Love Against the Law

by Justine Klavon

  “You called him?” Mack asked, raising both eyebrows at Sammi. He sounded amused instead of angry.

  “Kodi’s busy,” Sammi shrugged, defending her actions.

  “Go ahead,” Mack said and nodded in Eli’s direction.

  “What?” Sammi asked, confused, and not taking her eyes off her husband.

  “Go hang out with your friend. I’m going to go back inside and talk to Dr. Brock about not clearing you for the job,” Mack explained calmly as Sammi watched his face for an inkling of whether he was serious or not.

  “No, hon, you can’t get involved,” Sammi told him. “I can’t have Hobbs coming after you too. I’ll go back to work, at least for a little while.”

  Mack nodded his understanding as he moved his arm up to Sammi’s shoulders and pulled her to him in half a hug. He kissed her then stood up before helping his wife up. They both turned to look at Eli who hadn’t said a word the entire time he stood before them.

  “Do you want to join us for some dessert?” Mack kindly asked Eli.

  Eli just shrugged his shoulders and followed Mack and Sammi through the front door and into the house.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Better Than Me

  Sammi returned to the precinct the following week holding a lot of resentment toward Hobbs. It hurt her more to feel betrayed by him because she had truly liked him as a person and appreciated their ability to be open with each other. Now she had no desire to talk to him at all and was sad about losing an ally.

  Being stuck at her desk to make phone calls and take care of paperwork didn’t help Sammi’s gloomy mood. She got bored quickly with office work and knew with all her heart that she was never meant to spend her life behind a desk. If she had to be a cop, instead of a thief like she wanted to be, she wanted to at least be out doing the job for real instead of playing pretend behind a desk.

  On her second day back, Howard surprised his friend by showing up in the squad room to see Sammi. It was about lunchtime and everyone else was out on a case so Sammi knew that nobody would mind if she went out for lunch. She and Howard ended up at a fast food joint in walking distance from the precinct and Sammi shot a quick text message to Mack to let him know where she had gone.

  “I came by to see you last week and your Sergeant told me what happened,” Howard said as he and Sammi sat down with their terrible meal choices.

  “How dramatic was he?” Sammi asked, digging into her French fries as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Well, it definitely didn’t sound like you would be back this soon,” Howard told her. “And you’re sure it was Shay?”

  “Howard, she looked me in the eyes before leaving me to bleed out on my own front porch,” Sammi explained, dropping a chicken nugget to get serious. “It was Shay.”

  “Then how did you survive?”

  “Uh, believe it or not, Eli found me.”

  “Wait. Eli’s back?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t know about our plans to put a team together again. He’s just a good friend right now.”

  As the conversation steered toward the team, Sammi vaguely explained her dilemma with leaving her current position. Howard was understanding toward the predicament and admitted he was a little hesitant about breaking the law again. Sammi just smiled at him, glad that he was still the good person she had always known him to be.

  Howard and Sammi finished their lunch before Howard walked Sammi back up to the squad room. They exchanged numbers so they could stay in touch more easily, then Howard went on his way and Sammi got back to the work that she hated.

  *

  Two weeks later, Sammi’s wounds were almost healed, but she hadn’t been cleared by her doctor yet to return to full duty. She was going stir crazy in the squad room and spending most of her workdays contemplating how to get fired by going around Hobbs. But she knew she would only embarrass Mack if she got fired and she also knew she wasn’t physically ready to be reliable enough for a heist.

  As Sammi got ready to head home with her husband at the end of the day that Friday, Captain Hobbs came out of his office and approached Sammi’s desk. Sammi was already standing, wanting to leave as quickly as possible, but Hobbs motioned for her to sit down as he pulled up a chair to take a seat himself on the opposite side of the desk. Rolling her eyes, Sammi sat in her chair and leaned back in it to casually show her indifference to her boss.

  “How much longer until your doctor clears you to get back out there doing your job?” Hobbs asked, straining to sound kind.

  “He hasn’t said. But he’s dating my best friend so I’m sure I could force an all-clear out of him if you wanted to blackmail him too,” Sammi shot at Hobbs.

  Hobbs looked down at Sammi indignantly. He stood up without another word and disappeared back into his office.

  “What was that about?” Mack asked, appearing in front of Sammi’s desk and glancing back in the direction Hobbs had gone.

  “He was looking for drama, so I gave him some,” Sammi told her husband, getting up from behind the desk. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Mack put his arm around Sammi as she came around the desk and they walked out of the building together. Sammi leaned into him, sensing his discomfort about her situation with Hobbs. They hadn’t talked too much about it, but Sammi knew that Mack would help her out of this if she would let him, and that was all that mattered to her.

  “Hobbs has got to be retiring soon,” Mack assured his wife during their long drive home. “And when I’m Captain, I will burn your file myself.”

  *

  By the middle of the following week, Dr. Brock finally cleared Sammi to be on full duty in the Homicide unit. She and Mazzeline caught their very first case together the next morning and headed out to a rundown apartment building to investigate the murder of a twenty-four-year-old male career criminal who had been shot down just inside his apartment door. Sammi, knowing that she was better with people than Mazzeline, sent him to the crime scene while she conducted interviews with potential witnesses.

  While Sammi spoke to the owner of the apartment building, she asked if there had been any complaints or disturbances lately. The middle-aged Italian man recalled nothing and admitted that things had been significantly quieter in the building over the past two years since Frank Nardino stopped coming around. Sammi hadn’t heard that name in over a year and it immediately piqued her interest, which she mentioned to Mazzeline as they met back up a short while later in front of the building.

  “So, wait, who is this Nardino guy?” Mazzeline asked after he and Sammi were in his car and Sammi had told him about her interviews.

  “He was like a crime boss or something,” Sammi told him. “Mack had to deal with him a lot until he killed him three years ago.”

  “Well, if he’s dead, how is he relevant to our case?” Mazzeline replied, not rudely, but definitely challenging his partner.

  “I don’t know exactly, but our victim was a criminal and Nardino was a crime boss who frequented his building, so I’d be willing to bet the two knew each other,” Sammi defended her suspicions. “I want to question some of Nardino’s old so-called business partners.”

  Back at the squad room, Sammi immediately logged into a computer to begin research on Nardino’s old accomplices. She compiled a list of about a dozen names and split them with Mazzeline so they could each make some phone calls just to see if any of them knew of their victim. Every last one of them confirmed that the victim had worked with Nardino and had unsuccessfully tried to move into Nardino’s leadership position upon Nardino’s demise.

  Mazzeline and Sammi spent the rest of that day and all of the next making phone calls and home visits to confirm alibis for their handful of suspects. Everyone had a solid alibi and no obvious motives, but their strong feelings of dislike toward the victim let the detectives know they were on the right track.

  “How are you already better at this than I am?” Mazzeline asked at the end of the second day. Sammi just shrugged her shoulders beca
use she couldn’t exactly tell him about her experience on the other side of the law.

  Both detectives had the weekend off, so they returned to the case that Monday. By then, their evidence had been processed so they headed to the crime lab to get more information. The only evidence that proved to be any help was the bullet recovered from the victim’s body. As soon as they knew it was from a Beretta 92, Sammi didn’t need to run it through the database to know it was going to match one of the bullets from her own case.

  “Dammit, it’s Shay,” Sammi mumbled as she and Mazzeline left the lab.

  “Who?” Mazzeline asked, seriously confused.

  “Uh, Shay Krik is actually who shot me. The bullet from my side is going to match the one from our victim,” Sammi explained somewhat nervously.

  “If that’s true, Hobbs is going to have to take you off this case.”

  “That’s fine. But good luck finding her because my local precinct has been after her for over a month now.”

  When they got back to the squad room, they referred to the database to get proof that their case was linked to Sammi’s case in Long Island. Then the both of them took the connected evidence and went into their Captain’s office to reveal their findings. Hobbs took his time looking everything over, expressing his disbelief that the two cases could be tied together.

  “Looks like you’re riding the desk again,” Hobbs said smartly to Sammi once he was satisfied that a mistake had not been made.

  “Of course,” Sammi grumbled as she let Mazzeline leave the office first so she could slam the door shut behind them.

  Sammi walked to her desk in the back corner, not paying attention to where her partner went. She sat down, throwing her arms onto the desk and her head down onto her arms. With a heavy sigh, she made herself comfortable and hoped she could fall asleep before anyone bothered her.

  “What’s going on?” Mack asked curiously only a second later. Sammi picked her head up to see that Mack had come around her desk and stood next to her.

  “Conflict of interest,” Sammi stated coldly. “Shay’s our main suspect.”

  “Man, you really can’t shake that psycho,” Mack said jokingly, trying to get his wife to laugh.

  “You should’ve killed her when you had the chance.”

  Sammi pushed her chair back and got up without looking at her husband. She walked across the squad room and headed downstairs for the front door. Her thoughts were empty as she exited the building and wandered the streets of New York.

  As Sammi walked along with no destination, her cellphone rang several times. She didn’t need to look at it to know it was Mack calling her. But he needed to trust her while she took some space from this job that was not working in her favor. She just needed to feel like she could breathe again, free from their controlling boss and free from all the Shay drama.

  Sammi ended up on a familiar block and was convinced that the universe brought her there for a reason. She walked up to the sad-looking brick apartment building that looked worse than it had three years ago and let herself into the unsecured lobby. It had been two years so her old apartment had to have new tenants. But as she looked at the wall of mailboxes, the little white card with “Krik” scribbled across it with the heart above the “i” that she had added was still in their slot.

  “Samantha?” came a soft male voice from behind Sammi. Sammi jumped a little from fright, not expecting to run into anybody she knew.

  “Oh, Mr. Cleary, you startled me,” Sammi said, putting her hand over her pounding heart as she turned to face her old landlord.

  “My apologies, Miss. It’s been a few days since Eli’s been by for the mail,” Mr. Cleary told her. “Did you need the spare key?”

  “Uh, Eli still rents the apartment?” Sammi asked, confused.

  “Yeah, he doesn’t live here, though. He just sends a check every month and usually collects his mail in a timely manner,” the landlord explained.

  “Do you mind if I go check out the old place?”

  “Sure thing. Follow me and I’ll let you in. Your name’s still on the lease.”

  Sammi followed Mr. Cleary up to the fourth-floor apartment where he unlocked the door before leaving her in privacy. He just asked her to let him know when she left so he could lock up after her. Sammi waited until the landlord was out of sight before taking a deep breath and entering the place that she had begun to feel only existed in her memories.

  Nothing had changed in the tiny apartment and it looked like just the day before she had been by to collect her things. Sammi opened the refrigerator and cringed at her expired energy drinks and the rotting smell of three-year-old Chinese food leftovers. It took her a second to remember when the leftovers were from, but her heart sank as she realized the whole team had been over for dinner the night before their mall heist. It had been a little tradition of theirs to have Chinese takeout before a robbery and they had all been so happy that particular night. Everything had been going so smoothly back then—life would’ve been perfect if it hadn’t been for Eli’s temper. Hell, Mack only got involved in Sammi’s life because of Eli’s temper.

  Sammi closed the fridge as she had to blink back tears. She loved Mack with her entire heart, but she missed this life. She missed the thrill of the job, she missed the closeness with her friends, and she missed the comfort of knowing that she was exactly where she belonged.

  Embracing the nostalgia, Sammi walked out of the kitchen and over to the living room where she sat on the old couch. She brushed the dust off of Eli’s New York Giants blanket that they had always kept draped over the back of the couch and pulled it down to wrap around herself. Pulling her legs up to her chest, she rested her head on her knees and wondered if she was ever going to get to be a thief again.

  “Whoa, talk about a trip down memory lane,” Sammi heard from the doorway to the apartment which was behind the couch. There was no mistaking that deep but playful voice for anyone but Eli.

  “What are you doing here?” Sammi asked her ex, poking her head over the back of the couch. She wasn’t even really that surprised to see Eli.

  “I came by to pick up the mail and Cleary told me you were up here,” Eli explained as he walked slowly over to the couch.

  “Why do you even still have this place?”

  “Honestly, just for a permanent address. But what brought you here? Aren’t you working?”

  “I had to get out of there and I just ended up here.”

  Sammi made room for Eli on the couch and he took a seat on the side opposite from her. They sat in silence for a bit, letting the memories come to them at an almost overwhelming rate. Before either of them could think of anything to say, Sammi’s radio went off on her belt. It was Hobbs calling her back to the station house.

  “I really hate him,” Sammi grumbled, standing up from the couch with the blanket still draped over her shoulders.

  “You know you could use this place if you ever just need to get away,” Eli offered, not budging from where he sat.

  “Thank you, but I’ll be okay,” Sammi told him with a smile. Then she took the blanket from her shoulders and wrapped it around Eli before planting a quick kiss on his nose. “Tell Cleary I trusted you to lock up.”

  Sammi felt better as she left the apartment and didn’t feel as suffocated when she thought about returning to work. She was still partly lost in memories and looking at the ground as she walked out the front door of the building and didn’t notice the woman standing directly in her path with her back to her.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sammi apologized, seeing the lady at the last second before bumping into her.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” the woman replied with attitude as she turned around to face Sammi.

  “No,” Sammi whispered as her jaw dropped.

  “How are you still alive?” Shay asked, drawing her handgun from her waistband, and aiming it at Sammi’s face.

  “Shay, you have got to stop this!” Eli yelled as he appeared from inside the buildi
ng. Sammi knew that he was trying to reason with Shay so she wouldn’t get shot herself, but Sammi also knew that there was no reasoning with Shay.

  Removing her service pistol from her holster, Sammi aimed it directly at Shay’s heart. Her head was spinning as she thought about how she was trained to disarm a suspect when possible and to avoid lethal shots at all costs, but also about how this suspect wanted her dead and that taking her out once and for all was the only way to put a stop to this.

  “Eli, go back inside. Call nine-one-one and report an officer-involved shooting,” Sammi said firmly without taking her eyes off Shay.

  “Shay, please!” Eli begged his sister, ignoring Sammi. Sammi could hear the desperation in his voice and as badly as she wanted to be rid of Shay, she didn’t want to hurt Eli.

  “Listen to the cop, brother,” Shay replied with a snarl and a quick side glance at Eli.

  That very brief sideways look was long enough for Sammi to lunge forward and tackle Shay down to the sidewalk. Shay had kept ahold of her gun so Sammi grabbed that arm and slammed it into the concrete sidewalk several times until Shay was forced to release the weapon. Then, keeping hold of Shay’s arm, Sammi rolled Shay over onto her stomach and patted her down to check for additional weapons.

  “Packing light today, huh?” Sammi asked after not finding anything else on the suspect.

  “I wasn’t expecting to run into you,” Shay grunted as Sammi drove her knee into the center of Shay’s back to keep her still while she handcuffed her wrists behind her back. Keeping her body weight on top of Shay, Sammi took her radio off her belt to call in the arrest and request backup.

  “Why’d you kill that common thug in his apartment?” Sammi asked as she picked Shay up off the ground while waiting for her backup.

  “You didn’t leave me any other choice,” Shay spat at her. “Without the team, I needed to make a living and Nardino’s empire was there for the taking.”

  Sammi shook her head at Shay as a patrol car that had been a few blocks over arrived and took Shay into custody. As soon as Sammi handed her off, she sat down in the middle of the sidewalk to catch her breath and calm her heartrate. She hadn’t realized in the midst of everything that she was shaking with anxiety.