Page 33 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
They hurried to their son. “Are you alright?” Grace asked as she got to him first.
“I’m okay, Ma. You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Did anybody harm you, son?” Tommy asked.
“No sir,” TJ said, although the distress on his face was intense.
Tommy and Grace both saw it. “What’s wrong?” Grace asked him.
“Nothing’s wrong.” But his large eyes had terror in them as he looked at his parents. “It was just a tough place to be, that’s all.”
“You mean Juvenile Detention?”
“Yes sir.”
Tommy and Grace both pulled him into their arms and they held onto each other as a family. TJ laid his head on his father’s shoulder. His arm was hurting from the stitches and his heart was pounding. All he could think about was what they told him to do and how he was to do it. All he could think about was Destiny and her baby and how their lives were in his hands. And his parents and GG’s lives too. And his own life if he didn’t do exactly what they said.
And that stiffened his resolve. It was all on him now. He had to man up.
When they stopped embracing, TJ’s look changed from terror to determination. “I’m fine,” he said with an attempt at a smile. “Stop worrying. I was just shook up from being locked up. But I’m fine,” he said again.
He could say it until he was blue in the face, but Tommy and Grace could easily see that their son was a long way from fine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TWO DAYS LATER
Grace and Trina were forced to sit in chairs against the wall inside of Starbucks, the so-called command center, as they waited for word from the school. The chaotic shooting had stopped a few minutes earlier and Chief Browne had been on the phone ever since. But nobody would give them any information. It got so bad that Grace and Trina both decided they were leaving to find out for themselves what was going on. “They can’t make us stay here,” Trina proclaimed.
But they barely made it to the front door before an officer stopped them. “You have to stay inside,” he said.
“Not if we aren’t being arrested,” said Trina. “Which I know we aren’t.”
“Chief?” the officer yelled over to his commander.
Chief Browne was on the phone, but he held his hand over the receiver. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll tell you what’s going on in a minute.”
“Just tell me if my son is alright,” Grace said. “Please.”
The chief wasn’t supposed to divulge any such information. But he knew Tommy from way back, and he knew how his own wife would feel if it was their kid. “He’s unharmed,” the chief said. “He wasn’t hit at all. Now please have a seat. I’ll let you ladies know what’s happening in just a few minutes.”
Since they had no other option, they both sat back down.
Grace phoned GG, who had been picked up from school by her security detail and her nannies and had been taken home where she remained under tight security. The name of theshooter had been leaked to some members of the media and the press corps was already gathering outside of Tommy and Grace’s house. Grace had ordered the nannies to keep GG away from any phones or tablets or TVs or any other devices. Grace wanted to be the one to tell her.
She ended the call and waited. And waited even more. The promise by the chief to tell them what was happeningin just a few minutesstretched into nearly an hour as all kinds of police activity picked up, slowed down, and picked up again. And they still wouldn’t tell Grace anything.
But great relief washed over Grace when she saw Tommy and Reno walk through the door of that command center. She jumped up and ran to Tommy.Like he’s her daddy,Trina usually quipped whenever Grace ran to Tommy so dutifully. But this time Trina was so overwhelmed with emotions too, that she was running to Reno.
Tommy pulled Grace into his arms and fought back tears. He knew the toll it was taking on him, which meant it was taking double that on his sweet wife. He pulled back to get a look at her. She looked even more devastated than he had feared. “You still don’t know anything more?”
“Nothing. They said he wasn’t hurt, but that’s all I’ve heard. Chief Browne said he was going to tell us more in a minute, but that was like an hour ago.”
Tommy, who used to supervise Ron Browne when Tommy was a police captain with the very Seattle PD Browne now ran. And the idea that he would treat his wife that way, during a time like this, made him irate. He hurried over to the chief, but a young cop, who didn’t know Tommy’s long-ago stint with the SPD, got in between them to stop his progression.
Tommy looked at the young officer’s hand on his tailored suit, and then he looked at the young officer. That chilling look in Tommy’s deep-seated eyes caused the officer to remove hishand, but he didn’t remove his body between Tommy and his chief. The chief, seeing none of this, was on the phone.
