"Are you sure he wasn't greenlit? The Southern Front CIs could be trying to play both sides," Cortez said as she looked at Ben's weary but concentrated face through the window of the patient room.
The dull beeping sound of a steady heart rate monitor coming from behind the glass was all she got in response.
"Commander?"
Hicks shook his head, his gaze on Ben's face finally breaking.
"No, this is something else. One of the men was a County Sheriff. Miss Ellis already confirmed that he had stalked her during the day. Ben was there to pick her up and bring her to his home because of him."
"Any ideas?" Captain Cortez asked with furrowed brows.
"I doubt it is a coincidence. Midas and Ben have bad blood between them according to Sergeant Grey. He could have arranged something behind our backs, but his calls are monitored and nothing stood out to me. The stalking happened before Ben was at the prison, too. It was too soon," Hicks explained, his gaze ever so slightly hardened.
"What about the other attackers then?"
"One of the three assailants is an Armenian national. No known ties to any gangs, no criminal history… but that still makes it all point in one direction: the Derian crime family."
Cortez tilted her head, trying to remember any cases that Ben had worked against them. But she came up short.
"Why would they do that?"
Hicks released a deep sigh.
"Do you remember Erin Cole?"
"Of course, the rookie Ben takes with him from time to time," Jessica Cortez immediately answered. She had a very good impression of the young officer, especially after she volunteered to assist the SWAT team to get the injured security guards out of the way.
"She was recruited by Ruben Derian personally while she was in the academy. Ben linked a failed seizure to her accessing a file online and managed to build a case. Instead of bringing it to IA's attention immediately, he used a system failure to watch her body cam footage, weeks of it," Hicks said and briefly studied his phone. Still looking at it, he continued, "He deemed her worthy of saving and made her double-cross the Derians before she did anything she could not take back."
Erin Cole was already at SWAT HQ, Mumford and Rocker had just picked her up without her knowing why according to the message Hicks read.
He clarified after a moment of silence, "Ben convinced both Commander West and me that she was a fine officer who was blackmailed and never got a fair chance. He managed to turn her into an informant with no blemish on her record with West's approval and the two have been trying to find out who else is on the Derian's payroll because Ben was sure there would be more. Seeing as there is a dead sheriff among the otherwise Armenian-connected assailants, I'm inclined to believe he was spot on, as usual."
The two remained quiet until they were joined by Hondo and Luca.
"Any news?" Luca asked impatiently.
"Concussion and bruises, nothing major. We are still waiting on the results of the MRI they had him take. He just came back from it and is resting. Otherwise, one of the women he had in his car has a double rib hairline fracture in addition to the concussion. The other one is getting released with a sprained wrist. We organized protective custody until tomorrow," Cortez explained. "They wanted to observe him over night at the very least, but he insists on going home tonight. To not get cussed out, he offered to work from home for the rest of the week while he recuperates… in his words, 'he can't be taking another medical leave this soon. It's just paperwork to close the cases against the Southern Front anyway.'"
"Tough man," Hondo praised. "We could use his insights on all the investigations into the Front that are waiting to be closed with all the new evidence. Ben's got the skills."
"We solved cases before Ben was back on the force," Hicks chided, but it was clear he didn't really mean it. "He does have an eye for details, though. Especially with tons of data on a monitor."
Cortez gave her superior a short look but remained quiet. She liked Ben well enough, but she wasn't sure if maybe Hicks sometimes overdid it a little.
"What now? We're going after the Derians, right?" Luca asked.
The blonde SWAT officer already knew about the connection between the assailants and the crime family because he was one of the first on scene since he was still working and had heard Ben's distress call.
-----
A full two months later, Ben was sitting at his pool beneath the shade. He wasn't on duty today and enjoyed an empty house at the start of summer.
The dog had just left to sleep inside where it was cooler.
"What are you thinking about?" Sara asked as she got out of the pool after some leisure exercise and sat herself in Ben's lap, her back toward him. To tease him, she didn't towel down her wet body and wiggled into him, making his front just as wet as she was.
"It's finally the weekend and I have time for you," Ben replied and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull the redhead closer.
"For me? No late-night 'outings' with your colleagues? No 3C? No Anna? No Earthquakes where you need to go out and save everyone in the city? No latino parties that go until dawn the next day as you clean up all alone with your hot best friend?"
"Well, I will call my daughter to wish her a good night and good morning, but no. You have me for two whole days otherwise. Stokes got with one of the girls at the center and got himself roped into leading the self-defense class I could be teaching."
He quickly decided not to address the sore point of their first fight as a couple. If he didn't acknowledge it, they wouldn't get into yet another fight about his relationship with Chris.
Ben had called her beforehand to get permission and even allowed Sara to watch the recorded footage from his pool area after the party where the two had kissed under the instigation of Chris' drunk uncles. It wasn't like they had full-on made out, it was barely a peck to get those rowdy old men to stop teasing the SWAT officer about being single like Chris' family usually did during family events.
"And yet you still hang onto your phone with me quite literally throwing myself into your arms, almost naked," Sara whined as she turned her head and continued whispering into Ben's ears, "and wet."
Tearing his eyes from the article he was reading, Ben put the phone away and paid close attention to his girlfriend who thankfully didn't ruin the mood by continuing her talk about Chris.
She likely didn't because she didn't want Ben to bring up her ex Neal Caffrey again after the stunt the FBI consultant pulled last week during a charity gala they attended.
The two had the house for themselves. Anna and Emilia were in Liverpool visiting the last of Emilia's family for his once-lover's birthday. Zofia was with Alex, his ex-girlfriend's younger sister, to babysit Lily, his ex-girlfriend's adopted Vietnamese cousin.
And Sophia, Sara's assistant, who had taken a prolonged two weeks vacation at Ben's home after the attack two months ago, was off with Chris.
The two women somehow became casual sex buddies during the planning of the Quinceanera Ben had hosted at his home for Chris' family a little over a month ago.
Only Horatio remained, but the dog slept often and long during the day.
With all her work done and Ben saying he would spend his free time with her, Sara was determined to enjoy it to the fullest, without any petty arguments getting in the way just yet.
A few hours later, Ben was applying sunscreen to a very naked Sara. They had stayed outside to openly vent their lust without the fear of Anna barging in to show them a picture she had drawn or Zofia trying to do laundry with headphones on that prevented her from hearing that it wasn't appropriate to come inside.
"So, what do you want to eat?"
"Are you sure I don't need to help?"
Ben shook his head and gently intensified the massage he was giving while applying the lotion.
Hearing the pleased hum from her, the detective smiled and replied, "You deserve the break. Didn't you just close another seven figure deal for your bosses while having to suck up to that Saudi prince?"
"I do deserve to rest," Sara mumbled with a pleased smile. The incident with Neal that night was a mere fleeting annoyance in the back of their mind for now.
"So?" Ben asked again. "What will it be?"
"Something with carbs, you wore me out too much," she protested jokingly. "Otherwise, surprise me."
Pressing a kiss on her head and a soft slap on her bare ass, Ben walked into the kitchen and left her outside to sunbathe.
But as the detective was preparing the meal, Sara didn't stay idle and instead took the phone Ben had left on the side table before their little sex marathon at and in the pool had started.
She wasn't able to unlock the phone to her own dismay, but it still reassured her a little that her boyfriend wasn't the careless type. Trying to remember how the article he was reading looked, she got her own phone and started browsing the sites where Ben usually got his news from.
She quickly identified what he had been looking at.
'Three-way Gang war claims another dozen lives: Ruben Derian, 38, leader of the infamous 'Derian Crime' family, dies in house fire that claims twelve lives and leaves one in critical condition. Police suspect remnants of the Southern Front.'
Sara breathed a sigh of relief at the news, though it wasn't without an ounce of worry. The man who had ordered someone to ram into their car to kill Ben was gone. The man's younger brother had died almost two months ago and set off a gang war of epic proportions that Ben was explicitly asked to stay out of due to possible conflicts of interest.
For some reason unknown to her, the Derians suspected a notorious hitman from a local drug cartel to be the one to kill Serj Derian, the leader's younger brother. After a month of bloody conflicts, the Armenians began to target what was left of the Southern Front, who quickly retaliated.
When Captain Andersen came over two weeks after the assassination attempt they survived, she let slip that someone was fanning the flames behind the scenes. That someone was framing an innocent syndicate to get the Derians involved in an all-out war. And Ben let slip that the man behind the enemies of the Derians was Elijah Stone. Even Captain Andersen hadn't known that.
Ruben Derian's death seemingly concluded this worrying business.
But Sara was still worried anyway. When Andersen explained her 'framing' theory, her eyes were too intent on Ben. They had both noticed it immediately.
Ben could claim that he had a strong alibi for all the shootouts, arsons, and assassinations these past two months. Convincingly so. Maybe even too convincing to a paranoid mind.
At the beginning of all of this, some detective called Nick Armstrong came over to verify Ben's whereabouts after Serj's death and Ben hadn't left a single minute unaccounted for everytime another detective came by.
For the time of Serj Derian's death, Ben could offer proof that he was busy doing paperwork in his dad's study for almost an hour just before the man's death miles away. Camera footage at the house and timestamps on the police servers proved it. Ben had only been on a night run with Horatio that brought him back to the house before the murder.
Then, less than two weeks after that, Armstrong had been arrested for being part of the Derian Crime family. Rookie officer Erin Cole had finally 'closed the case' together with Commander West after Ben had to be excused with the shooting they were in.
And that marked the beginning of Ruben Derian's downfall. More and more people in his organization fell.
"Cops make the worst criminals to go after," Sara whispered with furrowed brows as she reached the end of the article.
She remembered Deacon had said that during a barbecue at the family man's home after Armstrong's arrest. Only a lucky find gave irrefutable proof of Armstrong's complicity after Ben wasn't allowed near the case.
Sara was glad that Ruben Derian was dead.
But one night, she woke up and Ben wasn't home. He claimed to have been on a night run because he couldn't sleep.
Again.
It wasn't the only time he did that, Zofia and Emilia had both told Sara that he would sometimes go on runs at the weirdest of times.
Still, something had always felt wrong about that. Even if there were no reported deaths that night.
Closing the news app and her eyes, Sara sighed and let the matter rest.
Ben was too good a boyfriend. She couldn't think about him being the boogeyman of the criminal underworld. Potentially. She shouldn't complicate things… but she had already been with one criminal.
She didn't mind it because Neal had a certain code he abided by. Something that made her sure that he wouldn't do something she would find unacceptable.
The more she thought about it, the more torn she was about bringing up her fears with Ben. It would be a defining moment in their relationship.
Drifting off between unease and total physical relaxation, the sun on her skin suddenly cooled off.
"Do you want a robe or are you going to eat naked and give me a feast as payment for cooking?" Ben asked as he adjusted the parasol above her to give Sara some shade.
"You sneak around like a ninja, I didn't even hear you," the redhead lightly complained.
"If it pleases you, I could stomp around like a buffoon?" Ben mockingly asked and tossed the robe over Sara to walk back inside and get their food.
While eating, Sara's eyes more often than not remained on Ben's face, lost in thought.
When he couldn't take it anymore, he asked, "Penny for your thoughts?"
"Did you kill Ruben Derian for what he did to us?" Sara's mouth worked before her brain did. She immediately wanted to take the question back.
He could tell her he did and reveal that he was a killer. A criminal vigilante.
Or he could lie, and somehow that would be worse.
Or somehow, she made it all up and Ben wasn't what she thought he was after all?
Maybe he really wasn't involved, but Sara had convinced herself that that wasn't true as she stewed in the scorching summer sun, her mind a maze of worry, apprehension and wild fantasies.
Ben stayed quiet for a while. His eyes were narrowed in thought.
With Haley, he kept everything bottled up and only opened up to a stranger, one of the lawyers at that firm he was at in New York, the one opposite of Castle's extra apartment he crashed after the bombing. That hadn't worked out very well for him.
With Sara… things were going very smoothly. Both of them were head over heels for each other - they both thought so. Even Anna came around and grew to cherish their new house guest.
"Ruben Derian deserved death," he replied, evading a direct answer. He decided to toe the line first without describing everything he did in the past few weeks that wasn't entirely legal or downright criminal.
Sara quickly judged that he wasn't done talking when she saw the look in his eyes. And the decision to potentially confirm something as drastic as being a police detective vigilante… Sara could acknowledge that it would need some time to think about.
"He sent someone after you to make sure he would get to me," Ben further explained but stalled again to take a sip of water. "We weren't even technically together yet and he still used you. Or, well, tried to."
Sara couldn't hear any of the anger she thought she would when he reached that point. What she heard was a hint of helplessness and a good amount of possibly righteous indignation.
"So yes. I made sure he died," Ben admitted before his expression turned confused. "But I did not burn his place down and kill the others. And I don't think the remaining Southern Front did, either. I'm actually a little confused about what happened last night."
"Huh," Sara replied with a mere sound, seemingly satisfied with the answer. She just continued eating without comment after a calming breath.
Ben didn't quite know what to do with himself at that moment. Her response was too nonchalant. The detective, for all his ability to read people, situations, and circumstances had no idea what to do now after seeing no outward praise, disgust, or anything in between.
"Get in the shower when you're done eating," Sara eventually said once she was finished with her meal and stood up.
Walking inside the house, she allowed the thin robe covering her to fall to the floor - hoping she could get Ben hard again despite their already vigorous love making only an hour before.
Things did seem to remain good between them, Ben judged and gulped down the last of his food.
He ran inside the house, not just because he was horny. But because he feared her acceptance of his actions was fleeting.
And frankly, the truth was much more complicated than Ben simply having pulled the trigger of a gun.
-----
[Flashback]
[3 days after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
Ben was out jogging with his dog, Horatio. The retired K9 had hip problems, but the vet had assured the detective that constant movement was good for him, and Horatio seemed to enjoy the pace. It was slower than usual because Ben was still pretty banged up from the car crash and subsequent fight. His ribs stung. His head still hurt on occasion.
Eventually, the two left the trail they were on and ran through the underbrush. Horatio became playful as he sniffed all the new smells and felt his new owner's emotions, and Ben had to laugh when his dog began to zoom around like an excitable puppy out on his first walk. It was a surprisingly quick process to train the dog to be more playful and less 'stiff' for the lack of a better word.
Horatio was supposed to guard Anna, and Anna needed a friend more than a rigid police dog that didn't know how to play fetch with a small child.
"Come on now, almost there," Ben praised indulgently as he jumped over another tree and landed in the dry leaves covering the forest ground.
The dog followed, though a little shakily because jumping wasn't his forte anymore. Jumping was a young dog's game. As Ben helped his dog down from the trunk because he wasn't sure if Horatio would stick the landing, he scanned his surroundings.
Nobody was there.
"You'll keep quiet about this, right?" Ben asked his dog a few steps later as he pushed away a hollowed out stone that still weighed quite a bit and took some effort to roll away.
It had been a lucky find during his time in the White Front.
He got a woof in response as Horatio sat on his hindlegs and watched his owner.
With a sigh, he took out a water bottle from his backpack and prepared a drink for the canine, "Give me a minute and then we'll head back."
As the dog was happily lapping up the water, Ben got to work.
Below the stone slab in a small hole in the hill, three wooden crates laid well hidden from view and sheltered from rain. Pulling away a waterproof camouflage tarp and opening the longest of the three crates after pulling it out, Ben found what he came here to find.
A Barrett M82 sniper rifle. Filed off serial number. Custom replacement barrel with no shots ever found and registered in any known database because he only shot one magazine into a test target near the shore on open sea to test the barrel.
Something that he had purposefully 'disappeared' from Kraft's stock long ago in case he ever needed it. Not exactly for situations like he found himself in now… but it was close enough.
"Fuck you, Ruben Derian," Ben whispered to himself, his gaze slowly steeling.
Disassembling the weapon so it would fit in his hiking backpack, Ben eventually made his way back to the hiking trail.
-----
[5 days after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
'2:03AM,' Ben noticed as he looked at his watch. 'I'm a little late.'
The watch was the only thing on him that was powered by a battery. Everything else had been ditched with Horatio keeping a lookout on a trail near Ben's home. The dog had been instructed to walk in circles between the hiding spot and Ben's home to fool potential tracking methods he had overlooked - though his work phone was at home and his private mobile phone that was with Horatio had even the data turned off allowing only emergency calls.
Leaning back down to look through the scope, Ben watched Serj Derian in his high-end apartment somewhere in the south of Beverly Hills.
It wasn't too far away from Ben's home. Around seven miles.
With his mile time being somewhere around five and a half minutes for such distances, Ben cleared it in less than forty minutes.
He had dropped the weapon here the day before during a bike ride where he purposefully messed with his phone's GPS to ensure that nobody would ever know he had stopped for five minutes to hide the weapon in a tree.
"Two hookers, huh?" Ben whispered to himself as he watched Ruben's brother slap around two women. The girls looked fed up but still gave the man sweet smiles whenever he looked at them.
Another look through the spotting scope confirmed: 852 meters. A little over half a mile.
The shot was doable.
The rifle was silenced, though it wasn't a full suppression. He still needed to bolt immediately, even if there was nobody close to him in the small clearing.
Wiping away the last of the sweat on his forehead, Ben took another deep breath and readied the shot that would change his life forever.
Not once as an active police officer had he taken matters into his own hands like this.
It wasn't like the time he purposefully shot those rapists in the dick during the raid in New York where Irina was freed and ultimately still died. It wasn't like the time where he helped Bruna start a new life after the NYPD freed her from captivity by stealing some illegal funds from the man who owned her before.
More or less unprovoked, he was about to commit a crime fully premeditated.
A cold shiver ran down his spine when Ben thought about that.
But he had already firmed his mind since the crash. Even with the identity of the assailants linked to Ruben Derian, they couldn't arrest and fold up the entire Derian Crime family due to insufficient evidence. And even though it was unlikely that they would go under completely unpunished, justice was too slow for Ben in this case.
They had tried to murder him or abduct Sara.
"Fuck you," Ben once more whispered.
Cursing not only Ruben for forcing his hands into choosing these actions, but also himself.
For failing to live up to the standards set by his charitable, good-natured mother. For failing to live up to the trust of the people he respected like Sergeant Grey and Commander Hicks.
He could have stopped at any time.
He could have never set foot near the hiding place of those weapons he stashed away.
He could have chosen not to find out where Serj would be and hide the rifle nearby.
He could have stayed in bed with his gorgeous girlfriend instead of running through the night like a criminal while purposefully leaving no digital trace by leaving his phone behind, messing up facial and gait recognition after mapping out all the cameras in the area.
Through the scope, Ben saw Serj backhand one of the prostitutes on the man's balcony as they partied. The detective already knew what kind of person Serj Derian was.
A lowlife with no regards for the law or other human beings. A misogynistic waste who at more than one point assaulted women to make himself feel more powerful. From his investigations into the man, Serj had never crossed a certain threshold. Not that Ben could prove anyway. He didn't exactly fit the bill of someone Ben thought should just die like the human traffickers he met during his time in the White Front.
But fate seemingly forced his hand, or so Ben believed.
The girl Serj slapped was now on the floor, the other one hid inside on the pretense of getting something. New drinks, freshening up in the bathroom. Ben couldn't read lips through the scope even with its powerful magnification.
After a last check if the wind conditions changed, Ben put his finger on the trigger and exhaled.
Gently pulling it, Ben calmly absorbed the recoil and put away the spent bullet case without breaking his gaze at the intended target.
Ben had already planted evidence near the tree, leaving the bullet behind would be an amateurish mistake that would make the frame job too obvious.
Because of the distance, it took two seconds before the bullet arrived at its target.
To Ben, it felt much longer than that even though he knew his shot was perfect.
And it was, the bullet tore through Serj's body, an inch above his navel that Ben had aimed at, and ripped a hole into the man's torso. The detective didn't aim at anything immediately vital like the head, the heart or the lungs on purpose.
There was a chance that Serj would live. There was a chance that he would bleed out horribly within seconds. There was a chance that Serj would die an agonizing death in minutes as the stomach acid filled the wound.
Every outcome was part of Ben's plan. Or, well, plans.
But Ben didn't wait around to see which outcome he would have to work with in the upcoming days.
He immediately jumped down from the tree, packed up the rifle and ran past a camera he knew about before disappearing into an alley and running into another direction to give the illusion of having vanished from anything the police would be able to track.
A few miles later, he stashed away the gun in a locker where he had purposefully disabled the camera so it wouldn't record him in disguise - one he exchanged for the second time since the shot.
Near Brentwood, he found Horatio guarding his small backpack and checked his phone.
"Anything to report?" He quietly asked and earned himself a quiet woof from the dog that had waited for him for over an hour.
He picked up a camera he had hidden near the dog to see if he had anything to explain later after checking its feed. Then he checked a burner phone to see if there were any issues with his alibi as he put on the jacket he originally left his house with.
With a script, Ben had remotely logged onto his work laptop and filed paperwork with the appropriate time spacing. To anybody checking the logs, it would look like Ben hadn't been able to sleep and had decided to work on some left-over case files.
It worked out fine, though he would have to check it again once he was at the laptop.
Sticking to the shadows, Ben avoided the security in the gated community where he lived with practiced ease, boldly walked onto his own property with Horatio in tow and began the rest of his scheme.
Meddling with the security footage of his own property. Double-checking his alibi. Listening to the police radio to see what was reported about the Serj Derian shooting. Checking if Sara was still asleep.
Hearing about the stepped out cigarette near the scene of where Ben took the shot from one of the patrol officers canvassing the area, the detective finally relaxed and walked into the shower before joining Sara in the bed again.
-----
[7 days after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
Ben was still on a work-from-home schedule to recuperate.
The detective stood in his drive-way and saw Detective Armstrong drive off with narrowed eyes and took out his phone to call IA Commander Percy West.
"Detective Nick Armstrong is on the Derian payroll," Ben said without waiting for a greeting or offering his own.
"*How sure are you?*" West asked instead of insisting on the needed formalities he would observe with his own squad.
"100%. First, he came to my home after an hour-long drive during night shift for the Jeffrey Baptiste homicide. Then he tried to access my personal records without a warrant, though he was smart about it. After the attack on me and the two women in my car, he tried to subtly talk a patrol officer into messing up procedure which could have made any evidence we found at the Derian family's dealership inadmissible. It seemed like an honest mistake for a rookie, not a ten year veteran. And just now his questioning into the Serj Derian shooting cannot be construed as anything other than him trying to see if I was responsible so that Ruben Derian could call open season on me."
The proof that he wasn't anywhere near the shot was airtight. Serj Derian was killed at 2:05AM. Ben had left his house at 1:08AM for a night run with his dog, but according to the footage he provided, the detective came back at 1:41AM and began logging paperwork at 1:47AM up until 2:02AM.
Nick Armstrong was given absolutely no reason to believe that Ben was the culprit through any avenue of investigation. In fact, Ben even provided evidence that him working during the night wasn't a one-time thing that week just to be thorough.
"*Detective Weiss, Hicks and I pulled you off the case for a reason. Your insights into Erin Cole and the original building of the case allowed us to get a foot in the door, but anything gained through your hand now will color everything we present to a judge as a personal vendetta. We need to argue that Ruben Derian tried to have you killed with three hitmen set on you, your significant other and her assistant. We can't do that when you are the one to gather all the evidence following this failed assassination attempt.*"
"I know, which is why I am telling you. Nick Armstrong is dirty, I know it for a fact. Do what you need to do to get a warrant on the man and book him before searching his home. Do it fast before he gets any wiser," Ben calmly ordered as the man's car vanished behind a bend.
Ben turned around and saw his dog sitting nearby at attention.
"Even my dog didn't like the man," he whispered, heard Commander scoff in disbelief on the other end of the line and hung up after wishing the decorated officer a nice day.
"Come on, Horatio. Time for a good wash. You stink," Ben called out and the dog happily skipped over, bouncing on his front paws.
During the summer heat, Horatio was happy to get wet - especially whenever Anna joined and played around with him.
It hadn't even been two weeks, Ben hadn't washed the dog more than twice, and yet Horatio already knew the words.
Horatio was quite smart, Ben judged with a grin.
What a good boy.