The Deputy’s Duty

The plane touched down at JFK International Airport with a smooth glide along the tarmac. The engines revved as the reversers deployed. Impatience had Ryan unbuckled and poised to grab the bag with the flak vests from the overhead bin before the flaps on the wings let down.

Meghan remained motionless in her window seat. Her mouth pressed tight, her gaze trained on the seat back in front of her.

“You should have told me you were afraid to fly,” he said.

Her hands had a death grip on the armrests. “I managed.”

Yes, she had. His respect for her grew. The plucky woman hadn’t blinked or given any clue that she’d battled with aerophobia when he’d handed her the plane ticket. She was an enigma.

Bold and brash at times, yet every so often, like now, he glimpsed a vulnerability that touched him. And earlier, when she’d spoken of betrayal and hurt, he’d sensed and seen the anguish she carried deep inside.

A welling need to soothe and comfort rose till it became a painful ache in his chest.

Someone had her hurt badly.

Rage at the unknown person filled him. He could only hope Meghan suffered nothing more serious than a broken heart.

Not that he was dissing the pain of having one’s heart smashed to smithereens. He’d had his fair share of heartbreak. Who hadn’t? But there were worse hurts, which left scars that he marveled ever healed.

The memory of another young woman rose, making his already-stretched-tight nerves strain even more. Ryan had witnessed his best friend assault a girl he’d professed to love when they were in high school. Ryan had intervened and then turned in his friend to the police even though the girl refused to press charges.

The decision still lay heavy on Ryan’s psyche but he didn’t regret doing the right thing. And he knew that Lily Wilkin was grateful, even if she refused to speak to him, claiming doing so hurt too much, brought back the nightmares. He understood. He’d had his share of nightmares from that day.

He could only pray that Meghan’s hurts weren’t nearly as horrific.

The plane jerked to a halt at the gate. Once inside the terminal, dodging travelers pulling rolling luggage, they weaved their way through the crowded airport. After retrieving his locked gun case from baggage claim, they headed outside to the taxi stand. Once they climbed into the yellow sedan, Ryan gave the address of where Dosha Meniski’s Seville had last been spotted.

As they wound their way into the city from the airport, Ryan pulled out his cell and checked in with the NYPD. Captain Gregson of the 13th precinct said he had an officer waiting for Ryan outside the apartment building where the car had been spotted. He spoke a moment longer, then hung up his phone.

“Have they seen any sign of Georgina?” Meghan asked.

Her anxiety sizzled in the air around her.

“No. But if they see Christina, they’ll detain her and take Georgina into custody,” he said, not sure how to lessen her anxiousness. He needed her to be ready for whatever came at them.

Meghan’s straight white teeth tugged at her bottom lip. She clutched the large nylon bag he’d stuffed the flak vests into and stared out the taxi’s side window.

“It’s going to be okay.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thanks for saying so.”

They lapsed into silence. Hoping to get her mind off her worries, and because he was curious, he revisited their unfinished conversation at the Sugar Plum. “You never answered me.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Oh? I don’t remember the question.”

He didn’t believe that for a second. The woman was smart and on top of it like nobody’s business. He thought back to what she’d said about getting people to open up. Getting them talking about the familiar, the mundane, leading them to the words they were waiting to say. Good strategy. Would probably work better than his more straightforward, go-for-the-throat approach. Ask the right questions, she had said.

He wondered what question he should be asking. “Do you really believe forgiveness is possible?”

Surprise flickered in her hazel eyes, then settled into determination.

She did remember. He’d thought so.

“Yes,” she answered. “Like I said, it takes time.”

“A lifetime,” Ryan stated, thinking it would be that long or more before he could let go of the anger and hurt over his father’s infidelity and duplicity.

“Maybe” she said. “But it’s so much better than the ugliness. The soul-sucking nastiness that burrows in and eats away at you until you convince yourself death would be better than living.”

He blinked. Whoa. Where was this talk of death coming from?

The stress, the tension of being shot at and terrorized, no doubt.

Tread slowly, Fitzgerald, he told himself, suspecting they were approaching a special place of trust where she might actually open up. And that touched him.

But then again, judging by the shuttered look closing over her expression, he could be wrong. “I’m sure my dad would like me to forgive him and have everything return to the way it was before…” He swallowed the words before they were spoken.

“Before I came barging into your office with the truth,” she finished for him.

He gave a dry laugh. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Life will never go back to what it was, but that’s okay. The past is over and done with. Now you have to figure out how to live in the now, then the future. And trust me when I tell you, finding it within yourself to forgive is the only way each day becomes bearable.”

“For me or my dad?”

She tilted her head in thought for a moment. “Both of you. But you mostly, since you’re only in charge of yourself, your emotions.” She shifted to better face him. Her lovely face held him in rapt attention.

“Forgiveness is for you,” she continued, seeming to warm to the subject, making him think she was speaking from experience. “Forgiveness releases the icky stuff so you’re free to love. To be in a relationship with God, with others.”

“What if I can’t release the icky stuff?” he asked, wondering what icky stuff she’d had to release, to forgive.

“Holding on to the bad feelings only hurts you,” she answered, her hazel eyes imploring him to understand what she was telling him. “Not the one who hurt you. They don’t feel any of what you’re feeling. We each only know our own pain, joy, hurt, anger, sorrow. We can empathize, we can have compassion…”

Her mouth kicked up slightly at the corner in a wry grimace. “At least healthy, well-adjusted people can. But only you can choose to forgive. The cliche ‘Let go and let God’ is a cliche for a reason.”

“Here we are,” the cabdriver said as he pulled the yellow sedan to the curb.

Ryan almost regretted the intrusion. He helped Meghan from the cab, her words ringing in his head and rattling around his heart.

Forgiveness releases the icky stuff.

He certainly had a good dose of icky going on.

The address in New York turned out to be a low-rise walk-up apartment in the East Village on Avenue B. The area once referred to as Alphabet City in its seedier days, now looked to be getting a face-lift as several of the brick, prewar structures had scaffolding crawling over them like locusts. Ryan hadn’t been to this part of the city in years, not since he and his college buddies had haunted the Big Apple on the weekends. They’d covered every square inch of the island on the lookout for the best places to eat. Food was a big deal when you’re a growing young man in college.

The smells of a noodle house offering soy-sauce-ladened dishes mixed with the more commercial scents wafting from a popular Tex-Mex restaurant next door made Ryan’s stomach rumble. The plane’s muffin and coffee hadn’t been enough of a breakfast.

Hip and trendy stores replaced the old tattoo parlors and punk-rock shops that had once catered to the more bohemian crowd. One of Ryan’s buddies had gotten a tat at a shop several blocks down.

What had brought Christina to this neighborhood?

A police cruiser sat parked at the curb. A young uniformed police officer stood casually on the sidewalk. He nodded to an elderly woman passing by. Ryan approached him. He read the name tag on the officer’s shirt. “Officer