The Oceans Call

|28| Moving Foward

"I told you." I say to josh. "Good job kid. You're almost done. We will be there in a minute." 

"Swat. Move in. Slowly and quietly. He's got a weapon." Josh says into his walkie. We load our weapons and put our vests on and step out of the van. Swat pulls up and we all quietly move into the house and around to get to the back yard. 

"JOSEPH CALIBRAN! HANDS IN THE AIR!" I yell as swat moves in around him. 

"YOU SAID I COULD TRUST YOU!" Joseph says pulling the gun out and pointing it at Luke. Luke doesn't say anything. He just stands in front of the gun, trembling in fear. 

"DAD, DON'T!" Joseph's son yells out.

"PUT THE GUN DOWN! IT'S OVER!" Josh says with his gun pointed towards Joseph. 

"YOU! YOU SET ME UP!" He says pointing the gun towards his son.

"No...dad. No I didn't. I didn't know about any of this. Please...please don't do this."

"You're a traitor to this family. You are not a son to me!" Before we knew it, Joseph fires his gun, shooting and killing his own son.

"NO!" Luke screams, running towards the son. Before Joseph could make another move, the swat sniper takes him out. Everything starts to move in slow motion. I watch as swat moves in and pulls Luke away from the son, who lays lifeless on the lawn. Josh runs towards Joseph to make sure he's really dead. Everything went the other way of what it was supposed too.

*CURRENT DAY*
STEVE'S POV

"What did you find?" I ask Danny.

"Alright, so it looks like on Brooklyn's last assignment, her and her partner were trying to get enough evidence on a Joseph Calibran. He was the main suspect in quite a few homicides and one of the biggest coke dealers western part of the states. It says here that Brooklyna and her partner, Josh, recruited a kid to go undercover to get him to confess."

"What ties did this kid have to Joseph?"

"Let's see...okay, it says in the case notes, Luke was close friends with Joseph's son, Peter Calibran." Danny pauses.

"What?"

"It looks like Peter was killed."

"So what, you think it's Joseph who's come after Brooklyn? Revenge?"

"I mean that would make sense. Other than one, Joseph is the one who pulled the trigger and killed his son. And moments later he was taken out by the sniper team."

"The man killed his own son?"

"I guess Joseph was yelling that his own son betrayed him and he wasn't a son to him anymore." I just take a deep breath, trying to take all this in. 

"Okay, so that clearly can't be it. I mean is it  maybe a relative of Peter's that is out for revenge?"

"I don't think so. It says that the kid she had undercover's name is Luke Harper."

"Harper? Anthony Harper. What happened to Luke?"

"Well, it says that he was fine...well as fine as can be after the whole thing went down." Danny kept reading through the notes. What? So the father is mad about her putting his son undercover in a dangerous situation? Why now? "Alright, here we go. The night after it all happened, Brooklyn and Josh took Luke back to a diner to talk about everything that happened. They all came to an agreement that Luke of course couldn't tell anyone about it...his father came to pick him up. Luke walked outside to get into his father's car, but before he even got two steps outside of the diner...he was shot and killed."

"Oh my god." I say, reading the notes that were up on the screen. "So, Anthony witnessed the murder of his son."

"And now he's out for revenge."

"I got a hit on the rental car." Chin says coming out of his office. 

"Send it to our phones. Let's go. Danny get HPD to meet us there."

"On it." Danny says as we all run down to our cars. 

*BROOKLYN'S POV*

"Really? You're not the reason my son was killed?! You put him undercover on a dangerous operation! You put an 18 year old kid ON A DANGEROUS OPERATION!"

"Mr. Harper...I- I'm sorry."

"Yeah, so am I." We pull into an abandoned parking lot and he turns the car off.

"What are we doing here?"

"You're gonna pay for what you did."

"Anthony, we can talk about this."

"Really? What do you want to talk about? You wanna tell me again how it's not your fault that my only son is dead? You wanna tell me it's not your fault that I saw my son die, in front of me? Huh? You wanna talk about that?" I just stay quiet. Trying to hold back the tears that are forming in my eyes. "That's what I thought." He grabs the gun from the center console and gets out of the car. He opens the back door and looks at me. "Out."

"Anthony. Think about what you're doing." I say as I get out of the car. "I understand how you are feeling. You think this is all my fault, and honestly at this point, I don't blame you and I'm not gonna stop you from feeling that way. But if you do this, you are going to have to live with it for the rest of your life. I already have to live with that. With the feeling that because of me, your son is gone. That I let an amazing, bright, and smart kid die. That I took something from you I can never fix. If you do this, you are going to have to live with that."

"No, I'm not."

"What are you talking about?"

"After this, I have nothing to live for. My son is dead, my wife left me, none of my family talks to me anymore. They said I've become to paranoid about the whole thing. It has taken over my life. And they're not wrong. This, this moment right here, this is what the past year and a half of my life has led up to. Making things right."

"This is not making things right. This is just doing what I did to you. You are going to be taking a member of someone's family away from them. For what, some revenge?"

"THIS IS NOT JUST FOR REVENGE! THIS IS TO MAKE EVERYTHING RIGHT! YOU TOOK SOMETHING FROM MY FAMILY, SO NOW I'M GONNA TAKE SOMETHING FROM YOURS!"

"Really? This is really how you want to do it? Just think about what you're doing."

"This is all  I have been thinking of doing since I found out that it was you who made this all happen." Before he could get another word in, we hear tires screeching from the road. He gets distracted and turns around to look. Without hesitation, I kick his knee in, causing him to fall. I grab the gun from his hand as he tried to point it up at me. I point it down at him until the cars arrive. I look up and recognize Steve's truck. I sigh in relief. Knowing this is all over. Everything. Having to look behind my shoulder. Worrying about this happening. Not being able to sleep at night, thinking he could find me at any moment. All of it. Everything starts to blur around me as I get lost in my own thoughts. Every single thing I worry about on a daily basis, it's all done. I hear mumbling and I start to come back to reality.

"BROOKLYN!" Steve yells as he runs over to me. I realize I still have the gun pointed down at Anthony. I drop the gun and look up at Steve.

"Steve." I say with the rest of the energy I have left in me. He wraps his arms around me and I feel myself lose all control over my legs and I fall into him and cry. He brings me in closer and kisses the top of my head. 

"It's all over. You're safe now." His words vibrate through me. I couldn't help but continue to cry. All of the emotions have taken over me. The relief, the pain, the sadness, the guilt. All of it...