talk."

His wife still hesitated and then huffed before storming out of the room with one last warning look sent in her direction. Chloe watched her go before walking into the room and closing the door behind her, "I gotta admit, I figured I'd be the last person you wanted to see. I'm sure they've told you by now."

"About your investigation," he raised an eyebrow, "yeah, and that's part of why I wanted to talk to you, the other part was to thank you."

"Thank me?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline as she sat in a visitors chair he gestured to.

"Of course, you may have been investigating me but you saved my life," his eyes darkened and he looked away, "I was supposed to die that day. If you hadn't been there I wouldn't have even had a chance."

"Supposed to...," she trailed off, her brow furrowed, and then realization dawned on her, "You know it was a hit?"

He snorted and looked back at her, "I had a feeling it was coming, yeah. Hell, for a second I thought it was you when I saw you behind the door. But then the shooting started and you were there trying to help me. It's the last thing I remember."

"I thought you were on the take and I wanted to catch you," she said as she folded her arms across her chest "Was I wrong?"

His eyes were unreadable for a moment, "You're right and you're wrong."

"I was right you were dirty," she said leaning back into her seat, and he winced at the term, "but I was wrong you were in it alone. I know that, I found the hidden entrance they used to start the gunfight. There was an old police key in the tunnel, whoever you're working with tried to kill you."

"They thought – and with you following me around…they don't like weak links," Malcolm said looking at his hands and she felt a shiver run down her spine. They? What exactly was going on here?

"How many cops are involved in this?" she asked as fear started to creep in, though she didn't let it show. One or two dirty officers was one thing, but this sounded like something else. What exactly had she stumbled onto and if they were willing and able to kill one of their own, what would they do to her?

She watched with interest as Malcolm grew nervous and his heart monitor started to spike. The excessive beeping grabbed both of their attentions and he took a moment to compose himself to lower it again. Neither of them wanted to summon a concerned doctor to interrupt this conversation. "No, look, this isn't why I called you here. You saved my life Decker, so now I'm returning the favor. Drop this. Whatever you know or think you know forget it and leave it alone."

"Leave it…" she stared at him open mouthed before righteous indignation filled her. She was a detective with the LAPD, she'd sworn an oath to uphold the law and protect the citizens of this city. If there was a gang of dirty cops running around killing people, abusing their power, she couldn't let that stand. She just couldn't. She knew there was corruption everywhere, it was just a fact of life and something Lucifer teased her about all the time. She knew she couldn't fix all the city's problems, let alone the world's, but this was a situation she knew about. This was something she could fix. "I'm not going to do that. You can't just ask me to turn a blind eye to this Malcolm. These people are thieves and killers hiding behind badges! They have to be stopped!"

Malcolm shook his head, his eyes wide but sad, "You're just like him."

"Like who?" she asked, put off balance by the seemingly random observation.

"Your dad," he sighed and looked at her with an apology in his eyes. It was well known in the precinct that she didn't like to talk about her father or his 'war stories'. Being a cop now herself it was all just too close to home, "He was a straight arrow too, a good man, it was a tragedy what happened to him and to you."

Chloe shifted, uncomfortable talking to this man about her father, "Are you going to tell me who your partners are or not?"

"No," Malcolm sighed, "I won't help you run into a bullet and I won't bring them down on my family. As it is I hope they let me go, that they consider this and my retirement enough."

"You think they'd come after you again?" she asked as she stood and walked to the bedside.

"If they thought I'd talk, yeah," he looked at her pointedly, implicitly telling her that he'd deny this conversation to his grave. And, considering their history, she knew everyone would believe him without a thought. "You can't investigate this and don't trust anyone inside the department with what you do know. I didn't know everyone involved but I do know there's a lot of them and they're high up."

A knock on the door made them both jump, interrupting their staring contest, just before a nurse walked in, "Sorry I have to do a quick check of his vitals and change the sheets. You're going to have to leave."

"Right," she said and started to walk away but Malcolm grabbed her arm and pulled her back. His grip surprisingly strong for someone who'd been in a coma for months but not strong enough to hold her. Even so, she let him pull her down and he placed his mouth right next to her ear while the nurse busied herself organizing her supplies on a table.

"I didn't want to do this but, look kid, you're dad found out and they killed him for it." Malcolm hissed in her ear and it was like lightening hit her as the words sunk in, "They left you and your mother alive because they didn't think you'd be a problem. You're becoming a problem. They won't make that mistake with your daughter."

She stumbled away from him, stunned, and the nurse looked worriedly at her increasingly pale face, "Are you ok, Miss? Do you need to lie down?"

"No," she said shakily as she maintained eye contact with the guilt ridden fallen officer. She wanted to deny his words, her father had been killed in a robbery gone bad by a gang banger, but the look in his eyes stopped her voice. Her gut, her instincts, overrode her denial, he was telling the truth, and she felt sick. "I have to go."

She spun on her heel and walked quickly from the room, she wanted to run but was just able to contain herself. She needed to get out of here and she needed to get somewhere she could think, to reconcile the two parts of her that were currently at war. Her logical mind was quick to dismiss the wounded man's assertion, she knew what happened to her father, but her gut was screaming at her. Malcolm's final words to her didn't make sense if they weren't true. His condition and a threat against Trixie would have been sufficient to express the danger to her. There was no need to bring in her father's death, to make it something it wasn't, when it had always been an open and shut case. No, he'd brought up her father twice and both times it had seemed like something that weighed heavily on him. He'd felt guilty, that much was blatantly obvious to her.

She'd just reached the floor's elevator lobby when a voice called out to her and she froze, her heart beating strangely. "Chloe? What are you doing here?"

"Dan," she said as she pushed the breakdown she wanted to have away, "What are you doing here?"

"I asked first?" he said with that smile she used to find charming, back before she'd been sent the anonymous video of him with another woman. Then he glanced back down the corridor she'd come from and his face fell, "Tell me you didn't?"

"He called me," she defended, the level of condescension in his voice making her hicks rise. That tone never failed to both piss her off and make her feel like a stupid child all at the same time, the feeling infuriated her. "He wanted to talk."

"He did?" Dan perked up and her stomach dropped for some reason, "What did he tell you?"

She opened her mouth and then closed it again as their conversation flew through her mind.

Don't trust anyone inside the department with what you do know.

I won't help you run into a bullet and I won't bring them down on my family.

You're dad found out and they-

She cut that thought off at the pass and shook her head to both clear it and answer his question. It wasn't that she didn't trust Dan...then again did she trust him? Why should she? He'd cheated on her and never had her back when it counted at work. He was always putting her down and telling her how to do her job, why did she trust him this much? Should she? Malcolm's confession was sending her into a paranoid tailspin and she didn't know what to do so she did the only thing she could, dodged. "He wanted to thank me for saving his life and for dropping my case before they pulled the plug."

"He thanked you?" Dan looked as shocked as she'd felt when the injured man had first said the words.

"Yeah," she nodded, "Look, I have to go pick up Trix...because you're too busy to…"

"Yeah," he said rubbing his ear in a gesture she'd come to learn meant he was nervous. It sent her heart racing. "I got a few minutes and I was right down the street so I thought I'd step in."

"Right," she said with narrowed eyes, as her mind bounced from suspicion to trust and back before settling on something like trust. For all his faults Dan would never do anything to endanger their daughter and according to Malcolm she would be if he was involved in this, "Well bad timing on your part, he's with a nurse now."

"Oh," he looked disappointed as he looked back down the hall and then smiled at her, "Can I walk you out?"

"Sure," she said keeping her tone light and they talked about inconsequential things for the ride down and the walk out of the building. "I'll tell Trixie hi for you."

"Thanks," he said with a smile and she got into her car and drove away without looking back, her hands white knuckled on the steering wheel.

She was able to make it several blocks before she was forced to pull over into a side alley as she finally let the full magnitude of what she'd been told hit her. Her stomach rolled and she just made it out of the car before she emptied it's contents on the alley floor. Her breathing harsh she leaned against a brick wall, a long suppressed pain roaring to life and making her chest ache as she sobbed. Maybe it was all bullshit and Malcolm was covering his ass by making his mistakes into a conspiracy to throw her off but it didn't matter. The very idea that her father's murderer hadn't died in that shootout so long ago made her blood boil. That the person or persons with her fathers blood on their hands could be working with her, could talk to her on a daily basis, and be the people she trusted her life to on the streets was too awful to ignore.

Thoughtlessly she allowed herself to slide and sit on the dirty alley floor, not that she cared at the moment, and tried to decided what to do with herself. What could she do? If Malcolm was right then she was already on the shit list of these people, she was already being watched...oh god was she being watched? Had they bugged her house or her phone or...no, stop it, she ordered her mind. If she allowed herself to descend into that rabbit hole right now she was never going to get back out again. She needed to focus on what she did know and that was very little.

She knew Malcolm was dirty and she'd been right. She knew he'd been set up to die and she knew that because of her initial investigation his would be murderer was likely watching her. If, and that was a big if, he'd been telling her the truth then she was in a worse position than she thought when she closed the case to throw off suspicion. She was going to have to be careful, she wouldn't put Trixie in danger for this. For a moment she thought of just letting it go but something inside her rebelled at the idea. She couldn't do that but she wasn't going to be stupid about this either. She couldn't be as gung ho as she'd been and she definitely couldn't involve Dan. If something were to happen to her then he and her mother would be all Trixie had left and she refused to take both parents away from her daughter.

As she ran through her options she considered telling Lucifer what she knew but then shook the thought away. A week ago she would have but with him on a bender she wasn't about to take the chance. In his current mindset he was likely to do something stupid like announce what he knew to the entire precinct just to revel in the chaos it would cause. And if there was a little voice in the back of her head that told her he wouldn't purposefully put her in that kind of danger, she'd ignored it.

Chloe took a deep breath, tentative plan in mind now, and pulled out her cell phone. It was only then that she realized she'd never turned it back on and quickly reactivated it only to be greeted by six text messages and a missed call. All from Lucifer. She shook her head and her mouth involuntarily quirked into the semblance of a smile as she opened the messages.

Good Morning Detective, have we a case today?

Detective?

.tive? that one made her chuckle, she could almost hear that seductive drawl his voice always got when he dragged out her title.

I have the sense that you're ignoring me?

You should know by now that ignoring me never works in your favor?

I find myself growing concerned, should I call your lieutenant and ask her your whereabouts? That text was from ten minutes ago and the missed call was from five, they spurred her into action. The last thing she needed after today's revelations was to have a face to face with her commanding officer because of him.

1)Are you five? 2) I just got these texts. It wasn't the complete truth but, like he'd taught her, half truths weren't a lie.

His response was almost instantaneous and she chuckled. If he was hanging by the phone like this he must have been exceptionally bored today. My dear detective, where have you been? Not working a case without me I hope?

She bit her lip before deciding to go with half truths again, No, I was in a section of the hospital where I couldn't have my phone on.

The phone call she received in response surprised her, "Are you quite alright?"

"Ah," she hesitated, was she alright? After everything she'd just learned and now sitting on the ground in a dingy alley a foot away from a pile of her own vomit the only thing she could think of was that physically, yes, she was. There was enough truth in that to satisfy her conscience. "Yeah, I was just visiting someone."

A silence stretched between them for several seconds and she wondered if he knew something was wrong. He always seemed to be annoyingly perceptive when it was least convenient for her. She'd even begun to wonder if the call had dropped when he sighed, sounding a little put out by something, "Do we have a case today?"

"No, I have to go pick up Trixie and then finish some reports," she grumbled feeling more like herself than she had since Malcolm's call last night. "I let myself get backlogged and the lieutenant won't give me another till I'm caught up."

"Very well then," he lamented like she'd just taken his favorite toy, "I suppose I'll just have to find something to occupy my time 'til then. How long will it take you?"

"I don't know," she frowned at the open door of her car, "Probably a day or two, if I'm left alone."

"Fine, fine," he huffed and she could imagine the pout on his face, "then I shall leave you in peace."

"What?" she asked with mock shock, "You mean you're actually going to leave me alone to do my job? Wow! Miracles do happen!"

"Oh ha ha," he tried to sound offended but she could hear the laughter in his voice, "my leaving you to do the sundries of your chosen profession is in no way comparable to the parting of the Red Sea or its ilk."

She smiled, really smiled, and then shook her head, "Alright, I have to go, goodbye Lucifer. Have uh...fun I guess."

"I feel I'd have more fun with you my dear but I shall endeavor to find some entertainment in your absence, goodbye," he said with a laugh and there was something to the tone of his voice before the line cut out that made her feel better. He sounded more like he had before his wings had gone missing and she wondered if something had happened to snap him out of his funk.

If it had she didn't have time to dwell on it, she had a daughter to fetch and paperwork to finish. She want to get that done as quickly as possible, she really wanted a new case. If only to distract her from everything else.