Thanks again for the feedback you guys are awesome!

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"Did you get it?" Tom asked glancing up at his front door as he heard it jiggle Doug using his own key insted of bothing to knock...

"Well hello to you too..." Doug smirked taking his key out of the door and closing it behind himself.

"I just saw you two hours ago, but hello... So did you get it?"

"Of course I got it." He nodded walking over and setting the manilla colored folder in his partners lap.

"How?"

"The same way you git your hands on the Nelson file..."

"You know if Fuller finds out we're going to be in a whole lot of trouble don't you?"

Penhall smirked and leaned down to pick the file back up. "Well if that's the way you feel-"

"Hey!" Hanson batted his hand away, "I was just saying..." He cleared his throat opening the file, "Let's see what we have in here..." He looked up at his friend, "Did you read it yet?"

Penhall's head shook back and forth, "Nah I glanced to make sure it was the right one, but I didn't want to look to suspicious so I brought it right back here to you..."

Tom nodded then looked back at the pages in his grasp, "Officer Daniel Booker... Honorable discharge" He read outloud as Doug took a seat on the sofa caddy corner to his friend leaning forward in intrest, "1975..."

"What for?"

Holding up one fnger Tom's eyebrows wrinkled as he read over the words drawing his lip into his mouth his breath slightly caught in his throat as he turned the page.

"Come on Hanson..." The eager man tried to lean forward more to get a peek nearly falling off the cushion and landing on the floor in the process, "What's it say?"

Tom looked up from the papers his skin slightly paled fron the things he had just read.

"What!" Doug reached over taking the file from Tom's lap and turning the page back he began to read outloud from the newspaper clipping stapled to it.

"On the morning of July sixth ninteen seventy-five officers Grey and Thompson were disbatched to 1649 Clearview Drive at aproximately 9:23 am." He stopped a moment to whipe his hands on his pants leg before continuing. "After recieving a call from headquarters about a disturbance in the area, the two men arrived on the scene to find Officer Daniel Booker laying in the front yard surrounded by his son, Dennis Booker age nine and wife Claire Booker age forty-one.

"Officer Booker had been shoot in the back a centimeter and a half below his neck and was no longer concious when the Grey and Thompson arrived."

Penhall swallowed a few time before continuing letting his eyes wonder up to Hanson... the man in the chair next to him had his head down and was listening as though he himself had not read it and was hearing the information for the first time. Penhall took notice of the shaking in Tom's hands and frowned...

"Maybe we shouldn't be reading this..."

"Keep going."

"Tom."

"Read it Doug."

Doug nodded and rubbed the back of his neck with his fingers before turning the page to finish reading the report. "Police statements filed by his wife later informed local police that the off duty officer of nearly 20 years had been outside that morning playing ball with his son when a couple of local thugs, later identified as Curtis J. Matthews and Ricardo L. Bennis, had driven by and began shooting at the two persons in the front yard.

"Matthews and Bennis both 22 from the near by neighborhood of Sun Valley had only been released from jail forty-eight hours earlier and Officer Booker was the arresting officer in the drug trafficing case.

"Mrs. Booker said that she heard the gun fire from where she stood in the laundry room of the familes small two bedroom home and came running to find her husband lying face down his head craddled in her son's lap. 'I don't think Dennis really knew what was going on... His father had jumped on him to shield him from the bullets... and then the next thing he knew his daddy wasn't breathing anymore and he was bleeding...' the distrought woman told police... 'He kept crying...Daddy wake-up daddy please wake-up even as the ambulances arrived and forced him to move away.

"Paramedics were able to-to revive..." Doug cleared his throat and whipped at his face trying to swallow the lump that had quickly formed there, "Paramedics were able to revive the 42 year old officer and he was quickly transported back to County General where he died nearly thirteen days later from a laceration in his abdomen that had gone unnoticed by the doctors...

"Booker had regained conciousness only three days before his passing and although he was paralized from the neck down was said to be in good spirits as he was surrounded by his friends and loved ones on July nineteenth ninteen seventy five at 7:36 am.

"There will be a purple heart ceremony this upcoming saturday the twenty-third to present the officers wife and son with the award of bravery and honor..."

"Wow..." Doug closed the file as Tom finally looked up from the spot in his lap he had been staring at his eyes meeting his partners, "That must have been horrible.."

Bitting his finger nail Hanson nodded, "I mean... I lost my father, but I wasn't there when it happened and he didn't... I mean they told Booker's family that everything was going to be ok, that he was going to live... then he was gone."

"Do you think that that's why he has trouble being around you?"

"Of course it is... I mean he found me too you know?"

"But you're not dead..."

"Doesn't matter..." Tom ran his hands through his hair exhaling a deep breath.

"So the quesion now is... how do we fix it?"

"I don't think we can."

"Then what do we do? Talk to him?"

"NO!" Tom shook his head, "We can't... he'll know we read the file..."

"True... Do you think there is another way... to you know make him open up about this?"

Tom didn't answer right away lost in his own thoughts momentarily the story Penhall had just read was still ringing true inside of him... that could of been him they were discribing... He could have died. His son, sure he didn't have one... but if he did his son craddling his head... His wife crying... And for a moment he felt truly thankful to be alive... That of course was fallowed by a severe feeling of guilt."

"Earth to Hanson!" Doug's hand was now waving in front of his eyes in a quite annoying gesture.

"Stop that," He grunted smacking him.

"Sorry man... but what are we going to do?"

"Wait..." Tom's voice was hardly a whisper.

"Wait?"

"Yes Doug, we are going to wait... He's going to have to come around sometime... Especially with me in his life as much as I am..."

"But you're not-"

"I will be..."

"I don't think I fallow you here..." Penhall's face was masked with confusion as he fiddled with the corner of the file in his hands.

"I'm going to help him Doug." Tom nodded, "I'm going to help him get past this... this fear he still has of his father, these memoried he holds on to like bricks piled on his back... I'm going to push and push until he bursts at the seems with an emotion he never wanted to feel again."

Doug's head nodded... "Why?"

"Because the only way to concur a fear is to face it..."

Penhall smiled a little, that was perhaps the smartest thing he had ever heard Tom say... and Tom had said a lot of smart things in the five or so years that Doug had known him... He couldn't help but think to himself that maybe this wasn't only going to be good for Booker, but Hanson as well had a few fears he would have to face to pull this off...

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There it is... I'm not to sure how I feel about this part, I'm trying to push all the thoughts and ideas I have for this story out right on to the page but sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to bore you and that y'all will lose interest.