Chapter Four: I Broke Him

"I brought it on myself. It's my mess."

Greg shook his head behind the young man's back, no, no, it wasn't Carlton's fault, it wasn't his mess.

Sam echoed his boss's thoughts from below. "Carlton's shouldering guilt for what Wellstead initiated. The whole team's an abuse victim. They're blaming themselves."

"Yeah, you're on to something Sam. Stand by for my signal. I've got an idea, and I'm gonna need you up here."

Below him, Sam's bootsteps sounded again, the blond sniper hurrying to get into a new position to help his boss and the subject.

In the school boiler room, a man was tied to a chair. Blood ran down his forehead and into his shirt. He moaned and rolled his head to the side as a phone's shrill tone broke the silence. On the opposite wall, the phone rang, filling the small space with sound until a young man picked up. As he picked up the phone, he turned towards his captive, brown eyes angry. His black hair was cut very close in a buzzcut and he was a bit taller than his best friend, Carlton. Tan-skinned like Lou, he counted Carlton as his best friend and he was furious at what his own actions had caused, but even more furious with the man who'd instigated those actions.

"Cory, my name's Ed Lane- I'm with the SRU. Do you mind if I come in and speak with you for a second?"

"Not gonna happen," Cory hissed; he knew, knew, the cops would side with Wellstead, that they'd let him go.

The cop didn't give up though. "All right, Cory, listen to me. We know what you and Carlton have been through. The only way to deal with Coach Wellstead is to let us handle it. Hand him over to us."

"There's other ways!" Cory snapped.

"Yeah," the cop acknowledged, "But, Cory, you want to do this the right way here, son. Just tell me how he's doing."

Mocking, Cory raised his voice, "You all right, Coach?"

A groan from the bloody, bound man was his only reply.

"Yeah," Cory taunted, "He says he knows he's got to pay to play."

"You don't know what it's like, especially for the third-string guys. It's worse for them."

Gotcha. "You see?" Greg demanded, "You see how much you care for your team? That's why you're a point guard, that's why you're a leader."

Self-disgust rose again. "I participated," Carlton retorted. "I had to beat guys down, too."

"Carlton wasn't hard enough for him! Even though he's got more talent than any of us, we still had to break him!"

"No, he tried…" the cop protested.

"I broke him!" Cory burst out. "Me! I took the bait, man. Court time over my friend."

"Cory, he had to use you- you were both too strong. Carlton was too strong."

Greg almost smiled. Two teams, one good, one bad. Time to play his ace. "A team run on fear is not a team," he announced, letting his conviction ring in every word. "My teammate Sam, down below us. Hey, Sam, come up here. I trust my life in his hands."

He heard Sam scrambling up, the sniper handling the height better than his Sergeant ever could. Sam appeared in seconds, pulling himself up onto the roof and keeping his hands in view at all times. "Hey, Carlton," he greeted. "I'm just gonna hang out here, okay?"

The young man looked from Sam to his boss, confusion running across his face before he looked back out over the edge. "What, you think I'm doing this all by myself?" Greg asked. "Sam's got my back. In fact, if you step back a little bit and look down there, you see that- that guy with the binoculars." Carlton did shift, did step back; Greg did smile now. "You see him? That's Wordy."

Greg's smile widened with pride as Wordy spotted Carlton watching him and lowered his binoculars to give Carlton a salute.

"I'm looking after you, Sam's looking after me, and Wordy's got all our backs."

"Just let him go here, Cory. Let us deal with it."

"I've got to finish this," Cory countered.

In front of him, Wellstead groaned again and shifted, finally beginning to wake up and look up at his captor.

"Whatever it takes," Cory finished, before hanging up.

On the other end, Ed called, one last time, "Cory," before he realized Cory had hung up.

"We all make mistakes. We all have bad games," Greg reassured the young man. In the background, Sam and Wordy backed him, physically and mentally, pushing the fear away.

"Basketball is everything and now it's gone," Carlton admitted.

"It's not gone, it's not gone, it's only the beginning." If Greg had had time, he might have told the young man about when he'd gotten his 'everything' back. "You're going to get that scholarship, but you're on two separate teams right now, Carlton, and the poisoned basketball team you got to walk away from. Your mother, your sister, and Cory, too- that's your other team, that's long-term. Nobody's going to cut you from that squad."

Grim, furious, Cory stood at a small table, shaping a piece of wire with a blowtorch right next to him. Time to make Coach pay, like Carlton had.

Behind him, the man himself woke up, shifting and trying to get loose. "What are you doing?" he demanded. Cory didn't even look at him. "Cory, what are you doing?" Fear entered the man's voice. "What, are you crazy? Wha…hey, what are you doing?"

"Where are we, Spike?" Ed asked, standing over his teammate's shoulder.

Without looking up, Spike replied, "I'm close." A few seconds and then, "Eyes in. We're up."

Spike shifted the screen so Ed could see too. "What is that, a blowtorch?" Ed muttered to himself.

"Wellstead's tied up. This is bad."

Over their shoulders, the janitor said, soft and horrified, "I think I know what he's doing." As the two cops looked up, he pulled his shirt open to reveal a brand on his chest, over his heart. A 'W' stood out, as livid as the day it had been applied. "Eastern Tech Warriors. We all got 'em- Coach's loyalty test."

"Shape charge, ASAP," Ed ordered, "Blow the door, we're going in."

He couldn't stop now, not now that he could sense he was so close. "Look, I know there's a lot of pressure, right? There's a lot of pressure. The pressure's got to be inescapable right now. You're supposed to carry your team and you're supposed to carry your family's dreams, too."

His order, unspoken, still rang loud and clear to Sam. "Jules, you copy?" Sam whispered, but not low enough to avoid his boss's enhanced sense of hearing.

"Copy, Sam," Jules acknowledged.

"I got your mother right here," Greg told the young man, "She's right here in the building right now."

"No. Oh, no." Like any other abuse victim, Carlton was ashamed, afraid to face his loved ones.

"Of course she is," Greg countered gently. "And she is nothing but proud of you."

"Tell them that we're working it through nice and slow," Sam instructed Jules, "We need their help, okay?"

"Okay, I'll get her on the line," Jules told her teammate. Turning to the woman in front of her, Jules explained, "You can't talk to Carlton directly, but you can relay a message through my sergeant. Speak from the heart. He needs perspective. He is very overwhelmed right now." So saying, Jules gave the equally overwhelmed mother the phone.

"Hello?"

Soft, Jules urged, "Say something personal, something you both share."

For a moment more, the woman floundered. Then her eyes lit, just a little. "Tell him…tell him I'm sorry I pushed him to the paint. He should have gone for three." She waited for Parker to relay that, then said, "There's other teams, other things in life."

"And you are so much more than who you are on that court," Greg called, watching as his charge started to cry, letting the tension out, letting the poison out. "And that she wants you to be happy."

From the other end, a small voice piped up. "I hid like you told me to."

Greg had to hold back a chuckle at that. "Your sister- she says that she hid like you told her to and that she sent us after the bad guys, but, uh…maybe one day you can explain to her that they weren't the real bad guys."

A sob came over the line. "Tell him I love him and I want him to come home."

"Do you see that the only way you could disappoint anyone is by taking your own life? Nobody hurts so bad they can't recover." Greg extended his right hand. "And all you got to do…is take my hand." As the young man looked at him, Greg added, quietly, as if he were speaking to his nephew, "Trust me."

For several moments, Carlton considered the older man's words, regarded the outstretched hand. Then, at long last, he turned and extended his own hand, grasping Parker's hand. Greg yanked him over the divider between them, pulling him close and into a rough hug.

Triumphant, Wordy's voice announced, "He's got him. Carlton's secure."

Over both the comm and the still open phone line, Greg heard Jules say, "He's got him," to Carlton's sister and mother.

Carlton's mother burst out crying, the relief in her sobs painfully obvious.

"He's okay," Jules soothed.