Refusing to open the door to the other side of his life even a crack had shattered his marriage. Given her commitment to the job, to the law, it would have put Zoe in an impossible position, put her own husband behind bars or turn a blind eye to his flagrant breaking of probably a good half dozen laws. It wouldn’t have mattered that it was done to return things to their rightful owners - there were other legal enterprises that did that – or that he was trying to make up for what had undoubtedly been a life filled with wrongs committed by his father. That was a rock and a hard place and that cowardly little part of him that couldn’t stomach the thought of watching her opinion of him change in her eyes knew that the avalanche he’d created in the end had been the only way to get her out of it.

If only the damn Captain had agreed.

Being partnered with Zoe again in the midst of this crisis meant not being able to perform his ‘business’ on neutral ground away from the station. It meant cracking that door open right here with Tyler.

Jack’s ears had clocked on to the click-clack of her heels the moment she’d started up the stairs, as good as a bell over a door for drawing him up out of his ennui. Dark dress, slick red heels and lips, the dim light tried to drain the colour from it all but it didn’t quite work as she came into view. Laughter rolled up from the depths of his chest as she asked if he’d had an easy day, a lot vibrating chuckle. Jack sucked in a breath and shook his head. ”Do those even exist anymore?” he asked. Certainly not when you were running from pillar to post most of your shift, trying to slap metaphorical band aids on a society that was unravelling one frayed thread at a time. Tomorrow morning would be worse, trapped in a car with Zoe, trying to make their way over to the North District to speak to a bar owner who now had only half a bar on his hands after the recent violence.

The corners of his mouth and his dark eyebrows twitched up in concert as he ushered her towards his office. ”Better than most I hope, better still if I mange to avoid the rush hour after this.” Twice recently he’d had to stop on the way back to his apartment to deal with situations that had boiled up with the tensions that seemed to rise as soon as the sun started to drop towards the horizon.

Jack saw the moment of pause he gave her as he came into sight for her. Saville Row suits certainly weren’t the norm in the department, especially not in the current situation. In fact, he was beginning to believe that one of the detectives had been wearing the same shirt for the last week straight. He smoothed a hand over the waistcoat that remained buttoned up over his slightly less crisp white shirt. ”I do, I can’t promise it’ll be cold though.” Rounding his desk, Jack hitched his pants slightly and bent, retrieving two bottles out of the small fridge he’d tucked into the cramped space. Chilled at least, the plastic cool against his palm as he made a grab for glasses with the other. He set it all in the middle of his desk, gesturing her to take the seat opposite his own.

Stretching his legs out beneath his desk, crossed at the ankles, Jack reached for the envelope he’d retrieved from the locked drawer of his filing cabinet and had set on the blotter when the rest of the bullpen had cleared out. He slid it across the desk, lifting his chin towards it. ”The translation of some documents that recently came into our hands from a burglary,” he murmured. Close enough to the truth that Tyler wouldn’t likely bat an eye. Far more people were hunkered down at home these days but it hadn’t caused crime levels to drop, in fact they were skyrocketing. ”You do speak German, don’t you? This is a little stilted, possibly peppered with some words of Yiddish. The victim led us to believe the documents originated from post-war Paris.” In fact they had been sent from a refugee who had returned to the city, having been liberated from a camp, to find the paintings that had been in his family for generations looted, seemingly by his own neighbour.

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Jack clucked his tongue, let a low sound roll from his throat. ”It seems a shame to let this virus strip away any more civilities,” he murmured. It had already driven large swaths of the popular to regress, their behaviour beginning to border on the primal. He couldn’t blame them, when you realized that you could quite possibly be wiped out by disease it was easy to let that panic at suddenly staring down your own mortality take over. ”How about we both keep our fingers crossed that at least we make it back home tonight?” A compromise, one that was at least faintly dubious on his own end. Tonight he might be safe but close calls were all too frequent now and this burglary might just be the straw that ended up breaking the camel’s back.

A touch of chagrin had Jack dipping his chin as he checked his watch. Waiting for the bullpen to clear out already meant that he was going to miss that first stream of traffic as people rushed to get home before the curfew. He shook his head slightly, settling a palm against his chest. ”Not too much I hope. I wouldn’t want you getting in trouble doing me a favour.” Especially since a little honesty from Tyler was likely to bring down more heat on him than he was comfortable with. All it would take was one wrong word in front of Zoe and the cogs in his ex-wife’s mind would be spinning fast enough for all the pieces to finally fall into place.

The office wasn’t exactly sound proof but at least waiting this late meant that there wasn’t anybody lingering to overhear the two of them. Jack got them settled either side of the desk, the niceties gotten out of the way with offered drinks. This, Jack thought, was where it got a little stickier. Lies had always scored deep lines through his life, through his relationship. When it put those you cared about in a situation that required them to pick between their duty and their heart, it was always going to end in tragedy one way or another. What he was telling Tyler now wasn’t quite on that level but it wasn’t as though he was going to admit he was looking for the location of a piece of art stolen during the Second World War all so he could steal it back.

Settling back, Jack propped an elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin on his knuckles, swinging it back and forth slightly as he watched her read. Her blue eyes moving quickly over the text, picking out what he hadn’t mentioned with an ease that was almost enviable. Languages had never been his thing, not in the way they often were for others. French he could handle, a little German too but the Yiddish had been well beyond him and only getting half the story left him all the more likely to stumble into a problem. ”That makes sense, the victim of the burglary has ties to Russia through his father. I believe he emigrated here after the war.” Jack’s eyes dropped to the documents, rising to Tyler’s again as she questioned him.

During the burglary was exactly right, when he’d been riffling through the man’s safe, looking for some sort of trace of where he was keeping what was obviously not in his apartment. ”In the goods recovered after a burglary. The items were taken from the storage locker of the victim. He couldn’t tell us precisely what else was taken, it had been filled with what was cleared from his father’s home when he passed. We believe that the items described in that letter may have been a part of what was stolen. If we know exactly what was taken and where it might have been sold on we may have a chance of recovering it.” Jack reached into the drawer of his desk, retrieving a notepad to slid back towards her. ”You’ve seen something?” The trio of paintings had been well documented before the war so it wasn’t the art itself he was interested in. More the description of Anton Van Durer and the night he had supposedly broken into his neighbour’s apartment and stripped those paintings from the wall to sell on the black market.

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A gimlet eye scanned the worn interior of the station. Cracked tiles, stained ceiling tiles, furniture that had probably been on its way to decrepit when the department had been set up. Cute certainly wasn’t the word for it. A smile curled Jack’s lips, his teeth flashing for a moment as he looked at Tyler from beneath his lashes. ”That makes two of us,” he admitted without a touch of chagrin. ”If I ever have to stay hunker down here I’d be tempted to bleach every inch of myself afterwards.” There was of course far more of a chance of it these days, what might have just been an overnight shift in the past taking on the possibility of a siege situation where they had to hunker down here, avoiding the infected masses. The last line before…

They weren’t going to be wiped out by this thing. Sure, it was getting messier by the day, the numbers rising, the faint lingering stench of panic in government circles growing stronger by the day, but there would be some who staggered out the other side of this. Shellshocked perhaps, but still standing and he planned to make sure that he and Zoe were amongst them. Blue eyes narrowing to gleaming slits, Jack made a sound low in his throat as she teased. ”Why do I feel as though I just sold a piece of my soul,” he drawled lightly. Perhaps in a way he had, even if Tyler wasn’t serious about never forgetting about her debts. This wasn’t work, this wasn’t legal, even if it was an act of charity.

Pushing the thought from his mind as they settled into her office Jack tried to make it look like work as much as possible. If she believed it was truly for a case then perhaps she wouldn’t skim more than the surface. There was a chance curiosity would come back to kill the cat though, Jack thought as he settled back in his chair, with it creaking beneath his bulk and watched with keen interest as she sank her teeth into it. A light kiss of pen on paper, words he could make out even from here sprawling across the paper, her focus on the documents he’d handed over. Captivating, that ability to focus reminding him almost painfully of his ex-wife’s. ”No, no, that’s fine,” Jack murmured, just a hint of the husky to his voice. ”The general gist should get me where I need to go. There were place names, people, but they made little sense without the rest.” At least so far as he was able to put together.

Craning forward, Jack propped his arms on the edge of the table, ignoring his own drink to watch her like she was the only thing in the room, unabashed in his own focus. His tongue moistening the dry edge of his lower lip, his eyes burning faintly when Tyler looked up at him again. He cleared his throat, straightening up with the faintest pop of protest from his spine. It had been longer than he’d thought. ”I really appreciate it,” he breathed, stretching out a hand for the pad. ”If there’s a next time I’ll … drat.” Jack’s chuckle echoed Tyler’s. ”If you’re wondering, I never get tired of being right.” Sighing, Jack reached into his desk drawer, extracted a maglite. He stood it on its end on the desk. ”I’d look away a moment,” he warned before he flicked it on, flooding the small room with the bright white light. It filled the space starkly, revealing every tired edge. ”I really shouldn’t keep you much longer. It’s not safe and I think you’ve already saved my bacon enough tonight.” Not that she’d really know in what way. 

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A dubious sound fell out of Jack’s throat as he followed Tyler’s gaze as she scanned the room around them. Lethford’s budget was probably one percent of New York’s, yet most precincts in the bigger city were far more run down than this one. Over a hundred years of policing in some cases and the bastions of it were beginning to crumble. ”Maybe before the virus,” he conceded, grimacing as he looked back. ”It’s all bleach and threats of irradiating the place but…” He shook his head. The city had gone nuts for cleaning products at first, along with everything else deemed ‘essential’ but the virus was still spreading at an astonishing rate. ”Yay, fresh baby diaper colours walls just to make the rest look worse.” Jack sank his teeth into his tongue, suppressing a smile. He was being exceedingly hard on the place, especially since budgets for things like decoration were likely to be non-existent for the next decade.

Money wasn’t going to flow this far downstream anymore. It would roll uphill, as it always did. Flowing from the pockets of the government into those of society’s richest. Big pharmaceuticals, weapons manufacturers, men like his own father who had the entire police force of cities like New York in his hands. The toadies of all of them who would hoard this virus’ riches like leprechauns. Getting into bed, so tp speak, with someone new and relatively unknown, at a time like this was a risky move. Jack glanced down at the paperwork though, his lips twitched into that wry smile. ”It’s a relief to hear it,” he crooned lightly. ”Let’s hope I can afford to cash it.” Blue eyes ticked up to her at that, teeth flashing in a smile that’d graced the front page of more society magazines back home then he could’ve counted in his playboy days.

Beneath that smile always lay a mind whirring over other matters. By the time the cameras had started flashing he was already finding ways to escape them, to do something to make up for his father’s extensive crimes. This was just a drop in the ocean, the return of the missing paintings to their original owners, but each drop added up creating a whole that was so much more than the sum of its parts. The documents Tyler was translating was the same, what he needed to know not necessarily in the words that were more amorphous. His answer had surprised her, Jack could see that as she peeked up at him. It would have been so easy to say yes.

Their eyes met, the lift of her head making it clear but Tyler didn’t call him on it. She remained silent instead, at least until she’d completed the translation for him. Gratitude filled the pit of Jack’s stomach as he reached out to take the pad from her. Promises of reward for a theoretical next time drying up on his tongue as the lights went out. A low sound of agreement rumbled in Jack’s throat as he retrieved the flashlight. ”It’s one of the burdens we unfortunately have to bear and all of womenkind has to suffer through,” he said by way of apology. With the warning about the light hanging in the air, Jack momentarily squeezed his own eyes shut.

He rose from his own seat, went to reach for the pad as Tyler extended it to him. ”Oink,” he agreed readily enough. Jack gripped the edge of the pad to take it, paused when Tyler held firm. Staring back at her, he kept his eyes on hers as she seemed to search for something in his face. A sigh rolled out of him, his shoulders slumping. ”I really should have anticipated just how brilliant you are.” Jack shook his head, his jaw flexing for a moment. ”There should be no blow back on you from any of this. Your name’s not on any paperwork and according to all official lines of investigation, these papers have nothing to do with the burglary.” Dipping his head slightly, Jack glanced in the direction of his wife’s office. ”If anybody does manage to dig deeper than I’ve anticipated, tell them I invited you here for a drink. My reputation would support the idea. If there are more though … would you?” The offer hung in the air between them, his brows dark slashes against the starkly lit planes of his face as they rose. It was a lot to ask, surely more than his soul would purchase.

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A little dip into his trust fund and he could’ve had the place looking like something out of Architectural Digest, Jack thought. It would’ve opened him up to levels of scrutiny and ridicule he’d gone out of his way to avoid since he’d moved to Lethford. Here he wasn’t the son of the police commissioner, a playboy who’d bought his way into a shield. He had occasional airs and graces, he preferred suits tailored rather than ill fitting polyester off the rack but he didn’t avoid getting his hands dirty. He just put up with the discomfort that wrung a grimace out of him when he walked into the place every morning. He grunted faintly now, leaning back enough in his chair to make it creak. ”The groaning the air conditioning does every time it’s cranked below 90 degrees would probably have you doubting that,” he murmured. Sighing, he lifted a hand, ruffling it through the sable waves of his hair to push it back from his face. The place was a dump but for now it was his dump, a well worn bastion against the Hell outside.

His smile pinched as Tyler teased him. Her blue eyes had already dropped back down to the papers in front of her but her own smile lingered. Chagrin tugged at Jack’s own as he chuckled. ”I’d not say a word,” he promised. ”I like to think I’m far too well trained to ever tell a woman she looks anything other than stunning at all times.” It might’ve been hot air from the lips of some but as a man who’d always appreciated women in all forms, Jack could put his hand on his heart and swear he was being truthful. There was still only one he’d loved, although the divorce decree between them practically guaranteed that a comment like that would fall on deaf ears with Zoe.

He could already imagine the pinch of her lips, the hurt in her big brown eyes if she’d heard him talk to Tyler that way. It had taken her long enough to stop believing in his reputation when he’d first convinced her to give him a chance. This would likely be seen of evidence that he really wasn’t who she thought he was. The problem was that he wasn’t and really, truly, him having Tyler here to translate these documents for him was proof of it. Technically getting into bed with her now was him sinking deeper into it but Jack knew he owed the translator one, more than one. He chuckled lightly, teeth flashing as his brow’s hitched. ”That I may be able to afford,” he admitted. ”If this pays off how about we call the first payment a gourmet meal?” Restaurants were closed, stores were picked clean of the practically everything but over the years he’d become a dab hand in the kitchen anyway.

Thoughts of it, of surprising Zoe in bed with eggs benedict or spending a Sunday afternoon filling the kitchen with steam while she sat on the counter, watching him work. A genius with a knife, a failure as a husband. Zoe might have agreed with the statement that he, like every other man in the universe liked to think he was always right. She’d suffered through less of that in their marriage than she might’ve done but he still hadn’t been an angel. Perhaps that was something Tyler had already figured out.

Jack held her gaze as he admitted to her brilliance. She’d danced between the lines of his story and the document, figuring out that something was most certainly unofficial about it. He clucked his tongue, trying for hurt but probably failing as she chided him for underestimating her. ”Fool’s such a misleading word. Those I try to protect for their own good perhaps,” he admitted, his tone lighter than the matter of his words. Jack made a low sound in his voice, his brows hitching slightly. ”It’s something they would believe of me here. I’m sorry if it adds a little tarnish to your reputation.” Word might get around eventually, reaching Zoe’s ears with the sort of ease everything did in a station like this one.

Taking the pad of paper, Jack slipped it into a briefcase at his feet. He zipped it up, straightened up as she did. Blue eyes settled on her, waiting for her to say she was done, not willing to get any further into bed with him. Tyler kept him waiting for an answer too, grabbing her bag, smoothing down her dress and stepping out from behind her desk before she retrieved a card from him. ”I can almost guarantee I’ll be in touch,” he promised. There was always a use for skills such as hers. Will snagged his own coat from the back of his seat, folded it over one arm and slung his briefcase over the opposite shoulder. ”I think it’s time we both got out of here,” he agreed. ”There is a curfew after all.” He winked as he rounded the desk and offered his arm. They were both exempt from it of course, their lines of work offering the sort of protection few others got.

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