With ease, Josh’s finger went to the trigger.

Brian couldn’t watch. Dead woman or not, he didn’t want to see someone get executed. It just wasn’t right; especially knowing that he was next. He couldn’t bear to see what it would look like, what his family would see if and when they ever claimed his body.

Shutting his eyes tight he swore he heard every movement of metal on metal as the trigger was pulled and a bullet was propelled out of the chamber.

The air whooshed out of his chest and he swore he could feel the impact of the bullet, just like he would probably feel it when his turn came. The sound of a body falling to the ground broke him from his reverie... mostly because it was coming from the wrong direction.

Brian’s eyes snapped back open and in front of him Santino was on the ground clutching his chest just below the collar bone, crying out in pain.

“What the fuck man?” Santino yelled at Josh, “You just shot me! I can’t believe you just turned around and shot me.”

“No,” Josh’s voice was laced with confusion, “I didn’t. I swear I was aiming for her. You saw me aiming for her! It was like... someone hit me and I lost control! My arm... it just... moved!”

“There’s no one even standing near you! You just turned around and shot me!” Santino kept repeating. He was really bleeding now, despite his efforts to keep pressure on his own wound.

Brian heard a chuckle and turned his head to see Nick standing next to his crate, looking smug, “That’s what you get for calling me a pussy. Pussy.”

Josh was staring at the gun in his hand as if it were possessed so Nick took the opportunity to knock the offending weapon out of the man’s hand, laughing when he heard him yell out in confusion.

“Nicky...” he whispered below the commotion of the room, feeling like his friend was tight-rope walking the delicate thread between life and death. He was trying to get Nick’s attention when he was interrupted by a new noise.

The sound of the gunshot had triggered more than just whining from Santino. The doors of the warehouse were flying open and with lightning fast speed black SUVs with flashing red lights were blowing in.

“Get down!” the man with the blue jacket had suddenly returned to the room and next to him as if he had circled around behind the crates. Brian’s instinct was to get as far away from the guy as possible but he realized as the man pulled him and Valerie behind a stack of empty crates that something wasn’t right.

“It’s you,” was all Valerie said to the man but Brian heard the message loud and clear without any more details required.

The man in the blue jacket was a good guy.

~*~

Brian was confused.

He poked his head over the top of the crate to see how things were going on the other side but what he really wanted was some kind of explanation as to what was happening.

He’d been sitting and waiting for the longest time while the FBI arrested Josh and Santino. The most he’d been able to figure out is that blue jacket, who they now knew as Agent Taylor, had been working undercover in the Esposito crime family for seven years. That specific day, unbeknownst to Brian and Valerie, had been chosen as the day the feds were going to take down the whole drug operation at a few key spots around the city, including police headquarters.

The reason Mr. Esposito hadn’t shown up in the time they spent in the warehouse was that he and his lawyers had been tied up with the FBI since morning.

Agent Taylor had been wearing a wire the whole time, so apart from getting mountains of evidence about the drugs he had also gotten a very clear admission of guilt. He had Santino, on tape, confessing to killing Nick. It was the justice Brian had been waiting twelve long months for. Finally, someone was going to go to prison for killing his best friend.

“Brian?” Agent Taylor asked, approaching the man.

Brian nodded and stood, “What’s happening now? I need to let my family know I’m okay.”

“We’ll let you get on the phone to your family right away,” Taylor assured him, “We do need to go back to my office though. I need to ask you a few questions about everything that happened today. I have some serious questions. I especially have questions about how the wrong person ended up getting shot. I leave the room for five seconds...”

“If I let you ask me some questions will you promise to give me some answers in return? I’ve spent a really long time waiting for them and I think you might be the only person who really knows the truth.”

“I don’t know if I’ll have the kinds of answers you’re looking for,” Agent Taylor told him, his brow furrowing, “I wasn’t there when your friend was killed.”

“No,” Brian corrected him, “I know about that. I know how Nick was killed. What I need to know now is why. I really don’t understand anything that has happened here.”

“Whatever I can tell you... whatever I’m allowed to tell you... I will.”

“Thank you for that,” Brian breathed a sigh of relief and turned to offer Valerie a friendly smile. What he found instead was more crates and no Valerie.

“Are you looking for your friend?”

“Yes,” Brian nodded, “I haven’t seen her in a little while.”

Agent Taylor looked around the room quickly then shrugged, “Neither have I to be honest. Well she’s either talking to another Agent or she took off.”

“Why would you think she would take off?”

The Agent laughed and raised an eyebrow towards Brian, “C’mon, I know what’s going on here.”

“You do?” Brian asked curiously, trying not to be nervous by the question.

Agent Taylor nodded his head, “Sure, it’s pretty obvious. She was lying about who she was, right? I’m the one that did all the research on her when she first started popping up everywhere and she was using an alias. She wasn’t a cop, and the person she was pretending to be has been dead for two years. What I couldn’t figure out was what her stake was in the whole thing, why she was even involved.”

“She helped me,” was all Brian told the man, “I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her.”

~*~

“So were you playing me this whole time?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why?”

“You weren’t supposed to know that you had help.”

“If this was all planned then why did you act so shocked in the evidence lockup when you realized who I was?”

“I didn’t know who I was looking for. I’d been sitting around anxious for days on the lookout for the person I was waiting for and then you showed up and I didn’t realize you were... you.”

Nick flashed his patent Carter grin, “You mean you didn’t recognize me?”

Valerie just rolled her eyes in response, “No. I’ve been busy the last little while. I don’t get to watch much MTV.”

Nick hopped up onto one of the crates as FBI Agents buzzed around them oblivious, “So are you some kind of angel or something?”

“Hardly,” Valerie groaned, “Quite the opposite in fact. This is me paying my dues. Getting back into the good graces of whoever is up there controlling everything.”

“Why were you in their bad graces?”

Valerie took a long moment to compose her thoughts, thinking of the best way to say what she wanted to say since no one had really asked her the question, “I was selfish,” she finally said and Nick looked confused, “I wanted something so bad I stopped at nothing to have it.”

“What did you want?” he wondered aloud.

She sighed, “To be with my Dad again.”

“Do you get to?”

“Do I get to what?”

“Be with him again,” Nick clarified.

“I’m not sure,” Valerie shrugged her petite shoulders, “I guess I’ll find out when I either leave here, or don’t. I kind of screwed up letting myself get sidetracked with my own personal vendettas. It was just kind of ironic that our lives ended up being so linked.”

Nick watched Brian from across the room, seeing his friend talking to the FBI Agent that had been in the warehouse with them before. He couldn’t believe that Brian was going to give up his own life for the sake of Nick’s lost one. He only wished he knew before what an amazing friend he had in Brian. Sure he had loved him as best as he knew how but admittedly, he wouldn’t have taken a bullet for him. In that aspect, he really was a coward.

“Do I have to go now?” Nick asked sadly, feeling so torn between his desire to stay and his need to leave.

“Yeah,” Valerie told him with a solemn nod, “You did what you came here to do. Brian can go on living his life now; he can stop wasting it on you.”

Nick turned to glare at her defensively, “He wasn’t wasting it on me! He’s my best friend!”

“He was your best friend,” Valerie disagreed, “Brian’s life will be so much better now that he can let you go. He can live again. You did a great thing by coming here.”

“He thinks this was about me,” Nick crossed his arms across his chest, still watching his old friend, “He thinks that this was about my justice. It wasn’t. It was always about him.”

“If Brian wants to think that this was his last favour for you, to help you have peace, then let him think that,” Valerie followed his gaze and they both watched as the shorter man followed Agent Taylor over to a vehicle, “You should go say goodbye.”

“So soon?” Nick was shocked; he thought he would have more time.

“There’s no point in waiting. You can’t stay. Nick, it’s time for you to go home.”