Thank you for reading!
Major was on patrol—something he did fairly frequently, despite what the media and Hobbs seemed to think—when he heard about the body in in Warmbloods, a human bar. That wasn't exactly Fillmore Graves territory, but right now, anything out of the ordinary was something he wanted to check out personally.
To his relief, Liv and Clive were at the bar when he arrived. "What do you know?" he asked them, glad that at least from them he could be sure of an honest answer.
"It was a drive-by," Clive told him. "Two people in masks."
"How many casualties?" As usual, Lambert made the simplest question sound condescending. Major would have liked to have done this without Lambert's help, but the man was the head of Fillmore Graves' detective division, so no such luck. Someday, if he was able to hold on to this job—and this city—long enough, Major hoped to be able to staff Fillmore Graves with people he actually trusted, whose competency he was certain of. But they weren't there yet.
Clive looked down at the dead body at their feet and back up at Lambert. "One."
"Witnesses saw the shooter and driver take off in a blue Civic hatchback," Liv added. "Matches with the vehicle we saw racing off on our way over."
Quietly, Major said to Lambert, "See if any of our guys own a car like that." He didn't like the look Lambert shot him in response, but like it or not, Fillmore Graves' first responsibility was to police its own, and Major wasn't going to back down from that, distasteful as it might be.
"Of course, Commander." It was so hard to tell if Lambert was just being Lambert or if he was subtly being insubordinate. Maybe both. Probably both.
Turning to Liv, Major started to say something, but he was interrupted by a loud human voice calling to him. "Hey, Commander!" He looked up to see a man standing at the end of the bar, clearly trying to get control of himself. "How are you all going to cover this one up? What are we going to hear on the news?"
A woman standing next to him took up the attack. "'Eddie Diggs died of natural causes'," she said, as if quoting a news article. "He is survived by his wife and two kids."
Major didn't know what to say. He wasn't in the business of covering things up, but it didn't pay to broadcast the growing unrest in New Seattle, not if he was going to keep the United States from writing the city and all its inhabitants off for good. He wished people would just stop killing each other, just for a little while, just until they could get the city on its feet and find some kind of equilibrium—but that wasn't going to happen.
"Our investigation is ongoing," Liv said into the silence.
"Yeah, because Renegade is all about defending humanity," the woman sneered.
"Look." Clive moved toward the bar patrons. "We treat this like any other homicide. We investigate, we find things out, we arrest and prosecute the offenders. Anything you can add to our investigation would be appreciated. And if you have nothing to add, then I would appreciate it if you would step aside and let us do our jobs."
The man and the woman looked at each other, and then they got out of Clive's way.
Clive turned back to Major. "I think it might be best if you left us to it."
"You'll follow up with my people?"
"Of course."
Major nodded. Just as he was turning back to Lambert, Liv put a hand on his arm. "Major."
"Yeah?"
"We'll get there."
He tried to force a smile and was pretty sure he had failed completely. "I wish I had your optimism."
"Optimism? Endorphins, son! Got my workout in this morning, a little bit of extra iron pumped over lunch, and now you couldn't bring me down with a bazooka."
The sheer nonsense of it elicited the smile Major hadn't been able to muster. "That brain tube is looking better and better."
She flexed for him. "You just wish you had these guns."
In a different time and place, Major would have enjoyed this brain—showing off his own physique for her, maybe doing a little stripping to bare more musculature, maybe going beyond that … But they weren't doing that anymore, and this wasn't the place anyway, and New Seattle needed him not distracted. "Yeah. That's it. You got me." He squeezed her shoulder.
Lambert was waiting near the door. "I take it we are leaving?"
"We're going to let Seattle PD handle this one. They'll check in with us as their investigation progresses."
"Indeed." Lambert's tone and his raised eyebrows said clearly how unlikely he thought that was, but he knew what was good for him and didn't argue as Major led him out of the bar.
Outside, Major stopped to look back. "I wish they trusted us."
"They are not trustworthy. Why should we care what they think?"
He shook his head. If this was Lambert's position, how many others on both sides shared it? Too many. They made it damned hard to keep this city together … and as far as Major could tell, they didn't care.
Some part of him wished he was still in that little house in Oregon with Liv, and that New Seattle had someone else charged with keeping it from going up in a giant mushroom cloud. He was probably a bad person for wishing that, but he couldn't help it.
"Come on."
"Of course, Commander."