Still Falling (Home In You #0) Read online

  Still

  Falling

  Home In You Series

  A Novella

  Crystal Walton

  Impact Editions, LLC

  Chesapeake, VA

  Copyright © 2017 by Crystal Walton.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Published by Impact Editions, LLC

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design © 2017 Victorine Lieske

  Author Photo by Charity Mack

  Still Falling/Crystal Walton.

  ASIN: B072LBQ499

  Contents

  Still Falling

  Contents

  Foreward

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Want a Free Book?

  Behind The Scenes

  Books By Crystal Walton

  About The Author

  Acknowledgements

  Foreward

  Crystal’s giving away a free book, along with exclusive bonuses from the heart-melting stories you love. Tap the image to grab your copy of Your Story Matters and enjoy more behind-the-scenes content: crystal-walton.com.

  Chapter One

  Vice

  On his way to their squad car, NYPD Officer Josh D’Angelo fanned away a sense of dread rising with the steam coming through the subway grates.

  Twelve. Twelve more collars, and he could finally prove he was ready to make detective. Pressure twisted in his gut as he toyed with the fraternity ring he’d inherited from his old man. Josh had worked this beat for three years. He knew the routine inside and out. Loved the difference he made on the streets. Was he ready to walk away from all that?

  He stretched his neck. No time for second-guessing. He had obligations to fulfill, wrongs to right. It wasn’t just about him.

  “You could’ve let me pick up the tab, you know.” His partner, Sophie Daniels, took a bite of the burrito they’d just picked up from a taco joint on Thirty-Fourth Street.

  “Next time.”

  “You always say that.”

  He shrugged. “Just giving you a reason to stick around.”

  The streetlight caught her usual nice-try-at-being-funny expression under her police cap. “As if anyone else would volunteer to put up with your quirks every tour.”

  He laughed, grateful for the brother-sister banter that helped neutralize the stress of the job. “Quirks? You sure you wanna start this?”

  “Psh, at least I don’t—”

  Two pops went off in the distance. Sharp, distinct. Josh reached for his holster on instinct. The shots had to have come within a five-block radius.

  He locked gazes with Daniels over the hood of their black-and-white. “Call it in.” He flipped on the emergency lights while Daniels pulled out the radio to advise dispatch.

  “Twelve-Adam to Central, reporting a ten-ten, possible shots fired near the intersection of Thirty-Fourth and Broadway. Have any calls come in?”

  “Twelve-Adam, stand by.”

  People on the sidewalks scattered like cockroaches, as if their squad car were a can of Raid spraying blue and white lights across the unlit streets.

  Central came back online. “All units, be advised we have an armed robbery in progress at 35 21 Thirty-First Avenue.”

  Frankie’s Bodega.

  Daniels cut Josh a wary glance as she keyed the radio. “Ten-four. Twelve-Adam responding.”

  Trained to hone his adrenaline, Josh whipped the car in a U-turn and made a hard right onto a narrow cut-through street between blocks.

  He parked in front of the bodega and left the lights on. From behind the shield of their car doors, they both readied their Glocks while assessing the scene.

  No movement through the windows. No sign of suspects or any bystanders. Other than the clink of a nearby shop’s rolling gate closing and the buzz of the neon open sign blinking, the street had fallen still.

  Josh motioned with his eyes for Daniels to move out.

  Guns drawn, they approached the storefront and took position to cover each other once he opened the door.

  He pressed his back against the wall, breathed, and scoured the street from this angle. One corner, the next. His pulse escalated. Around the brick siding, a peek of white sneakers from someone lying on the ground stood out.

  Daniels followed his line of sight and swallowed the way she always did when they found a victim. The day she ever stopped letting it bother her was the day he’d be worried. No one should get used to seeing crime scenes.

  They eased to the edge of the building. He nodded at her and pivoted around the dark corner, Glock and flashlight raised.

  “Clear,” he said while lowering his weapon, Daniels following suit.

  She knelt to the pavement. “D’Angelo, he’s still breathing.”

  Josh holstered his gun, joined her on the asphalt, and shined his light over the man’s face. His stomach lurched. Lieutenant Ramirez? This couldn’t be right. Not him.

  The bloodstain on his shirt spread from what must’ve been a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Josh checked the pulse in his neck. Weak. The minute Daniels handed him a pair of disposable gloves, he compressed the wound to stop the bleeding. “Hang on, Ramirez.”

  “You know him?” She squinted in the dark.

  No time. He tugged his shoulder mike while keeping one hand on the lieutenant’s stomach. “Twelve-Adam to Central, we have a ten-thirteen. Officer down. I repeat, officer down. Requesting a bus at this location.”

  “Officer?” Daniels swept a glance over Lieutenant Ramirez’s street clothes and back to his face. “Wait, is this—?”

  A girl’s scream followed by a crash from inside the bodega whipped both their heads toward the storefront. Ahead, a guy with a black hoodie pulled over a ski mask bolted through the side door. He took one look at them and sprinted down the alley. A glimpse of red fabric blurred out of focus as the door’s creak ping-ponged across the narrow throughway.

  “Call it in.” Josh sprang to his feet. “Keep pressure on that wound till the bus gets here.”

  “D’Angelo, wait.”

  “I’m not letting him get away.” He withdrew his Glock. “Police. Stop!”

  The night’s humid air coated his lungs as he ran in pursuit. “Police!” he yelled again, but the guy kept running. Past a series of fire escapes, beyond the last dumpster, straight for a ten-foot chain-link fence bordering a yard between one alley and the next.

  Ambulance sirens neared in the background.

  Without the slightest hesitation, the suspect scaled a stack of crates, ran sideways against the brick wall, and leapt to
the top of the fence like he was Jackie Chan or something.

  He’d cleared the second fence by the time Josh climbed the first.

  Barks ignited out of nowhere. A pair of pit bulls clawed halfway up the fence that Josh had frozen on top of. He jumped back down, the snarls too close for comfort.

  Under a busted streetlight, another barely noticeable flash of red fabric drifted out of sight with the thug. Josh banged the fence. The metal rattled against the blacktop, fueling the dogs’ determination to guard their yard.

  “Yeah, where were you thirty seconds earlier, huh?” Josh gripped his knees.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. He turned, Glock lifted.

  “Easy.” Daniels returned her gun to her holster. “The perp?”

  “Lost him.” He swore and smacked a palm to the bricks. It burned him to let any criminal get away, but this wasn’t just an abstract crime. It was personal.

  Daniels angled in front of him. “You good?”

  “Yeah.” He let out a hard exhale. “I’m good.” His focus tunneled back to the end of the street where Ramirez had been lying. The first responders must’ve gotten him loaded on the rig already. He started forward.

  “Josh.” Daniels stopped him. She rarely ever called him by his first name. If that wasn’t enough reason to worry, the visible concern on her face sent his heart rate spiking again.

  “What is it? Lieutenant Ramirez . . . is he . . . ?”

  “They’re transporting him to Mount Sinai now. He’s likely.”

  The faintest trace of relief touched his shoulders. “Then what’s wrong? We got another vic?”

  The look on her face answered before she did.

  “Frankie?” His chest constricted at her nod. Knowing him, he’d tried to be a hero.

  Daniels shifted. “There’s another. Blunt force to the head. She’s alive, but . . .”

  The sequence of events rewound in his mind and stopped on a girl’s shrill scream landing to his gut. He didn’t wait for Daniels to finish. He shoved off the wall. Sprinted.

  “D’Angelo—”

  His partner’s voice trailed behind him as he barged through the side door into the bodega. He skimmed two stands, knocking over a box of protein bars. Cans of energy drinks rolled across the dingy tiles, but he didn’t slow until the sight of two medics hunched over someone stalled him in the middle of the store.

  Heartbeats assaulted his eardrums, urging his feet to move. One inch. Two.

  A glimpse of the girl’s blood-matted hair brought Josh’s knees to the floor.

  Bree. What was she doing back in Astoria?

  One of the medics cast him a sideways glance. “You know her?”

  Josh blinked, swallowed—anything to free the vise around his chest.

  “The girl,” the medic tried again. “You know her?”

  More than know. “I almost married her.”

  Chapter Two

  Shaken

  Bree Ramirez stood in front of the bathroom mirror in her new tenth-story Manhattan apartment—the one that was supposed to make her feel safe. But no walls were high or thick enough to insulate her from images of her dad in ICU.

  Goose bumps prickled over her skin as images from last night shuddered in a replay she hadn’t been able to stop since she’d woken up in the ambulance.

  She dropped her compact and grasped the sink’s edge. The soothing album playing in her living room faded behind noises scarred in her memory: dad grappling with the burglar, gunshots ricocheting off the bricks, her own scream muffled by a gloved hand.

  She’d heard a moan when she elbowed the guy in the ribs, but he was too strong, too controlled. He’d dragged her into the bodega like a shield and kept the cold barrel of his gun pressed to her temple. A warning. A reminder.

  From behind the register, the recognition in Frankie’s eyes turned to resolve, and she knew he’d try to protect her. Just like she knew he wouldn’t make it.

  Tears carved rivulets down her cheeks and blurred her reflection. She never should’ve agreed to go out with Dad last night. Never should’ve gone back to Astoria at all. Why did Dad have to step in? Just once in his life, he could’ve . . .

  Bree silenced the thought. Going down that road would only end in a crashing zone she’d learned to circumvent a long time ago.

  She brushed her fingertips under her lashes. Yet instead of squelching her errant emotions, the touch ignited the feeling of Josh’s warm hands cradling hers before the medics loaded her into the ambulance.

  She’d kept her eyes closed, but even half-conscious, she’d know Josh’s voice anywhere. Would know his strength, his compassion. Four years of pretending she’d forgotten only made the ache of missing him sear that much deeper. She wasn’t supposed to run into him. He wasn’t even supposed to know she’d come back.

  Bree snagged her compact from the sink and willed her thoughts to stop spiraling. Shoulders down, face forward, she held her gaze in the mirror. “You’re stronger than this.”

  She finished camouflaging the bags under her eyes and sprayed her hair—for once, glad to have untamable curls. Maybe they’d hide the indigo bruise on her temple. The last thing she needed was people at rehearsal probing with questions. If she could just get through—

  A piercing beep blared from the front of the apartment. Security alarm? Panic surged until embarrassment took over.

  Her breakfast.

  She raced to the kitchen, yanked the pan of charred eggs off the burner, and waved a dish towel at the smoke detector on the high ceiling. The stupid thing all but laughed at her. Desperate, she whirled open her front door.

  “Excuse me?” she called to a guy from 10B heading down the hall. “Would you help—?”

  “Sorry.” With his back already pressing open the door to the staircase, he lifted his briefcase as if that sufficed for an excusable answer.

  “Please, I—”

  The door’s clank into its metal frame shot back to her, as sharp and abrupt as her neighbor’s lack of manners. “Thanks a lot,” she mumbled.

  Following two resigned steps back inside, the alarm ceased. She froze, waited. Nothing but the soft strings of her favorite album filled the quiet space. Until her cell’s ring added another tune.

  Gabe. Forget finicky alarms, she needed to know her brother was okay. She disconnected her phone from the speaker dock while glancing at a picture of them from eight summers ago, arms around each other’s necks. “Hey, you all right?”

  “I’m not the one who went to the hospital last night. Why aren’t you still there?”

  She touched the knot on her head. “The coward knocked me out with the butt of his gun before running off. It was just a little blood.” Nothing she shouldn’t be able to handle. She’d grown up in Queens, knew what went down on the streets.

  Bree sank onto her microfiber couch and slid her hand under her leg.

  “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t have gotten caught up in the cross fire like that. What were you and Dad even doing there? I thought you were hanging in the Upper West Side.”

  Her orange tabby, Clyde, abandoned his spot on the recliner next to her gray tabby, Bonnie, and made a new bed smack on Bree’s lap. She rubbed his head, welcoming his comforting purrs as he burrowed into a tight ball. Something must be wrong with the thermostat. Even the cats seemed to notice how cold it was in here for late June.

  “We were. But Dad insisted we go to Bareburger’s for shakes before they closed.” A longstanding father-daughter date they’d had since she could walk. At least, until her junior year of high school.

  Maybe she should’ve kept her parents in the dark about moving back to the city for a little while longer. Or insisted they only meet in Manhattan, where she wouldn’t have to risk bumping into Josh.

  Even as she thought it, the assurance and safety of his presence last night rushed in. She’d wanted him there, needed him.

  “Dad was supposed to be off duty.” Gabe’s voice held a raw tenor she wasn’t used to hearing from her
all-guy baby brother. “If anything happened to you, I’d never—”

  “Don’t go there. I checked in with Dad’s doctor before they released me this morning. He’s stabilized, and you know Mom’s not going to leave his side. He’ll make it.” He had to.

  The snap of the A/C kicking on again quaked across her shoulders. She turned up the essential oil diffuser her high school friend Ti had given her as a graduation gift, needing lavender’s calming effects more than usual.

  In Gabe’s lingering pause, Bree’s focus strayed to two flyers magnetized to the back of her steel front door. One, an audition announcement for associate concertmaster. The other, a deadline notice for Nyack College’s fall deposit. Both reminders of what was at stake this summer.

  With Mom just getting laid off, and now Dad’s medical bills setting them behind, they’d never be able to afford Gabe’s tuition by August 1st. It was up to her to get him out of here. She had to make this audition.

  When she shifted, Clyde hopped to the hardwood floor. He rubbed against her violin case before reclaiming his cozy spot beside Bonnie.

  Bree pushed up from the couch and wiped off the orange hair he’d left on her skirt and tights. “Listen, I need to practice before rehearsal. Do me a favor and visit Dad today, ’kay?”

  “Why don’t you go?”

  “I can’t.” The words came out more forcefully than she intended. Lightening her tone, she set the violin case on the couch and clicked open the brackets. “Please, Gabe. You know Mom. She’s gonna worry until she gets you in her arms. Especially knowing two of the Sanchez Crew are responsible.”

  An NYPD family living in the middle of gang territory might as well have a bull’s eye on them. Not to mention the Crew had been trying to recruit Gabe since he was in middle school. What better way to stick it to a lieutenant than to have a hold on his son?

  She had to get him to Nyack and out of that dead-end neighborhood. Hadn’t it cost them enough?

  A photo of Dad and her late uncle, Luis, holding a pip squeak version of Bree between them mocked her from the end table.