Chapter 8

Danny's heart was pounding with apprehension as he quickly climbed the stairs to Eddie's soon-to-be-former little third-story walk-up apartment. He had been relieved to find Jamie's locked black Ford Mustang parked neatly just down the street after a quick glance inside proved it to be empty. Despite his overwhelming desire to confirm that he'd found his unaccounted for sibling, Danny did hesitate for a few seconds to gather his thoughts before softly knocking at the door and turning the key in the lock. He was both reassured and concerned to find his little brother curled up in an apparent deep sleep on a small, somewhat outdated and worn sea foam green loveseat sitting next to an old furry white area shag rug in the middle of an otherwise completely empty space. It would have been an almost comical scene given any other circumstances. The kid was breathing evenly and deeply, but had obviously been in a highly fevered state recently as his shirt was soaked through in sweat and his face was still flushed. Danny shook his head as he quietly walked over and picked Jamie's phone off the almost obscenely poofy rug where it looked to have fallen out of his hand and was rendered virtually silent on vibrate only.

"Oh, Harvard, you could have saved us all a lot of grief you know…" he muttered under his breath as he glanced at the screen full of missed notifications before turning the device off and slipping it into his own pocket. There was much to be said before he allowed his brother to look at those messages. He paused for just a few seconds more to send out a brief text of his own to the entire family affirming that Jamie had been successfully located and was safe before kneeling down and touching his arm in an attempt gently to rouse him. Danny was relieved to feel cool skin beneath his fingers as the fever had obviously run its course and broken. Jamie moaned slightly at his contact and his tired hazel eyes soon slipped opened in confusion.

"Hey, sleepyhead. You gonna wake up now?"

"Danny," Jamie rasped as he ran the back of his hand across his arid, dry lips and squinted at the early afternoon light now streaming in the small bare living room windows. "What… what are you doing here?"

"Well, obviously I was looking for you, genius," his brother retorted lightly. Danny had never been one to display an overabundance of tact, but he was determined to handle this situation with as much sensitivity and diplomacy as he could muster to try to soften the blow. At that moment though he wanted nothing more than to pull the kid into his arms and hold him like he'd always done when Jamie was a small boy, so that's what he did. "C'mon, sit up a little," he ordered as he pulled his brother by the shoulder before sliding into the seat himself and pushing him back down on his lap.

"Danny, are you nuts? Get away from me, I've gotta be contagious!" Jamie growled hoarsely as he tried to jerk away but his older brother was having none of it and kept a firm grip on his shoulder to keep him from getting up. "You want to wind up like this? What the hell have you been smoking today?"

"Look around, Harvard. Do you see anywhere else to sit? Besides you're drenched in sweat... it's over and your fever's gone. You're not gonna make me sick now."

"That's after 24-hours you idiot," Jamie frowned as he shivered a bit in his damp clothing. "Don't you pay attention to anything when your kids go to school? There's a reason they have to be fever-free for a whole day before they allow them back," he observed as he gave in somewhat with a sigh and turned to lay on his back with his feet dangling over the opposite armrest from the knees down. Eddie had always referred to this as their special date night chair since it was such a tight fit if they squeezed in together they inevitably found themselves on top of one another which often led to other things. Still, it was just weird though to be sitting here with his brother this way. "Now seriously, what are you doing here?" he croaked through the intermittent laryngitis as he stared up at the gruff face above.

"I told you... I was looking for you," Danny repeated as he pulled down the old handmade afghan that was still resting on the back of the furniture and covered his brother with it to ward off the chill. "I was worried after seeing you at dinner last night… you weren't at the 3-5 or answering your calls, and I happened to spot your car here while I was driving through," he lied blatantly, an art form perfected after years of facing tough perps in the box on a daily basis. "So I came up after I talked to Eddie and her neighbor Miss Rosie let me in." That was nearly the truth and enough minutia to pass as genuine fact for now. As much as he hated to admit it, Danny was in interrogation mode and he needed to get Jamie talking about what went down at the precinct that morning to filter as much useful information out as possible before he inevitably upset him with the details and the younger man went into shock and clammed up. "Besides, you used to lay on me like this all the time when you were little, remember? That's the only way you could watch a scary movie until you were like… what? Twenty? I used to cover your eyes during all of the bad parts until it was safe to look." Danny desperately wanted to do that again in this very moment... to put blinders on Jamie and take away the pain that he was about to inflict and hide it away, but this was real life and there was no way to spare the kid from what was coming next.

"Yeah, you used to cover my eyes during all of the good parts too," Jamie conceded with a small smirk as he relaxed back down. It was kind of nice to take comfort in these pleasant memories for a change, especially with his often contentious brother and he was starting to feel much better than he had before as the damn virus had seemed finally to give in after two days of waging a war on his body. "I think I missed about three-quarters of 'Pretty Woman' every time it was on until I went away to college. I never even knew she was singing that one song from under the bubbles in the bathtub until Sydney and I saw it one weekend."

"You were like five or six when that movie came out and Julia Roberts played a prostitute… what did you think I was supposed to do when they started making out? Let them corrupt you?"

"You watched it all the time."

"I had a thing for tall redheads," his brother admitted with a heavy nostalgic sigh. Besides, I was fifteen, and it was a classic chick flick. All the girls loved it."

"Not Linda. Now why were you looking for me, Danny?"

"Dad was concerned," the older man admitted with a slight change of direction as he prayed he'd eventually be forgiven for what he was about to do. "He called over to the precinct to check on you when you didn't answer your phone and he saw you were listed on the duty roster for today, but you weren't in the car when they radioed."

"Oh, crap... I guess the assignments didn't get changed at the desk," Jamie admitted as he rubbed his head. "Sorry. It was such a last-minute thing. I lost my voice at roll call and went back to the locker room to try to find some cough drops when Lieutenant Carson was leaving. He had second thoughts about sending me out on patrol the way I looked I guess and came back in a minute and told me to go home… said he wasn't going to be the one that had to call the Commissioner and tell him I dropped over in the hallway again like Renzulli did last summer. He said he'd ride with Rodgers today since I pulled four doubles to cover for him last week when he was out sick. Is Dad mad about the log? It was stupid to forget, but I felt like such crap that I couldn't even make it home so I stopped here just to take a nap since it's quiet… and not so cluttered…"

"No, Dad's not mad… he was just worried, that's all," Danny assured softly as he made probably one of the greatest understatements of his life and put his hand on his brother's shoulder. It was time to start opening this up and there was no easy way to do it… everything just needed to be ripped apart with the rough edges exposed so that somehow they could start to put the pieces back together again. He needed to get Jamie back to the hospital for Eddie, and it was apparent now that he likely had no real information to offer about the events that took place after he clocked out. Still, he tried one last pry. "Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you left the precinct this morning?"

That comment fully caught Jamie's attention, and he successfully pulled himself up in a sitting position and stared at his brother intently now. Concern began radiating off of him in place of the fever that had been allowed to flashover. "No, I didn't see anything wrong, we didn't even start the day yet. What's going on, Dan?" he asked evenly. "Did something happen? Is everything alright?"

"No kid, everything's not alright," his older brother admitted sadly, unashamed that there were tears now welling up in his eyes. "We almost lost somebody in the family today," he added all but soundlessly with a tight throat.

"Gramps?!" Jamie gasped. Damn it, he should have guessed there was more to this then a concerned older brother just stopping by to check on him. He frantically looked around for his phone but couldn't remember where he had put it. "What's going on? I knew he didn't look good the other day. I should have insisted that he…"

"No, Jamie! Stop! Grandpa is fine," Danny assured before he took a deep breath. "It was you," he added quietly with a waver in his voice and a renewed look of shock plainly written on his face.

"WHAT?! DANNY, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? You're not making any sense!" Jamie pitifully tried to shout in a near panic as his voice faded off to nothing while he fended off his brother's attempt to grab his arm.

"KID, LISTEN TO ME!" Danny demanded as his voice echoed off the hardwood floor in the near-empty space and he was finally successful in his attempt to snatch Jamie's damp shirt and hang on. "I promise I'll tell you everything, but you just need to sit tight and listen until I'm finished! Okay?" He continued as soon as he saw his little brother had been rendered silent for a moment. "Carson and Rodgers were in the car on 9th and Wilshire having coffee and writing a report after a call around ten this morning when a guy walked up out of nowhere on the passenger side and opened fire on them," he paused as he watched virtually every drop of blood drain from Jamie's face. "Rodgers took one to the side of the chest that managed to slip by his vest, but he was able to call it in. He's in surgery now at St. Vic's. Docs say he's likely paralyzed from the waist down though… hollow point rounds, there's a lot of damage..."

"Carson?..." Jamie mouthed without a sound as almost every function in his body had seemed to cease. His stunned eyes managed finally to blink once as he sat stiffly back up against the couch. "He's…?"

Danny just shook his head at first. "I'm so sorry, kid. He took one almost point blank to the side of the head. They rushed him in but he was long gone before they even got there... LISTEN! THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT!" he insisted as he could see the shock wave overcome his brother's brain as he began to stare numbly straight ahead, and there were still such difficult details to reveal.

"Jamie, I know this is hard but need you to stay with me," Danny implored as he shifted over to kneel in front of the couch on that damn white rug so he could be in his brother's direct line of vision. "Kid, you have to understand. The car assignments weren't updated and everyone saw you at roll call ready to ride with Rodgers. We were all told… 1PP was notified… Dad didn't even know until he got to the hospital and went in the back that it wasn't you and the media bastards somehow found out that a ranking officer from 3-5 Edward was down on scene…"

"Oh, God," Jamie managed all at once to breathe in his blank white vacuum of space. He somehow sensed that particular bit of information had to be relevant to something else that his brother was trying to get across to him, but his normally sharp brain had been rendered impotent and none of the standard connections were being made until one image snapped forward of a blond-haired woman standing in a white dress next to a little girl in a bridal store. "Eddie!" he gasped.

"She heard and went to the hospital thinking the worst," Danny admitted. He had both hands on his brother's knees at this point, ready to intercept him if he tried to run for the door when the last part was disclosed. "When she got there, Dad was telling the Rodgers family that he was in surgery and she assumed…"

Jamie's wide eyes shot up and locked on his brother in a hollow stare… surely there wasn't anything worse to add…

"...she assumed that meant you were the one down and fainted and hit her head on some kind of table before anyone could get to her. She's okay, though," he insisted as he used his strategic position quickly to push his brother back on the couch before he could bolt as he had feared. "Hold on now... they were treating her for shock, but I talked to her myself before I came here. We had to ping your phone to find you. She was knocked out for a couple of minutes and got a nasty cut on the side of her head that'll need a few stitches, but she's gonna be fine. Do you hear me?" Danny begged as he searched his brother's eyes for some hint of comprehension while maintaining a firm grip on him. "Jamie, they're gonna keep her there probably overnight for observation, but she's gonna be fine, I swear. She just really needs to see you, okay? Linda and Eva are with her and Kaylin too. Dad put me on the case, and Baez and I are gonna find the guy that did this and put him down, one way or the other... I promise," he added with strong conviction.

"So that's what you were doing?" Jamie barked back angrily to the extent his near-absent voice would allow after a short pause. He was breathing heavily and physically shaking again once more as all the adrenaline left in his body hit hard with the last bit of news, lifting the fog as suddenly images of each of these terrible scenes began playing on fast forward through his brain, nearly drowning out his thoughts. "All this time you were sitting here interrogating me first?... Pretending to be worried about me when you knew Carson was dead and Eddie's hurt?! Nice work... Detective Reagan!"

"I wasn't pretending!" Danny insisted as he cursed being the one that had to bring all of this agony down on his own brother, while at the same time giving thanks to above that the kid was here to take it in the first place. "Look Harvard, there was no easy way to do this! I had no idea how you were going to react… sometimes you just completely shut down over this stuff, ever since Mom and Joe…" he paused with deep regret for throwing that in there on today of all days but this was not the time to back up. "There's a cop-killer out there that needs to be found so I had to know what you did, and DAMN IT! I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm glad you weren't the one in that car today! Now get your stuff if you have anything you need to bring," he ordered as he stood and pulled Jamie up by the collar and reached in his own pocket. "I've got a shirt you can change into in the trunk. Here's your phone. I promised Eddie I would find you and bring you back so I'm gonna drive you down to the hospital right now and I don't want any lip about taking your own car. We'll pick it up later!"


Boy that was tough. Next up, Jamie deals with the situation at the hospital as they wait for news on the rookie's condition, and he is torn between being there for Eddie and his obligation to the job and the other officers in his platoon as the inevitable guilt starts to settle in on top of everything else.

Special thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing! You guys make my day and keep me writing!