Conspiracy

Disclaimer: I own nothing

A/N: For this chapter, I'm going to give Gary's perspective. You'll understand why, I hope. Jade's an observer here, Gary's the one with the most emotional output in this chapter.

Chapter 24 (Father and Husband: Unleashed)

Jade and Mark remained in the squad car, trusting Gary's promise to remain calm when arresting David. The man hadn't been at the Vega home, and Gary spent up all of his anger on the drive there. Holly informed them that David had gone to some grill and bar, and they found the man sitting out on the restaurant's patio with a bottle of beer.

They parked within earshot and watched as Gary walked up. "Hey David," Gary said upon reaching the man. David looked up slowly and raised an eyebrow at him. "Mind if I sit here?" Gary had to be careful here. He had the power, sure, but he couldn't wave that power in front of David.

"Go for it." David leaned back and pushed his elbow over the top of the chair. "So you must feel vindicated." Gary raised an eyebrow as David brought his bottle up to his lips. "Captain Richardson, now. I'm back to detective. Go figure. I have no more control over you, do I?"

"I guess you don't." David chuckled once and pulled the bottle away. "You still have my wife. She won't go into protective custody, she's concerned about my well-being." Gary slanted his eyes and David smacked his lip.

"Yeah, that's a damn good woman there. You got lucky when she chose you." Gary swept his fingers through his hair and looked away. His stomach twisted with a fire that had grown worse over the years. His gun was at his hip, and it would be so easy for him to reach down and grab it, but he resisted the urge. "She's loyal to a fault and cares more about her family than herself. That's a fine woman."

"Did you ever sleep with her?" It was a question that he was terrified of, but he needed to know. Not for his own sake, but for Holly. He needed to know if this man ever harmed her. David slowly shook his head and hissed out a sigh.

"No. She wouldn't let it happen anyway. She wanted nothing to do with that, and I didn't want to force myself on her like that. A woman that good, she doesn't deserve to have that happen to her."

He clenched his teeth and grabbed his wrist, holding it tightly so as to keep resisting the urge to throw out all his hatred at David. "Yet you forced yourself on my daughter. You took a picture and you sent it to me. Insurance? Vanity? Pride? Why? Why would you do that?"

David bowed his head and closed his eyes. "Gary."

"I want to know." Now it was for himself. This may be the only chance he was going to get to look the devil in the eyes and get an answer. He turned his head to the man and frowned as David looked up at him. "I was your friend once. I helped you, I gave you friends and treated you like a person when so many treated you as an outcast." Tears welled up in his eyes and his hand loosened, then trembled. "What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"Gary, I-"

"What would make you shit on someone that was your friend. No, more than that. What would make you take a man's wife and a man's children…hold them hostage and hang them above that man's head for so long, touting your power over him? What would make you force yourself on a man's daughter and show him a picture? Why, David? Why would you do this to another man?"

He bowed his head and stared at the veins bulging from his hand. "Why me, David?" It was a question he'd asked himself for years, but no amount of shouting at the walls could ever provide such an answer. "What causes a man to do that to another? Let me understand-if there's anything for me to understand."

"Would you like a drink, Gary?"

He lifted his head and shook his hand in the air. "I gave up the drink a year ago." He couldn't stand the smell of alcohol anymore. When he lost Holly and the girls, he did become an alcoholic. After waking up one day to the stains of beer and vomit on the walls, in his floor, and even on the ceiling, he decided to quit drinking himself to death.

Then the picture came, and he started to drink again. This time it was hard liquor, and it nearly killed him. A year ago he found himself praying for death, and in a drunken stupor, he pointed the gun at his chest and fired a shot.

He'd been so drunk that he misplaced the nozzle and wound up holding the gun so crooked that the bullet went into his side and missed the vital areas. A neighbor heard the shot and called the ambulance, and he woke up in the hospital.

"I was in an insane rage," David answered calmly, "I was blind and angry. Tori ran, she went to get help. I was pissed with her." Gary's eyes clenched shut and he crossed his arms, pushing his hands between his arm and armpit. "Trina came at me, defending her sister and calling me all sorts of names-belittling me. She told me I was a weak person, that I wasn't even a man. I wanted to teach both of them a lesson, so I grabbed Trina from behind and pushed her down…I lost it. That's no excuse, I'm sure."

Gary's hand twitched and he jerked his head back slightly. His eyes shot up to the sky and he began praying mentally to keep control. He wasn't one for praying, and certainly not a believer in any benevolent God; but if there was one listening now, he prayed it would keep him from outright killing the man beside him. There was never a time more than now that he wished he left his gun in the car.

"You know, your wife never wanted to get a divorce from you. I didn't push, I'm not sure why. I would have liked to, but she was insistent-then there was Rebecca." Gary raised an eyebrow at him and bit down on his lower lip with enough strength to draw blood. "Rebecca said I shouldn't make her get a divorce. It might look bad, anyway."

"That would look bad?"

David looked towards the sky with a laugh and shook his head. "It's funny."

"What is funny?"

"In high school, in college, I tried so hard to make you like me. I wanted your approval. You were one of the cool guys. I'd hoped that I could gain your approval and we could always be friends." Gary narrowed his eyes and loosened his grip on his wrist. His hand fell beside his gun and his fingers grasped firmly the edge of the seat.

"I guess that turned out as planned." He sneered and David glanced back at him with a shrug.

"Yeah. You hate me now. I see it in Holly's eyes every day too, the same one in yours right now." He held his breath and felt his heart slam into the pits of his stomach. "She'd like to kill me. Every day I wonder if it'll be my last…"

"You deserve death, you monster. I'd love to put you down myself." He feigned a sympathetic smile.

"You wanted a family. You wanted what I had, you wanted to be me too didn't you? That image, that dream or fantasy, it isn't working out so well anymore, is it? You've been demoted, I'm a Captain on the police force. The leash you had so tightly wound…it's come off."

"Yeah. You remember Lanie?" David's eyebrows rose and a chuckle fell from his lips. "She's come under scrutiny of government officials higher up than she is. It's even all over the local news. She's probably going to lose her job. I guess things are going to shit for all of us, save for you."

"Me? I still don't have my family. What do I care about my promotion?"

"I guess." David scratched behind his ear. Gary flared his nostrils and glanced down at his hand. His knuckles where white from gripping the seat. His leg was shaking and he was finding it harder to quash the murderous desire inside him.

"Hey Gary?"

His eyes flew to David. "What?" His response came with a growl and his eyes darkened as the sky seemed to turn red. All he could think about now was what David said about his daughter and about his wife.

"You know all those victim advocate programs we have to send victims of crime to? Counselors and stuff?"

"What about?" It wasn't the job of the police to take care of the victim. No, their job was to ensure justice. They could, however, offer the number of their counselors and so on.

"Do you think you'd ever use those?"

"When you told me I wasn't to speak out or someone would hurt my family?"

"Well. I mean it isn't like we know where your parents or even your sister are located right now."

"As if I'd let you near them, you sick fuck." He wanted to know why he couldn't put this sick beast down right now. What was stopping him. "Yeah they moved. You still have my wife, dumbass."

"Yeah, but I don't hold power over you anymore, do I?"

"No." Gary separated his lips, revealing his bared teeth as a mad dog might do. "You don't. You're just a lowly detective now, and I fear not Lanie or Rebecca."

"Well, you probably should be a little afraid of Lanie. She can't do anything right now because she thinks people are watching her every move, but yeah, you're suddenly more powerful than I am."

"Mad dogs and diseased animals should never have power, Dave." He fantasized about this moment; the moment he could point his gun at David and declare himself to be taking his family back, before promptly blowing the man's brains on the floor.

A heroic moment for a storybook, but this was reality, and reality separated him from a cold blood killer. It separated him from people like David, or Lanie and Rebecca.

Reality was what made him a father, and when all of this was said and done, Tori and Trina were going to need their father. They would want their father. Holly would want her husband, she'd want him as he'd want to be with her.

With a sigh, he relaxed his muscles and reached to the handcuffs hanging behind his gun. His eyes flickered to a man standing at a phone booth down the street. It was Mr. Sikowitz, and he was watching. Approving. Jade was now standing beside him; perhaps she had called the man to be present.

Sikowitz understood. Gary needed to be the one to make this arrest. No one else could do it-it wouldn't feel right. For himself, it had to be him.

"Do you want to kill me, Gary? Could you ever forgive me?"

"Kill you, yes I've wanted to kill you for a long time."

David chuckled and took another sip of his beer. "Bluntness isn't a trait you lack." Gary shrugged at him and unhooked the handcuffs.

"I suppose I've got you to thank for that." He set the cuffs in his lap and cleared his throat. David turned his head to make eye contact, then lowered the beer bottle to the table. "David, you're a cop. We both wanted to be one back in the day, and you remember, we used to recite the Miranda Rights with one another. Do you remember them?"

"Yeah. I know them. I know my rights."

"One last time. Would you recite them with me, so I can be certain."

People mistook the Miranda warnings as something that must be read immediately upon arrest. While he wished to do them now, they were only something that had to be discussed when starting to question a person.

All that truly had to be said upon immediate arrest was the standard: "You are under arrest for…"

"I will." David stood up and frowned. "Shoot."

"You have a right to remain?"

"Silent…" David slowly turned around and Gary stood up. His hand brushed over his holstered gun and he closed his eyes as the wind blew through his hair and against his face, relieving his angered and savage nerves.

"What will happen to that which you say and do?"

"It can be used against me in the court of law."

"Good." He took David's right hand and pulled it back behind him. "What do you have the right to, David? And what happens if you cannot afford this?" David rolled his head to the right and dropped his shoulders.

"An attorney, Gary. One will be provided assuming I can't afford one myself."

Gary felt a moisture on his cheeks and quickly wiped away his tears. "And at anytime you wish to exercise these rights and cease further questionings, can you?" His heart struck him hard, and a sharp pain spread throughout his body as he proceeded to bring down David's left arm.

"Yes."

"David Vega." He slapped the cuff over David's right wrist, watching it lock into place. His eyes drifted up and past the man, locking with Mr. Sikowitz. "I hereby place you under arrest for kidnapping, hostage-taking, sexual assault of a minor…"

"When I asked you earlier if you were able to forgive?"

"I'm a long way from forgiving you. You destroyed me and everything I held dear, 'old friend'. Now, do you acknowledge the charges against you, and do you request a lawyer for questioning?"

"I do, on all accounts."

"Good." He walked David to the patrol car and opened the door.

"Never thought I'd see the back of one of these."

"Long time coming." He put his hand to the back of David's head and narrowed his eyes. "Watch your head." It felt good to finally be the one in control and to no longer have anything holding him back. His daughters were safe and he could finally be with his wife-and now, he was arresting the man responsible.

It wasn't over yet, not by a long shot. But for him, the hardest part of his life felt like it had come to an end. The weight on his shoulders was gone now, and peace was on the horizon.

"Investigator Sikowitz," He heard David mention, "You hired a private investigator. I'm surprised." He expected that David saw the man, but it didn't faze him. David knew the investigator had a shrewd reputation among the police force. The man didn't look like much, but he was truly more than what met the eye.

Hell, Gary had to hand it to the investigator-hiring a teenage girl seemed insane at first-but now he saw the value of it. "My children needed their father, my wife needed her husband. I'm more surprised you didn't expect that I would find a way to them somehow. It was only a matter of time, David."

"Yeah. I suppose I should have figured you would. The girl standing with him? I knew there was something up with her…I didn't realize I was letting a mini investigator walk around my home."

"I think that was the man's point. Now please." Gary opened his door and narrowed his eyes. "Exercise your right to silence until we reach the station."

Gary needed to be the one to make that arrest for his own closure, for the emotions and pain that he has dealt with. What are your thoughts? Do you think David would have resisted, or perhaps he knew from the get-go that an arrest was coming? He'll likely be charged, but Gary did well to actually be strong through all that. Lanie's still at large, and two of her cards are in custody.