Chapter One
SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR
March 2017 - Bronx, NY
The alarm blared like a siren in his brain. Maverick Lennon was startled awake from his nightmare. He grabbed his cell phone out of reflex and threw it across the room to stop the noise. Where it landed didn’t matter. The phone's alarm blared in triumph, undeterred. It mocked him. It sang an obscene warning of his failures to rise and shine. Maverick sat up. He pressed both hands to the side of his head, yet the alarm blared on. The disgraced cop’s body and mind seizures with fatigue as if he’d run a marathon in his sleep. His face went into his hands next. And his elbows rested on his knees.
It was only Tuesday.
The darkness in the room was nothing more than a cluster of shadows. But the darkness watched him. It waited to see if he’d respond. Throw something else, it whispered. How about you punch another hole in the wall, it chuckled. The darkness had shifted into his mind? He dragged his hands down his face and restrained himself. It’s just an alarm clock. You’re awake. And if you’re not, it’s just another stupid dream. He caught the peek of light from the sun glimmer in through the slants of his blinds. And the memories of her were instant.
“No. No,” Maverick said and closed his eyes. It was too late. He opened his eyes again. The ghost of his wife, at eight months pregnant, entered the room. She wore a long peach nightgown, the one her mother had given her for Christmas two years ago. The kind that gathered material at her breasts with thin, slender straps pressed tight to her shoulders to hold the weight of her full bosom. It’s sheer fabric draped over the swell of her belly. Even pregnant, she hadn’t gained too much weight.
“Rise and shine, Hercules,” she said as she walked past the bed. Rise and shine, the darkness chuckled back to him. Frozen with dread and heartache, he tracked her with the movement of his eyes. She visited the closet. His closet. She chose his tie. She chose his shirt for ironing. “Coffee is ready. You’ll be late for court if you don’t hurry.”
It was always the same. The reason he set the alarm was to avoid this moment, her ghost, this pain. Maverick glanced to the darkness. His eyes lowered to the floor, where the alarm blared. The darkness in his mind had tricked him. He wasn’t awake. The nightmare came for him too soon.
“Sweetie? Are you okay? C’mon, get up. You said you had court,” his wife said.
Both of Maverick hands were now pressed in prayer at his mouth. Of course, he didn’t believe in ghosts. This was worst than a ghost. It was his sick mind slipping into the memory of her when he needed sanity the most. Her blonde locks swayed and glistened as if spun in gold. They cascaded around her shoulders. She cast a look of innocence and love—a smile of patience. The kind of patience that always reminded him to be the man she deserved, and then she faded away.
It had been three months since her death, and already his life had turned to shit. The cellphone lying against the darkness stopped blaring. Instead, it rang. He opened his eyes and found he lay flat to his back on his pillow. He was awake. And the phone was ringing. His beloved ghost had gone before the worst part of her visit came for him. Grateful for the ringing cellphone he tossed the covers aside. He knew the caller. Maverick reached for the phone. The bullet wound to his side that had been stapled shut stretched and split him in agony. He withstood the pain. He preferred it.
“Hello?”
“Are you up? Because I’m on the way,” Camille said.
“Why?”
“What do you mean? Maverick. You have to take this seriously. I.A. is cutting you a break. If you don’t do this, you will lose your badge. And we’re not going to let that happen.”
Maverick glanced at the bed. It was empty. Her side had disappeared under the tangled bedsheets, but he still could sense her absence. He wanted a king-size bed. Melissa insisted on a Queen. She preferred to sleep in his arms at night. Now he slept alone, and his bed felt massive.
“Maverick? You there? We need to go over your story. Our story. Okay? I’m on my way. It’s okay. You’ll be fine.”
Maverick hung up on the caller. He walked away from the memory of her into the stark reality of the empty house. It was going to be another meaningless day. In the bathroom, he removed his gauze to see blood had surfaced from his barely healed wound. He ignored that too and decided a shower, morning beer, and then cup of coffee would get him through the next sixteen hours before he could return to bed and his nightmares.
FIVE HOURS LATER
There was physical evidence, photographs, drug testing, polygraph results, acceptance of reports alleging officer misconduct, and an entire review of the search and seizure violations. Maverick sat through discovery as his union rep whispered in his ear. Lieutenant Robert Daily and three others talked over thirteen years of his career as a police officer. His partner Camille Blanco gave her statement of the events that occurred before he was shot. Two men were dead, Maverick took a hit, but he lived. A young mother and her child were in police protection thanks to his quick thinking. In Camille’s eyes, he was a hero. But his sweet wife Melissa knew him better. She, too, had visited the courtroom. Her ghost sat in the peach nightgown with her robe tied too tight with a sash around her pregnant belly. Maverick knew she was dead, but it didn’t matter. She was always there for him. She smiled to encourage him to be the man she deserved. He nearly opened his mouth and told her that man was dead.
It was over.
Maverick barely had to speak. The police union was influential within the NYPD. And as a result, the blue shield protected their own. Camille grinned at him. Happy over what they had done, she talked so fast her Dominican-Spanish accent garbled her words. The ends had justified the means, she said. She believed he did it for the woman being held hostage and her child, who had been too young to defend himself against his gang leader father. But Maverick didn’t even know they were in the house when he entered and started firing. His team was hunting for drugs. That’s what the ‘renegades task force’ did—drugs, not search and rescue. Bring in the big bad drug dealers and get a reward. Maverick was just hunting. It was what he did after Melissa died—hunt. For revenge, for relief, for a little bit of payback, after all, he’d lost.
“Well done, this is over. We’ll handle the presser, so don’t do any interviews. In fact, take a few weeks to get yourself together, Maverick.” Chief Connelly said. The Chief then glanced over to the black Lieutenant Robert Dailey, who he was always in battle with. Chief Connelly frowned. “Dailey is watching you. Be careful.”
“He will Chief, I’ll make sure of it,” Camille smiled.
Maverick cut his gaze over to Robert Dailey. That keen look in the Lieutenant's eyes was a far greater indictment than the one Internal Affairs cleared him from. The Lieutenant shook his head in disgust before he walked out. Maverick’s partner rubbed his arm. Her name was Camille. She was half Puerto Rican and half Dominican. Many would tell you Camille was one hundred percent a Bronx girl and a damn good police officer. She saved his career by giving her sweetened testimony on his actions. He doubted he was worth it, but Camille helped heal his regrets.
SIX HOURS LATER
Maverick slammed his pelvis against hers, and the mattress squeaked loudly. With his hand to the headboard and his thumb in Camille’s mouth. He thrust in and out of her tightness over and over. Her inner thighs, slick with sweat fastened tight to his waist, kept slipping. The wound to his side pierced his gut with pain and seeped blood. Neither could he stop, or did he notice. It was the locking strength of her thighs that permitted him to go the distance. She wanted no release, and he didn’t care. He moved in and out of her staring down into her round brown eyes ringed in the longest dark lashes he’d ever seen naturally on a woman. She sucked his thumb, her cocoa-melon breasts jiggled, and her copper brown skin glistened with the sexual-heat radiating from her. He’d started fucking her on the sofa, then the floor, and eventually, he took her to the bed. Over forty-five minutes fucking the most beautiful woman on the force, in the world, with the wettest, tightest pussy on earth, and still, he couldn’t come. But she did. He watched as her mouth went lax and his thumb slipped out. She gasped for air as her lids fluttered. She called his name and spoke words of love for him in Spanish, giving him her body without much of a fight. So he pretended to love her as well. He dropped on her and conjured images of his wife and how beautiful she was before and after they made love. He did that and felt comfort in Camille’s arms because she didn’t seem to mind. Together they climaxed. Maverick dropped over to his back and sighed. He inhaled. He sighed again. The feeling of comfort and support soon slipped away.