Author's Note:
Chapter 12 hit an incredible milestone for me by reaching 100 followers. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that people have taken the time to read and support my story. When I started writing this, I couldn't have hoped to get the kind of reception I have. I want to thank everyone that's followed, favorited, or commented; your support means so much to me. A special thank you goes out to everyone who's left me multiple comments, especially Cimar, Combat Engineer, and Hebbocake. As my way of saying thank you, I'm posting this early as a bonus chapter, so chapter 14 will go up as usual this weekend. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter, so I hope you enjoy it! Thanks again for your support!
The warehouse was dark and dusty, with boxes scattered haphazardly across the floor. It looked as though no one had been in it in quite some time; the current occupants had left dusty pawprints on the grimy concrete floor. There was a ferret, dressed in the sort of gaudy suit that stereotypical mobsters wore, and his companions–mid-sized mammals, about half a dozen in total–were similarly dressed. While they looked like stereotypical mobsters, however, the mammal they were meeting simply looked dangerous. He was an impressively muscled wolf who stood literally head and shoulders above the mobsters, and his jet black fur was matched by equally dark clothes. Even the briefcase he carried was black. His monochromatic appearance was broken by a sharp and dangerously intelligent-looking yellow eye; he had only the one, as the other was covered by a black eye patch. A thick scar ran down about half an inch or so from beneath the bottom of the eye patch, which only served to increase how menacing he appeared. "Are you sure no one followed you here, Patch?" the ferret asked the wolf.
"Positive, Audobon," Patch replied, his voice deep and resonant, "I've got the money if you've got the stuff."
The wolf opened his briefcase. "One hundred thousand," he said, encompassing its contents with a sweep of his paw, "Plus a little extra for your trouble."
Patch pulled out a bundle of cash and held it out to the ferret. Audobon, however made no motion to grab it. "A little extra," he echoed, and reached into the briefcase.
A quick slash of the ferret's claws ripped open the lining of the briefcase and he pulled out a small bit of circuitry with a blinking red light on it. "An interesting choice of words, Patch," he sneered as he crushed the tracking device, "Or should I say Detective Lucas Black?"
Audobon's goons had surrounded Black and had a motley assortment of weapons leveled at him, mostly knives and clubs but also several shotgun. Guns of any kind were notoriously difficult to procure in the city, but Audobon–or at least the organization that he worked for–appeared to have gone to the trouble. "All this, for me?" Black asked, his tone light.
"What can I say?" the ferret asked, "My boss doesn't appreciate loose ends."
"That's funny," Black said, "Neither does mine."
With that, he dove to the floor. Audobon and his thugs had enough time for a look of confusion before a black SUV burst through the wall of the warehouse as though it were made of cardboard. One hapless goon was struck by the car and was sent flying into a support pillar. His body hit with a meaty sound and he did not rise again. "What are you waiting for?" Audobon shrieked, "Get them!"
The mobsters went into motion, but far too slowly. Black wrestled a shotgun away from the closest thug and hit him with the butt of it hard enough to take all the fight out of the weasel, who slumped to the ground bonelessly. The driver's side door of the SUV opened and a gray wolf exited the car, smoothly drawing a tranquilizer gun and diving for cover behind one of the boxes on the floor of the warehouse. "And here you said you this was going to be easy!" the newcomer yelled at Black with a grin.
"You can gloat later, Amarok," Black retorted as he tried to pin down one of the other mobsters.
The mobster Black was fighting caught him with a glancing cut to his arm. Black roared with pain and swung out, but when his fist missed making contact he reached up and pulled off his eye patch, which took the fake scar with it. His other eye uncovered and his depth perception restored, Black's next blow hit home and the mobster collapsed.
"And you can thank me later," Amarok said as he put a tranquilizer dart into the back of a bobcat with a crowbar in his paws attempting to sneak up behind Black.
"Audobon knew my real name," Black said once he and Amarok had worked their way behind the same crate.
"We must have a leak," Amarok said grimly, "But we can deal with that later. Audobon's getting away!"
Amarok burst out from behind cover and began to pursue the fleeing ferret just as Black yelled, "Amarok, wait!"
The warning came too late. A mobster Amarok hadn't seen jumped out from behind a pillar and drove a knife into his chest. Black unloaded his stolen shogun into the mobster, but it was too late for Amarok. Black's partner collapsed to his knees, a thin stream of red running from the corner of his muzzle. Off in the distance, the sound of sirens started and rapidly began to get louder. The mobsters, taking advantage of Amarok being down and Black being distracted, simply fled. "Just hang on, help's on the way," Black said, desperately putting pressure on his partner's wound as he cradled his head in his lap.
The gray wolf shook his head weakly. "Tell Carol..."
"You'll tell her yourself, OK? Stay with me," Black said, cutting Amarok off.
"I love her..." Amarok gasped, and then fell silent.
"Amarok? AMAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!"
Three weeks later, Detective Black was sitting in the office of the chief of police. The office was modern and clean, gleaming white with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the bullpen that could be made opaque at the touch of a button, as they were at the moment. "How's the arm?" the chief asked.
She was a middle-aged cheetah with the first signs of gray in her muzzle, but she still had a youthful slimness to her that made it clear that she hadn't neglected her fitness regimen on her way up the ranks. "Fine," said Black shortly, rotating his arm for good measure, "I've got the clearance to return to active duty."
The chief picked up the file on her desk and flipped through it. When she was silent for a moment, Black spoke up again. "You've got to put me back out there, chief. We were so close; I can feel it."
The chief sighed and dropped the file. "Do you know why they call you Lucky Luke?"
Before Black could respond, she continued, "It's not because of your history of making arrests. Six partners you've gone through in five years, Black. Six!"
"Benson and O'Malley retired," Black retorted, a defiant set to his muzzle.
"Yes, and Hammarskjöld went to desk duty," the chief acknowledged, "But you see what they're worried about, don't you?"
"I'm afraid I don't," Black said, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
"Then I'll spell it out for you," the chief said flatly, "They're afraid that, when push comes to shove, the only back you watch is your own."
"That's ridiculous!" Black spat, "There's nothing I could have–"
"I'm not telling you what I think," the chief interrupted, "You're a damn fine detective. But you're just about radioactive. No one wants to touch you."
"And you won't send me out without a partner, will you? Look, there has to be someone, right? I'll take anyone."
"I was hoping you'd say that," the chief said, the smallest hint of a smile on her face.
She hit the intercom button on her desk. "Send Detective White in, please."
"Yes'm," came the tinny reply.
There was only a moment's delay between the reply and the office door opening. A slim albino bunny entered and offered her paw to a stunned looking Black. "Athena White," she said, "Your new partner."
When the opening credits ended and the show went into the advertisements that Zulu thought Judy would be most interested in, Nick spoke up for the first time since they had started watching the episode. "If that's Wolford's idea of acting calm and cool, it really explains a lot about him."
"Black's partner was killed in front of him," Judy protested, finding herself defending the show simply to egg Nick on, "He's normally much more reserved."
"You mean wooden?" Nick shot back, "Which reminds me: if I ever die in a sting gone wrong, I'm expecting you to dramatically shout my name to the heavens."
Judy laughed and rolled her eyes. "Only if you'll drive a car through a warehouse for me."
The two of them were sitting on Judy's bed, watching the show on her laptop, which she had perched on her dresser. The laptop was old and not particularly large, and they had to sit so close together that their hips were touching to both be able to see the screen. On the way back to Judy's place they had stopped for takeout; they each had one of the rapidly cooling white containers in paw. "About that," Nick said, "How did Amarok know where to go through the warehouse wall? There weren't any windows. He could have just as easily run everyone over instead of just that one mook."
"That's... actually a good point," Judy said with a frown, imagining the anticlimactic carnage that would have resulted.
"I'm in for a ride, aren't I?" he asked as the commercials ended and the show came back on.
Having started his commentary, Nick didn't stop even while the show was playing. When Black and White arrested two twitchy-looking ferrets, Nick waved his paw dismissively. "They didn't do it," he said.
Judy had already watched the episode, and knew that Nick was right, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "What makes you say that?" she asked.
"We're only twenty minutes in," he said, "If they already caught the criminals, what are they going to do for the rest of the episode? Fill out paperwork? No, that was too easy."
"Well then, if you're so clever, who did it?" Judy asked, leaning over to look Nick in the eye.
He shrugged, "Rooferton, probably. He's got to be the dirty cop."
Judy narrowed her eyes, "Have you been looking up spoilers?"
"If I wanted spoilers, all I'd have to do is pay attention when everyone at the station talks about this show," he retorted, "But it's pretty simple. The only two cops who have names who aren't in the opening credits are Amarok and Rooferton, so I'm not betting on either one showing up in the next episode."
Judy's ears stood up. "That's cheating!" she said, "You're supposed to figure it out from the show!"
"And I did, Carrots," Nick said easily, "You're just making it harder on yourself if you don't use all the information."
As Judy already knew, Nick was right, and he crowed in victory when the ending showed that Rooferton was the guilty party, having done it at the behest of an evil real estate developer with a convoluted and frankly somewhat nonsensical plan. On the screen, the two lead actors were wrapping the episode up with a heart-to-heart while generic-sounding music played and the camera slowly spun around them. "I don't want you to feel like I'm replacing Amarok," White said.
"Good," said Black bluntly, "Because you can't."
When her face and ears fell, he was quick to add, "Because you shouldn't. I've had six partners before you, Athena. Every one of them was their own mammal. And after this case, well, I think you are, too."
"Seven," she sniffed between tears, "That's supposed to be a lucky number, right?"
Black barked a rare laugh. "I guess so. Come on, I bet the chief has another case for us."
The episode went to the end credits, and Nick looked over at Judy. "How many more of these do we have left?"
"Five."
Nick grimaced. "Are they all this bad?" he asked in mock despair.
"No," Judy said with a grin as she queued up the next episode, "Some of them are worse."
Judy awoke in the predawn darkness, something warm and soft in her face. Nick's body was curled around hers in a gentle comma and his shirt had ridden up his chest; it was the downy fur of his belly that had rubbed against her muzzle. When she looked up, she saw her laptop had gone to sleep and the screen was black; she must have fallen asleep sometime after the start of the third episode of Black and White, and Nick must have also dozed off. Her first reaction would have been to wake Nick up, but she paused.
When Judy was young, her grandfather had spent a lot of his time sitting on the porch swing. Sometimes he'd be listening to a game on the radio, sometimes he'd have a newspaper, but more often then not he'd simply be sitting, watching the crops on the back forty rustling in the wind. She had asked him, once, what he was doing. Pop Pop had considered her question, and the answer he gave her was one that didn't make sense for a long, long time. He had told her that he was taking the time to enjoy the moment he was in. "Everyone I love is happy and healthy. The crops are growing well. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
Judy, however, had spent her entire life living not in a moment but working towards the next one. Every success was just a stepping stone to the next one that she needed to reach her goal of becoming a police officer. Even when she had succeeded and become a police officer, the need to prove herself as a real cop had ensured that still had something to reach for rather than appreciating what she had. But now? She sighed contentedly and rested her head against the warmth of Nick's chest. She couldn't guess what would happen in the morning, let alone what the rest of the day would bring. But for now, she had a job she loved working with about the best partner she could ask for. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is, she thought as she drifted back off to sleep.