It was Kathy in the doorway, bags packed, kids already in the car, that slapped Bo awake to the reality of things.
He woke up fast.
From then on Bo made it a point to be a part, an active part, of Kathy's and the kids' lives. And he shared his life with them. Most of it. He still didn't talk much about being an MTac, and when he did, he edited out things like a telekinetic crushing a couple of cops under a semitrailer, or an intangible reaching into a cop's chest and squeezing his heart till it burst. Other than stuff like that, Bo shared his life. And when Kathy went back to school, then started working, that helped out a lot. When she had other things to do and to worry about, it pulled some of the pressure off Bo. At the end of the day Bo and Kathy were one of the few MTac couples to make something out of their marriage.
And Kathy was among a select group of MTac wives not to be a widow.
So those hours after work belonged to her. To the family.
That only left the night for Bo; his time.
Not even.
With chores, with errands, with all the things that living takes from your life, his time, really, was those very few moments in bed, before sleep came, in the still and the quiet and the dark. His time was those few moments free of family and work and responsibility.
Bo was no different from any guy who had obligations pulling him every single way. Most men live for their freedom, to be able to do as they please, be it running wild in the streets or dumping dirty clothes in the middle of the floor. Whether they ever really had that kind of freedom or not, it's a fond notion. And when the reality or illusion of it's been hacked and hacked and hacked away by every other commitment, a man's kingdom is reduced to a few blessed moments between waking and sleep, when he can think about the should've-beens and what-ifs, sort out the what-have-becomes and the what-will-bes.
Then he sleeps, wakes, starts the cycle of obligation all over again, each day living just a bit more for the night. For what's left of the freedom he probably never even had in the first place.
And even that, the night, Bo didn't own anymore. It belonged to a cop named Fiero. A cop who got dead tangling with a telepath. A couple of times Bo had watched the confiscated news tape of Fiero walking into Valley Bureau, regurgitating the little speech he'd been force-fed, then sticking his gun in his mouth and sending a slug through the top of his head. What Bo had seen was unshakable. It was waiting for him when he closed his eyes at night. He couldn't figure why it got to him so bad. Getting killed was something that sometimes happened to cops. With MTacs it was staying healthy that was unusual. Bo had managed to stay healthy and active and alive longer than any other MTac on the LAPD. The department's very own iron man. Bo was a natural, and it wasn't just glad-handing to say so. When it came to going after muties, when things got hectic, Bo had the ability to move with thought but without thinking. Pure instinct. It'd been that way for him for nearly a decade.
Things changed.
He'd felt them changing for a while. He was sure things had changed in that alley when he turned and saw the shape-shifter, chameleoned into the form of a wall, moving toward him, and too late raised his weapon. He would've been killed if it hadn't been for the sharp eyes and quick triggers of the rest of his element.
That was one of those stories that got edited for his family.
At first Bo chalked the incident to losing a step with age. Who doesn't? Maybe he was a hair slower than his best days, but that's all he was: just a hair slower. He had a lot more good years before he had to sweat over being too old for the job. But truth: It was more than age that had planed his edge. The tremor in his hand was an indicator, but it took what happened with Fiero to convince him of facts.
Bo had crossed paths with Fiero more than a few times and found him as solid an MTac as there's likely to be. Three times BAMF in two years. In the history of the department only Soledad was on track to bust that record. But as good as Fiero was, he was no good against a telepath, against a freak that could crawl into your mind and make it its own. And once Fiero was being puppeted, he was nothing but a sweaty, frightened creature marking time until it put itself down. When Bo saw that, when he felt the torque in his gut as Fiero's husk sank from the picture frame and thudded on the floor, he knew it wasn't age that was slowing him down. He'd lost a step to fear. A small step. A minuscule delay that comes when, before the body moves, the mind asks: Am I going to make it? Am I going to see my wife and kids again? And it was just when the mind's asking questions, during that nanosecond's worth of inaction, that a cop, especially an MTac cop, got himself, got a member of his element, killed.
Bad enough he should die, Bo thought. Worse he should have to live through another loss like Reese. But hadn't he said that before? How many other cops had he outlived?
Couldn't remember.
He closed his eyes.
Fiero, gun in mouth, was waiting for him.
Something had to give.
He looked to Kathy asleep beside him.
Something had to change. Bo knew what. A decision got made.
He closed his eyes again.
Nothing but dark.
For the first time in a long time the night belonged to Bo.
Soledad got the call while she was out running. She ran with her cell phone. Habit. A habit she'd formed when she first landed MTac. An emergency call could come anytime, anywhere. Even when not on shift, an MTac was never fully off duty. Soledad hadn't been on the platoon long enough for her forced habit to have been of any use. Ironic now: Because of the habit, she was able to take a call about her future with the PD. It was Gayle calling.
Gayle said: "It's going to happen Thursday. You and I are supposed to go in and sit down with your lieutenant."
Asking, but afraid to know: "What's going to happen?"
"I'm not sure. But I don't think… I have to be honest, it's not going to be good."
"Is it like you said? Is there something going on? Something else?"
"There's nothing I can find, nothing I can prove. Just what I believe."
At Crescent Heights and Beverly, Soledad sat at a bus stop bench. A young girl, young woman really, who'd moved out from New York and didn't have a driver's license sat there, and a homeless guy sat there as well.
Soledad: "So… what are they going to do? What's… Am I looking at suspension? Am I looking at—"
"Honest to God, I don't know."
And Soledad sat.
"Soledad…"
"I'm here."
"I haven't given up, Soledad. Don't you, okay? I'm coming in there to kick ass. You know I will."
"… Yeah…" Gayle's tough talk didn't much take.
"Okay, so don't give up. All right?"
"You're doing this for you. But this is my… it's all I've got."
"And I'm still going to kick ass. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay. Just hang in there. Thursday. Okay?"
"Yeah."
Gayle hung up.
Soledad hung up.
An RTD bus pulled up at the stop. The young woman from New York got on.