No, he wouldn’t.

Now he just had to find a way to live with that decision. With that in mind, he picked up the phone and called Tony Trulo, the department psychiatrist.

“Hello, my friend,” Tony said. “I was wondering when I might hear from you.”

“The boss made me call you.”

Tony laughed. “I love how no one ever comes to me without an order, as if my wit and charm aren’t enough to bring you in.”

“Haha,” Jake said. “What wit and charm?”

Tony chuckled. “How’re you holding up?”

“Good minutes. Bad minutes. Everything in between.”

“This is a tough one, Jake. No way around it. You did your job. Ordering the death of a colleague’s son will haunt a good man like you.”

“It does, even knowing we saved an innocent life by taking his.”

“There’s a lot to unpack here. Since you can’t come here while suspended, how about we meet for coffee in the next day or two and dig into this some more?”

“I’ve got to make a quick trip to New Orleans, but I’ll be back in a couple of days. I’ll reach out then?”

“I’ll be here, and we’ll get you through this.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

Chapter Seven

While she waited for the dump of Spencer’s phone, Sam reviewed the final reports on the Shane Ramsey case. The words ran together in a mishmash of symbols that made no sense to her. Damned dyslexia. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and released it slowly. Then she opened her eyes, blinked a few times and took another look at the computer screen.

Still a maze of nothingness.

“Cruz!”

Her handsome, dark-haired partner came to the door, brow raised. “You bellowed?”

“What’s that app you told me about that can read for me?”

“What are you trying to read?”

“These stupid reports, and the dyslexia is being a bitch.”

He came into the office, stepped around her desk and clicked around on her computer. “The text-to-speech thing is included in the program. All you do is click right here.”

“Huh. How come I never knew that?”

“Because you refuse to attend any of the required training.”

“That’s a waste of my time.”

“There’s so much I could say to that.”

“Go away. I have listening to do.”

“Yes, ma’am. Just bellow again if I can be of any further assistance to you.”

“Thank you. I’ll do that.”

Sam pressed the button he’d indicated and sat back to listen to the reports her team had compiled to summarize the Ramsey case. Gonzo had gathered input from all the officers involved and put it into one cohesive narrative that told the story of Shane Ramsey’s murdering, raping rampage and how it had ended in gunfire in Rock Creek Park.

As she listened, Sam’s mind wandered to Angela, Spencer, Jack, Ella, Angela’s unborn child, Spencer’s lost job and the benefits his family relied upon. Her anxiety spiked into the red zone as she tried to get her head around the mess her sister was in and how she could fix it for her. Not that it was her job to fix it, but that was what she did. She fixed things. She got answers. She figured things out.