Dani entered and immediately froze at the sight of her team in their kitchen. Her gaze slowly scanned the stacks of files and the computer on the counter. Then, she met each of their eyes before stopping on Malcolm's and raising her eyebrows, tilting her head accusingly.
He licked his lips while nodding in agreement with her silent demand, "We need to talk."
Dani stared through narrowed eyes at Malcolm, clearly filtering her thoughts for the present company.
Gil read the room quickly, "JT and I should check in at the precinct. We can touch base after lunch."
Malcolm nodded and showed them to the door. Once he shut it, he turned, looking up at Dani in contrition.
"How bad is it?" The anger he expected was practically absent. Instead, fear colored every word Dani had spoken.
"Bad," he admitted.
She swallowed and took a slow, deep breath, "Like seven weeks ago 'bad'?"
Malcolm stared at the place where Dani's scar rested beneath her shirt.
Please, just a little longer. Her body twitching in his arms, before going completely limp, lifeless.
"Bright?"
Come back. Come back.
Dani reached out and took his hand; the contact pulled him from the memory. His eyes refocused and found hers.
"Nothing could ever compare to that," he whispered.
Malcolm took her face in his hands and kissed her, as though he was trying to confirm her existence. He did this from time to time, to placate his irrational fear: that Dani hadn't actually survived and this reality was all a fabricated delusion his mind created to keep from tearing itself apart.
Although, it stood to logic that if this was all a delusion of happiness meant to keep him from losing his sanity, he probably wouldn't be getting threatened by the wife of a man he'd…
Murdered, his psyche finished.
Tugging her hand, Malcolm led Dani to the couch and sat across from her. He ran his hands through his hair before beginning.
"Two weeks ago I got a text message that said 'I know what you did'. There was a video attached to it, a video of me… shooting Bennet."
"Two weeks ago?" Dani's eyes widened, "You've been dealing with this for two weeks and you didn't tell me?"
"That was wrong of me. I was afraid the stress would hinder your recovery. But, that's not a valid excuse. I know that."
His remorse seemed to stunt her anger, "What else?"
"Until last night, nothing. There hadn't been any additional contact. The message I got at dinner asked if you and your mother 'knew' and there was a picture of the three of us laughing at dinner."
"What?"
"That's why we left so quickly. Someone in that restaurant was watching us."
Dani started picking at the hem of her shirt, something she did absent-mindedly if she was anxious.
"I went to Gil last night. I knew if he saw the video's contents, he would have to report it."
Dani interrupted his explanation, terrified, "Is he going to?"
Malcolm shook his head, "He refused to watch it. Said he couldn't hold me accountable for what he hasn't seen or heard me confess."
She grinned, thankful.
"This morning JT and Gil showed up with all this," he gestured toward the stacks of files on the island counter, "Right before you came home, I think we figured it out."
She stared at him expectantly, her heart racing.
"Josylnn Bennet was released from prison a day and a half ago."
After her mouth popped open, Dani spoke, "How the hell did that happen?"
"Luca claimed he set her up. Some story about trying to get back at Bennet after an argument. He knew he was going to be locked up for a long time and he took the fall for her on the way inside."
"And you think she's the one behind the messages?"
"I think it's our best option at this point. I also think she's the reason Damian changed his testimony."
Dani scrunched her eyebrows in confusion, "You think she wanted you on the outside?"
"I do."
"Why?"
Malcolm leaned back and rubbed his eyes, "That, I don't know."
The two of them sat in silence, Dani attempting to reconcile all the information she had just been given and Malcolm desperately trying to figure out why he was sitting in his apartment and not in a jail cell.
After ten minutes of processing, Dani stood, went to the fridge, and returned with a bottle of water for each of them.
"So, what's the plan?" She stood behind him, looking down at his face, as his head rested on the back of the couch.
"I have no idea. None of these messages have come with demands or any information as to what their point is. I don't know if this is extortion or if they're just screwing with me before they send the video to the police." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, "I can't shake the feeling that I haven't spent my last night in a prison cell."
Dani walked around the couch and sat in front of him on the coffee table. "Don't talk like that. Look at me," she rested her hands on his knees. "We have overcome too much to start losing faith now. After everything we've been through the universe owes us a little something."
Malcolm looked up at her, genuinely frightened, "That's what I'm afraid of." When Dani stared at him, confused, he continued, "That this is justice from the universe, penance for what I did on that boat. For…"
Murdering Ezra Bennet. Again his psyche finished the sentence he couldn't bear to speak aloud.
Dani shook her head, "You're a good man, Malcolm. The most selfless person I've ever met. You are not owed this. You are not owed more time in prison. That isn't justice, or penance, or whatever you want to call it. You do not deserve this. We do not deserve this. And we are going to fight. So, what's the first step we need to take?"
Every day Malcolm was confident that he couldn't possibly love her more than he did in that moment. And every day, she proved him a fool. He took a breath and cleared the white noise from his head, "First step is: find Josylnn."
"Okay. Let's get started."
When the buzzer to the apartment sounded, Dani answered, "It's open."
She cracked the door and went back to her seat at the island. Gil and JT entered, more files in hand.
"Anything new?" Malcolm asked, hopeful.
JT pulled the chair next to Dani, "New? Yes. Helpful? No."
The profiler raised up from the file he was studiously combing, "What now?"
Gil answered him, "We got a call from the Marshals. Yesterday they were set to destroy those cartridges they picked up a month ago. Turns out two of them didn't match the others. Apparently they looked almost identical, with one exception, neither were armor piercing."
"Is that mistake on our end or theirs?" Dani asked.
"Varga, swears when he inspected them they were all there, 200 identical rounds." The lieutenant walked over to Malcolm's wet bar and helped himself to a pour of whiskey.
"Do you believe him?" Malcolm looked to his entire team for an answer, "I don't know the guy. Other than illegally obtaining the ammo from him in the first place."
"And stealing his silencer," JT added.
"That too," Bright responded, remorsefully.
Gil returned to the island sipping the contents of his glass. "I believe him. Varga might have let a signature slip, but he knows his hardware. He sat in that conference room and painstakingly investigated every cartridge for an entire shift."
Dani rested her arms on the counter, "Assuming he was right, then a swap occurred at some point. Either in transport or at their office in Newark. Did they pick up or did we deliver?"
"That's part of the reason why we came back early, that file is here." JT found it in the stacks and flipped through the pages for a minute, "We delivered. Officer James Bishop."
Gil eyed the detective, "We need to have a chat with him." JT nodded. Gil turned to Malcolm and gestured to the files all over the counter, "Any of this getting us closer to Josylnn?"
"There's a couple locations that could be promising. I'll head over to-"
"No, You won't," Gil corrected. "You are a civilian for the next four months. You interfering in this investigation not only kills any credibility we have, but it's also a direct violation of your probation."
Malcolm opened his mouth to speak.
Gil held up a hand to stop him, "Bright. No. That's an order." He turned to Dani, "And your job is to make sure he follows it."
She nodded, glancing over at him as he stewed and pouted.
As they exited the apartment, Gil added, "Powell text me those locations."
Malcolm sighed as he tossed his notes in her direction.
The light at the corner of Lafayette and Walker changed, as did the signal for pedestrians to cross. There was only one other pedestrian besides Malcolm waiting to cross. Given the fact that it was 2:30 in the morning, that wasn't a complete surprise, even in the city.
He and Dani had gone to bed a little after midnight, their eyes exhausted from staring at paperwork and a computer screen the entire day.
Dani's appointment to get cleared for duty was early the next morning. It didn't take long for her breathing to slow into the steady rhythm of sleep. Malcolm waited a half an hour after he was sure she had fallen asleep, before he gingerly exited their bed, grabbed the attire he needed, and carefully snuck out the door. Twenty-five blocks later, he stood in front of a nail salon, at 2:00am, peeking in the window as though Joslynn herself might be sitting in the nearest chair awaiting her manicure. He stepped back from the window, taking in his surroundings. The sounds of night shift waste management trucks echoed down the less hectic streets and alleyways.
"This is ignorant," he scolded himself, turning to retrace his steps back home.
Malcolm glanced up at the sign as he crossed Walker Street and sighed. Malcolm Walker. Eight weeks ago, Malcolm Walker strolled into Ezra Bennet's club and charmed the criminal mastermind in an instant. Seven weeks ago, Malcolm Bright lay in an infirmary bed in Manhattan Detention Complex with a freshly stitched stab wound, having watched the love of his life seemingly die in his arms a few days prior. The speed at which literally your entire world can flip onto its side was terrifying.
He shook the thoughts from his mind as he walked through a section of construction scaffolding. He always sped up his pace when beneath them; another one of his irrational fears: collapsing scaffolding. When he reached the corner, a garbage truck stopped, almost too far out into the intersection. Two men jumped out to collect the bags on the sidewalk. Malcolm turned and walked around the back of the truck to avoid traffic.
As soon as he rounded it, one of the men rushed him. Malcolm was so surprised that he didn't have time to react. The second man came from behind him and shoved him into the brick side of the building, face first. Bright immediately tried to push himself backwards off of the wall, but one of the men had their forearm on his neck, pushing his face harder into the brick, and was using his substantial body weight to pin the rest of his body there as well. The second man grabbed Malcolm's arm and pinned it, outstretched, against the wall, pushing in the wrong direction at the elbow.
The profiler cried out in pain, earning a great deal more of it from both men. He was trapped. Try as he might, he couldn't move or prevent whatever it was they were about to do. The second man's back was blocking his view of his arm, as Malcolm struggled in vain.
"Enjoy."
The man's pleasantry was the only warning Malcolm got. Suddenly he felt a prick on the back of his hand, as a tingling warmth quickly spread up his forearm to his shoulder. He had just enough time to feel the men release him and watch the syringe fall to the ground, before it hit him. A profound elation he couldn't explain engulfed his entire being. Instantly, every care he'd ever had in the world melted away. His father, losing his job at the FBI, Dani's face as the bullet hit her, none of that mattered, none of that even existed anymore. There was only this feeling, this complete and utter euphoria.
Malcolm only barely registered the sound of the truck driving away. He turned, his back to the wall now, and slowly slid down it. The injuries on his face were completely forgotten, as was the fact that his head had just been slammed against a brick wall. Nothing had ever felt so perfect. On the back of his right hand, there was a tiny dot of blood atop one of the veins. He stared at it in awe. Then, he wiggled his fingers and grinned as he watched the tendons on the back of his hand move in a wave.
Despite the life-affirming warmth that had spread throughout his entire body, his head felt heavy and hard to control. When he attempted to raise it, it fell back against the wall harder than he'd intended. The resulting white spots in his vision were, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. For a few seconds, they flashed in and out like tiny stars. His heart was beating so fast it took his breath away. Each pulse pounded like a drum, throbbing in his veins so hard he was sure they would explode.
Malcolm took a deep breath, the action had never brought him more peace and tranquility. He hadn't noticed the incredible weight that had been pressing down on his chest and shoulders, the burden he had been carrying for weeks. All of the pain, the guilt, the fear, the worry had lifted off of him and he was able to breath again. Never in his entire life had he felt so happy, so content, so light that he was sure he could literally fly. As he sat in the alleyway, watching the cars pass, everything was perfect.
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind his voice of reason, his analytical shoulder angel, was trying to get a message to him.
Get up.
How long had he been sitting there? Time had seemed to pause indefinitely.
You have to get home.
At first, he whipped his head around, trying to find who was talking to him. Giggling.
Four blocks. That's all you have to walk.
Home, he thought. Dani.
Her face appeared in his mind. She was looking up at him through her lashes, wearing that trademark bitten-cheek smile. An entirely new wave of joy, of love in its purest form, swept over him. She was perfection personified, everything he could ever hope for. He wanted nothing more in this moment than to hold her, and never let go, to share this feeling with her.
Malcolm pulled himself up, using the wall for support. The rush of even that simple movement was intoxicating. His body felt amazing, both powerful and incredibly relaxed at the same time. He started forward and slowly turned the corner back on to Lafayette. He stumbled on a subway grate, but caught himself before falling. A man passed by him, deliberately creating as much space between them as he could.
He passed his building, accidentally walking an extra block north, before he realized his mistake and turned around. As he fished for his keys, Malcolm stared at the graffiti on the door. He'd never paid much attention to it, but the colors, the curvature of the writing, was actually quite inspired, soothing even.
When he got to his apartment, he subconsciously understood that he should try to be quiet and not wake Dani. The execution of that knowledge was another thing entirely. He managed to get the door closed with relative ease, which was nothing short of a miracle.
Once he was inside, the rush of the high started to fade. His heart rate slowed and his vision lost the radiance that had colored everything since it started. Suddenly he was parched to the point of what felt like dehydration. His mouth tasted bitter and felt like sandpaper.
After downing two straight glasses of water, Malcolm still felt as though he hadn't had a single sip. As he filled the third, Dani's voice floated to the kitchen from their bed.
"Bright?"
Instantly, his heart rate spiked, "Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
His brain was so unfocused that it took an impressive amount of willpower to come up with a legitimate answer, one that wasn't all that creative, "Getting a drink of water."
"Oh."
Their covers rustled for a second and then Dani returned to her slumber.
Malcolm sighed in relief. The euphoria, that absence of stress and worry, was slowly waning. He tiptoed into the bathroom and shut the door. Reaching for the faucet handle, he looked down at his hands. Both were shaking uncontrollably. After splashing his face a few times and running his hands through his hair, Malcolm caught a glimpse of his reflection. The eyes were the most shocking; his pupils were minuscule, barely visible in a sea of crystal blue.
He stood there for some time staring at his face, searching for something that he couldn't quite place. The high had passed; the resulting tranquility had vanished.
Malcolm knew that the immediate after effects of whatever had been injected into his system were bound to be miserable. But, that wasn't his first concern. He was fairly certain he knew the 'who'. And if Joslynn was indeed the one behind what had just happened, given the Niners' industry, that meant it was most likely heroin he'd been injected with. What he didn't know was the 'why'. The messages, the stalking, and now this, there had to be an endgame, a method to the madness. It was absolutely infuriating that he couldn't figure it out.
He flipped the light switch off and exited the bathroom, slowly making his way to the bed. As soon as he lay down, Dani scooted closer and snuggled into his chest. Malcolm wrapped his arm around her, his hands still convulsing, and kissed the unruly mass that was her curls. Guilt hit him like a speeding freight train. She was the one person who would actually understand what he'd just gone through.
But he could never tell her.