Chapter 13

~*~*~*~

“There’s no weakness in forgiveness.” ~ Tami Taylor, Friday Night Lights

~*~*~*~

“Feeling calmer yet?” Elena asked, gently.

Danny glanced over to see his wife watching him curiously from the other side of the cab’s backseat. Sofie was dozing softly between them, her head resting on Elena’s shoulder with her mother’s arm wrapped around her.

He shook his head, his anger still simmering under his skin and quietly replied, “Not really.”

Turning to look out his passenger window, the glow of neon and store lights dancing against the glass as the taxi sped through the city, Danny took a deep breath as the events from earlier in the evening replayed in his mind like a movie clip. It had started out so happily, sharing the news of the pregnancy when it suddenly took a bad turn and steadily went downhill from there…

~*~*~

“Dinner was delicious, Sylvia,” Elena complimented as she pushed her dessert plate away from her.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Sylvia replied, taking the last bite of her flan.

They had just finished dinner at the apartment of his brother, Rafi, and sister-in-law, Sylvia. While the adults enjoyed dessert at the table, the kids disappeared next door to inspect a neighbor’s Chihuahua’s new litter of puppies. So now that the kids were gone, the adults could enjoy a little adult time.

“And what about me?” Rafi teased from across the dining room table. He leaned back in his chair and tilted a can of soda to his lips. “I made the garlic bread.”

Sylvia rolled her eyes, obligingly ignoring her husband but Danny wasn’t ready to let his older brother off the hook as easily.

Smirking, Danny gestured with his hands and said, “Yeah, Elena, Rafi spread butter on some bread and put it in the oven.” He mockingly egged on, “All Sylvia did was boil the pasta, make the sauce, meatballs, salad…”

“Cállese,” Rafi grumbled, in an attempt to try and stifle his younger brother’s teasing. “You talk a good game for someone who eats tofu burgers. Don’t forget I’m the older hermano, you gotta respect that.”

“Alright, I’m willing to let it go since I’m the younger brother…” under his breath he added, “with the full head of hair.”

Rafi tossed his paper napkin at him before smiling and asking, “So what big case are you working right now?”

“Don’t get him started?” Elena playfully warned, picking up her glass of water and taking a drink.

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s not a missing person’s case. It’s this crazy mess one of my co-worker’s has gotten involved in and we’ve all been dragged into it -- a case involving a woman who was involved with a guy from my team,” Danny vaguely replied.

“Are you talking about su socio, Martín?” Rafi asked, pronouncing Martin’s name with the Latin inflection on the ‘i.’ Danny nodded, remembering that the first time Rafi met Martin was during one of the lowest points of his life so it had left a lasting impression. Good or bad, he wasn’t sure. “How’s he involved with her and why’s it such a mess?”

Danny tilted his head side to side, thinking how to explain the situation between Kim and Martin. He bit his lip and decided for the simplest version – the truth. He proceeded to tell Rafi about how Martin met Kim and all the ugly truths that were revealed shortly thereafter – starting with the bank robbery all the way to the deal she arranged by agreeing to pose undercover.

“So, now he’s living in the same house as her while pretending to be her husband?” Rafi clarified.

“Basically,” Elena chimed in before Danny could make a sarcastic comment.

Laughing, Rafi shook his head and started to take another drink of his soda. “Oh, man, that dude is hooked!”

“Either way,” Danny said, ignoring Rafi’s bemusement at a situation he took very seriously, “I need to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid around her.”

Rafi eyed him from across the table. “Why?”

Meeting his gaze, Danny gave him a puzzled expression and asked, “What do you mean why? She’s obviously trouble.”

“How do you know she really isn’t trying to make things right?” Rafi asked, lifting up the palms of his hands.

The relaxed atmosphere slowly began to be replaced with tension as Danny stared at his brother in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Why are you?” Rafi bounced back.

“I think Danny’s just worried about his friend, right?” Sylvia said, cradling the large bowl holding the remaining spaghetti and meatballs with one hand and picking up two glasses by slipping her fingers along the rims. “He doesn’t want his friend to get hurt. That’s good.”

“Of course,” Elena agreed, starting to stand up and pick up her own plate.

“Yeah, exactly,” Danny replied with a nod, shifting his gaze from Rafi to the two women. Feeling his nerves pinch tight at the mere notion that his brother would defend that woman, he motioned for Elena to stay seated as he stood up to help clear the dishes hoping the distraction would end the discussion. However, as he picked up both their plates and his empty water glass he couldn’t help but add, “I just want to make sure he’s not stupid enough to forget all she did to him.”

“Why’s it stupid?” Rafi coolly asked as he also stood up, picking up the plates long discarded by the kids.

Danny frowned at his brother. “What?”

Not slowing down in the clearing of the table, Rafi continued, “Why is it stupid if he forgives her?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Holding a small stack of dishes in one hand and two empty glasses in the other, Rafi stared at his brother with a visible frown on his face. “If he cares about her and she is serious about getting her life back on track, why can’t you leave it alone?”

Danny’s grip on his glass tightened. “Because she’s trouble. The things she did…”

“She did it before she met him,” Rafi quickly interjected, effectively stopping Danny’s words. Gesturing at him with the hand holding cartoon embossed glasses, he continued, “and with this deal she made, she’s going to be a free woman. Why not let them be?”

“She screwed him over,” Danny argued, unsure why Rafi was so determined to play the role of the Devil’s advocate and defend Kim. “Not only doesn’t he deserve what she put him through but she doesn’t deserve him.”

Rafi gave him a hard look from across the table. “So she made some mistakes.”

Danny shook his head, refusing to listen anymore. “Mistakes are forgetting to buy milk, not robbing a bank or taking bribes to let murderers go free or pulling a gun on two federal agents – one of which happened to be me,” he explained, hating that his voice raised a few octaves as he finished.

Rafi’s jaw flexed so tightly, the tendons along his chin were visible under his skin. “People make huge mistakes in desperation but it doesn't mean they are unredeemable...”

Stepping towards the kitchen, over his shoulder Danny replied, “Some things are.”

“What about me?” Rafi’s low voice challenged. “Am I unredeemable for my mistakes?”

That comment stopped Danny in his tracks. He licked his lips, turned around to face his brother and carefully replied, “That’s different. You’re family.”

“Family?” Rafi repeated with a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “You ran as far away from me as you could back when I was making my mistakes.”

“Rafi…” Sylvia quietly began, a soft warning inflection in her voice.

Looking at his wife, Rafi shook his head. “No, he needs to hear this. He’s arguing that it’s family that makes us forgive mistakes but he wrote me off years ago for mine.” He refocused on Danny and jutted out his chin defiantly. “Ran so far he even changed his name,” he grinned and finished, “Isn’t that right Danny Taylor?”

The long scabbed over wound effectively peeled open, Danny narrowed his eyes at his older brother as years of buried anger and resentment crept out. It was shocking to Danny that to this day, Rafi still failed to understand why he wanted, no needed to change his name. Maybe he never would. “I had my own reasons for that, it wasn’t about you.”

“Like hell it wasn’t,” Rafi shot back. “See, I know Danny Alvarez made a lot of mistakes – so many that he’d do anything he could to erase them. But you know what? I know Danny Taylor made a few too.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Danny replied, trying his best to contain an anger that only his brother managed to ignite in him. He worked his tongue into his cheek and hurried towards the kitchen, putting the dishes into the sink.

He prayed that Rafi would let it go but when he heard the unmistakable sounds of footsteps behind him, he knew that this conversation wasn’t over.

“I think Danny Taylor needs to hear this more than anyone,” Rafi said, willfully ignoring Danny’s attempts to end this escalating argument. “Cuz it’s pretty clear mi hermano, you either forgot or really don’t understand just how a few bad choices made in a moment of desperation can change your entire life.”

Adrenaline racing through his veins, Danny clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared back at his brother. “I see people make choices everyday,” he argued, as the walls of the kitchen seemed to move in closer, restricting the air in the room. “I have to find people who go missing every single day because of the bad choices they make or someone they trust makes that directly affect their lives.” He pointed his index finger in Rafi’s general direction and seethed, “Don’t you ever tell me that I don’t understand.”

Brushing past him and unceremoniously dropping the dishes into the sink, Rafi spun around and looked at him. “And are they all unredeemable, too? Are you, Danny Taylor, FBI Agent as well as judge and jury?”

Waving his hand at him in a classic ‘get out of here’ gesture, Danny started back into the dining area. “You don’t even know this woman, why are you rallying so hard to defend her?”

In the dining area, Danny saw Elena and Sylvia eyeing each other worriedly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist or psychologist to see that they were wondering if they should intercede or if the bickering brothers would work this out on their own. Not liking how this night was progressing, Danny gave Elena a reassuring look as he moved to his chair.

Trailing hot on his heels, Rafi replied, “Because sometimes I think you have a selective memory when it comes to remembering that some people suffer bigger consequences than others.”

Baited, Danny gripped the back of his chair and turned to face his brother. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that when you got in your car accident after law school you may have been drunk but you were lucky that the only thing you hit was a taxi cab,” Rafi explained, the anger in his voice ebbing away to resemble something like pity. “But you could have just as easily hit a pedestrian, an old man, a kid…”

Suddenly Danny’s walls of defense flew up, hating that Rafi was pointing this out in front of Elena. He had told Elena about the incident – she knew everything about his past drinking but he resented Rafi throwing it in his face. He entire body tensed up and he reacted the only way he felt – defensive. “Watch yourself, Rafi.”

Wordlessly, Elena softly placed her hand on top of his to reassure him that none of that matters to her now. The gesture managed to calm him, if just a little. He glanced down, her eyes silently telling him that it’s okay.

As if realizing that he had been close to crossing a line, Rafi worked his jaw, as if he was reconsidering his words. After a long pause, he squared his shoulders and met Danny’s eyes. “All I’m saying is that you should think about how different your own life would have been if the accident had gone another way. You were lucky that your consequences had a much happier ending. You had the chance to turn things around.” Danny lowered his head solemnly, licked his lips, processing what he was being told. When he looked up, he found Rafi watching Sylvia with sad eyes before his gaze drifted over to Nicky and Rosa, who just re-entered the apartment and were heading in their direction with Sofie trailing behind. “And I know what this Kim might be feeling because I’m trying every day to try and make up for my own mistakes.”

With a low voice, Danny breathed, “You don’t know what she’s really doing…”

Giving him a hard look, Rafi finished, “Or maybe I know too well.”

~*~*~

Releasing a heavy sigh, he pulled himself free from his brooding and shifted his attention back to Elena. “You know I do believe that people can change. I really do,” Danny said, reaching over Sofie’s head to softly caress Elena’s cheek. “I know I’m living proof of that.”

“I know,” Elena whispered, tilting her face into Danny’s hand.

Danny rested his arm on the top of the backseat but kept his hand on Elena’s face. “I know that Rafi’s doing all he can to stay on the right path,” he met her eyes and with conviction, he reiterated, “I know that.” His voice softened and he continued, “And maybe Kim is doing the same thing, but how can I not be skeptical?”

Elena shrugged. “It’s okay to be skeptical, mi amor. But it’s also good to keep an open mind and hope for the best. Maybe being with someone like Martin has really changed Kim for the better. Finding someone who you can trust and who makes you happy can change your life. This I know for sure.”

Smiling at her, Danny leaned over and kissed her when his cell phone warbled in his pocket. Pulling his hand from her face, he reached into his coat and pulled out the phone.

After a quick glance at the caller ID, he pressed the ‘talk’ button and quietly answered, “Hey, Viv, what’s up?”

“Sorry to call on your weekend off but Jack needs you to come in the office – tonight,” Viv said in her usual gentle but professional way.

Casting a look at Elena, “Is there a break in the case?”

Through his phone, he could hear Viv shuffling papers as she explained, “Delmar’s bringing in a woman from New Jersey. He was going through the phone records and found something.” Suddenly the sound of papers was replaced by clicking keys and he pictured Viv working at her desk. “There was a large volume of phone calls from the same number in the weeks leading up to the robbery and they stopped entirely afterwards. He traced them back to a Christine Parcell. He went to go talk to her and she told him that her boyfriend dumped her almost immediately after she was cleared of involvement and then up and disappeared.”

“Delmar thinks the ex-boyfriend is the connection?”

“Christine told him her ex, Bobby, was very curious about her work. Always asking how busy she was, days and times of the regular customers, dropped her off in the morning, picked her up and often came to pick her up for lunch.”

“So that’s how Jimmy was able to get inside knowledge,” Danny surmised. “By having one of his guys romance a woman who was working at the bank to get intel.”

“That’s our guess,” Viv agreed. “Anyway, Delmar’s going to have her look through some old mug shots to verify it’s someone from Jimmy’s crew while his team contacts other single women who worked at the previous banks to see if anything else clicks.”

“So why do you need me exactly? Don’t tell me Jack's having me come in on my weekend off to make calls, cause I know Delmar’s men know how to use telephones.”

She laughed. “Jack wants to talk to you about the other bank employees where you and Martin are working so we can try and line up their preliminary profiles with whatever knowledge you were able to get yesterday,” Viv explained. “We know that there are at least five single women working in the bank. He hated to call you in, but the sooner we get started the sooner we can start looking for any possible links.”

Danny closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. While he knew that this was important, he was hoping to just go home, crawl into bed and forget about the stupid fight he’d had with his brother. But as usual, the job often takes precedent. Opening his eyes, he told Viv he would be at the office in about half hour and hung up.

Still clutching his cell, he gave Elena an apologetic look. “Sorry, looks like I am working this weekend after all.”

Giving him a small smile, she nodded knowingly. “I know the job, you don’t have to apologize to me.” Shifting her shoulder to try and get more comfortable against Sofie’s slumbering weight, she asked, “So, who’s getting dropped off first – us or you?”

Grinning, Danny smiled, “Babe, don’t you know?” Elena gave him a questioning look as he added, “You always come first.”

She laughed.



A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating but life is CrAzY. Thank you all for the kind reviews and the constructive criticism. All have been processed, noted, and taken under consideration. In fact, I was inspired to do some tweaking and fine-tuning to the outline by combining, eliminating, and enhancing future chapters. I do believe the story will be the better for it. Thanks. Now, while I thought things were happening, I will do my best to make more things happen a little more often. However, I will still keep true to the story I wanted to tell and hopefully you will still want to read. (Oh, and as always, thanks Anmodo for your support and help!)