This Time? Chapter 17
Tim parks his truck a street over from the sting house. Wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, as if going for a light workout, he jogs along the sidewalk until he's close to his destination, carefully surveilling the area. He passed an unmarked unit on his way toward the house, giving a subtle wave to Smalley and Ventnor. He's known them both for years and they're not about to question his presence. He also outranks them.
As far as Tim can see, nothing out of the ordinary is happening on the street – except for Lucy's undercover operation. He makes his way over the cracked concrete of the narrow walk that leads to the back door and raps in a rhythm he and Lucy agreed upon before she assumed her cover. She opens it quickly, grabs his arm, and pulls him inside. "I wasn't sure you'd come."
"I told you I would," Tim protests.
"You told me you would if Metro didn't have some last-minute operation."
"Well, right now we haven't got one. And I have my radio in case anything comes up."
"Which could be any time," Lucy asserts. "Which means we have to make every minute we have now count."
Tim scoops her up in his arms. "I always forget how small you are. You always act like you're the tallest one in the room."
"Celina's shorter than I am and Nolan's usually the tallest one in the room," Lucy teases.
"And yet somehow you seem to put everyone in your shadow."
"You're not." Lucy presses her lips to Tim's. "Maybe that's what I like about you."
"I know what you like," Tim claims. "So where's the bedroom?" Lucy points through a doorway toward an old, single, brass bed. Tim regards it skeptically. "There's barely room for you in that thing."
"I wasn't in charge of furnishing the place," Lucy points out. "But we'll just have to snuggle up. After all those stories you told me about roughing it on bare ground in the military, that thing should seem like a luxury to you."
"In the military, I was only worried about a place to sleep," Tim argues.
Lucy walks her fingertips down his back. "Maybe we'll get to that – eventually."
Tim lays her down in the middle of the narrow stretch of bedding. "Or maybe we won't."
Nolan looks down adoringly at the woman sound asleep with her head in his lap. They'd agreed to catch up on episodes of The Bachelor, which neither one of them had much chance to watch in the past weeks. About the time the first rose was handed out, Bailey was dead to the world. John continued to watch for a while but without being able to heckle the action with Bailey, found the show deadly boring. He would have gotten up to move around but didn't have the heart to disturb her. Still, his legs are starting to go numb and he'll have to move sometime, especially since he needs to pee.
Cradling his wife's head in his palms, he tries to slide slowly out from under her but Bailey's eyes snap open. "Is it over? What did I miss?"
"Not much," John assures her. "And we really should both get to bed. You'll heal faster if you rest and I have to get up for work tomorrow."
"We never talked about what you're going to tell Aaron and Celina about our wedding celebration," Bailey recalls.
"What do you want me to tell them?" John asks.
"To go ahead and plan the biggest party they can, with a band and caterers and everything."
"That's not what I expected you to say," John admits. "I thought you might want to wait until you have your moves back and can be the star of the dance floor."
"I'm the bride. I'll be the star of the dance floor anyway," Bailey insists. "The bride is always the star. And maybe we can do one of those slow waltzes where the bride stares into the groom's eyes and every woman in the room starts crying out of jealousy. John, I wasn't ever really Jason's wife, more like his slave. But this time, I feel like I have a partner, not a master. And I want to start it off the way partners are supposed to. Wait! Can you waltz?"
"I can. My father would never dance with my mother and the various men she brought home were more interested in horizontal moves. So she made me learn so I could dance with her. But it will be a lot more fun dancing with you."
Bailey runs her hand up John's thigh. "It better be."
Lucy almost tumbles out of bed when Tim sits straight up. "Do you hear that? What is that?"
"Sounds like someone on the porch," Lucy says. "Those men said they were coming early in the morning so they wouldn't have to paint in the heat."
Tim checks the watch he tossed onto the rickety bedside table. "I get early, but 5 am?"
"They probably don't want the neighbors to have much chance to observe them," Lucy speculates. "The drug dealers I went undercover with were the same way. They'd move their merchandise predawn before people started off for work."
"And it's end of shift for a lot of cops too. They'd be more likely to be sleepy and less observant. So would anyone watching the house," Tim figures. "These people are smart, Lucy. I don't like you being in here alone."
"In case you haven't noticed, Bradford, I'm not alone," Lucy points out. "But those guys out there think I am. So how are we going to get you out of here without tipping them off?"
"I can go out the back the way I came in." Tim scowls. "But the walk from the back door is visible from the porch. They'd spot me. I'll have to go through the yard to the alley and come out on the cross street."
"The yard has a six-foot redwood fence. It's one of the few things about this house that isn't falling apart. Nolan said it doesn't even have termites," Lucy adds.
"Lucy, we both went through academy training on vaulting fences," Tim reminds her. "And I had a lot more of it in the service."
"Which was how long ago?" Lucy retorts.
"Not long enough for me to forget."
"Then you'd better get going before someone decides to put their trash in the alley or something," Lucy advises." She gets up on her knees for a kiss. "See you tonight?"
"I'll have to see what duty Metro pulls, but I'll try," Tim promises.
The in-house medic at the division holds up a sizable sliver of wood. "Quite a splinter, Bradford. You won't enjoy sitting down for a day or two, but you should be fine."
"This is just between us, right Marco?" Tim demands.
"I have to put it in your medical record, but ethically, I can't otherwise disclose it," the medic assures him.
Tim pulls up his pants. "Good." His phone buzzes an alert. "I have to get out of here. They need me at Metro."
On the other side of the door, Smitty smiles to himself, wondering how he can leverage the information he just gleaned. Bradford won't want his buddies at Metro to know, but he'll probably want Chen to know even less. One way or another, the little tidbit will come in handy. It's just a matter of when and how."