Rawlins pointed a meaty finger at him. “You’re lucky we don’t drag you downtown and book you for assault!” he snarled. “Because before this asshole goes anywhere near a police station, we’re going to have to swing by the county hospital. The last thing you need—that any of us needs—is another Officer-Involved Shitstorm brought on by you!”
“I’m off duty!”
“No, you’re suspended is what you are, until you’re cleared of misconduct! Which, as I hear it, isn’t going so well for you right now. And instead of keeping your goddamn head down while you’re under investigation, you follow Little Miss Hotpants to a motel room where you beat down yet another suspect. This one wasn’t even armed! Boy, you’ve dug this shithole so deep you may as well lie down in it and let the boys from Internal Affairs bury you.” Rawlins started for his cruiser but turned to look back at Caleb. “I think we’ve all had enough of your mommy issues, Barnes,” he said loudly. Caleb grit his teeth and watched the older man waddle to his car. When he turned, he saw Izzy standing alone, the other officer having abandoned taking her statement so that he could stand helplessly beside the bleeding scumbag lying prone across the backseat of the police cruiser, as though worrying over him was going to help in any way.
Caleb caught Izzy’s eye and frowned as he started toward her. The look on her face told him she’d overheard every word.
Chapter 16
Izzy finished giving a brief statement to the uniformed officer and started to turn back toward Caleb. In truth it had been very brief. She had merely confirmed that she’d been renting a room and that she and Caleb had arrived to find the room door ajar and her next door neighbor hiding in the closet. She hadn’t mentioned what she did for a living or why she was in town in the first place. The nervous man thanked her for her time and left her standing beside her car. Caleb finished giving his statement to a third man who’d arrived several minutes ago. This man wasn’t wearing a uniform but a suit and tie. She didn’t need to overhear the conversation to conclude the man was Caleb’s superior.
She hadn’t given any indication that she’d thought Barnes had done anything wrong. She had been attacked, she’d reminded the officer. And she had been pinned against the wall by her throat. She’d left out the part where she’d broken free and gotten in a shot of her own. He could’ve had a weapon, she told the officer. There had been no way to know. No, she didn’t recall whether or not Barnes had identified himself as RCPD. It all just happened so fast, Officer.
Caleb was no doubt being grilled with the same questions. He was calm and collected, especially for a man who’d just beaten the living shit out of someone. He answered every question, some of them more than once, although Izzy couldn’t really hear them all. When he was finished, he gave the suited man a curt nod then turned toward her. As he reached her car, he said, “You’re coming home with me.”
Izzy silently agreed that staying at the Rainbow was a bad idea, but she hadn’t considered the alternative that he was proposing. She hesitated while thinking it over, which apparently caused Caleb to re-think the offer.
“Or… I know a hotel where you can stay,” he amended. “I know the owner. She’ll cut you a deal.”
Izzy considered the offer, though it was likely that she couldn’t afford an actual hotel—even at a discount.
Now he seemed to regret his proclamation that she’d go home with him, which put her more at ease with the idea, actually. Not an hour ago she’d seen this man beat a suspect to a bloody pulp. She’d known rough cops, dated rough cops, and rough men in general. They weren’t always dangerous. Izzy’s job, now that was dangerous; and in order to do her job as well as she did, she’d honed her instincts and her ability to read people to a razor sharp edge. It had saved her life on more than one occasion. It seemed that though Caleb Barnes seemed relatively safe, he was a bit of a mystery—even to his closest friends. It intrigued Izzy, but it didn’t bother her. She couldn’t forget his fingers on her throat, his insistent but gentle touch and the look of genuine concern in his eyes.
She handed him the keys to her Charger. “I’ll go home with you.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the people watching them, then turned back to her. He opened his mouth, closed it again. He didn’t seem to be in the mood to argue so he slid the keys from her hand.
As they rolled past the older officer’s squad car—the loudmouth, as Izzy silently dubbed him—Caleb hit the gas, kicking up dust and loose gravel. He might have been just getting a feel for the clutch, but she somehow doubted it. When they turned onto the cross street, he shifted smoothly from first to second and powered into a left turn. She had to admit she liked his driving, but that didn’t blind her to the man entirely.
“Your jacket’s clean,” she said as he cruised through a yellow light without slowing down. “No flags. No infractions.”
He was quiet for a few moments. “I was under the radar,” he admitted. “But I fucked up. Or I’ve always been fucking up and it came down on someone else’s head. I put assholes away,” he said somewhat defensively. “I put them away for a long fucking time.”
“You frame them?” Izzy asked bluntly. There was no point in pretending she wasn’t aware of the possibilities. She dated cops. She worked with cops. She knew cops. The car slowed just a bit and he turned into a large gravel lot. Izzy thought it looked like a commercial garage. Over the low-slung, slate gray building, the sign said, “Burnout.”
Caleb pulled the parking brake but left the engine running. He unfastened his seatbelt and turned to face her fully. “No,” he said firmly, but he didn’t seem to be offended at the question. “I don’t frame them, Izzy. I don’t have to. I give them some rope and let them hang themselves.”
She considered this. “What’s IA going to call it?”
He was quiet again, so quiet she thought maybe she’d pushed too far and he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he said, “If they dig deep enough, talk to enough people, they’ll say I purposely provoke suspects into violence. And then tack on extra charges for it.”
Now Izzy was quiet. She turned and looked out the Charger’s window, across the gravel lot. A man stood in the large, open bay of the garage. He was looking at them curiously, but he didn’t approach. She recognized him from Maria’s bar earlier that afternoon.
“Do your friends know?” she asked. “That you’re suspended?”
She turned back to see him shake his head. “No,” he said with a sigh. “I haven’t told them yet.”
She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth and risked one last question. His answer turned out to be the most candid, honest reply she thought she’d ever been given, by anyone. “Will they be surprised?”
He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and blew out a long breath. “No,” he told her. “Probably not.” He looked past her at the men working several feet away. “But they’re going to be damn disappointed.”
He took his hands off the wheel and reached for the handle of the door, but before he could turn it, Izzy grabbed his hand. She turned it over, examining the purplish, swollen knuckles that marred his tanned skin. Caleb didn’t pull it back but when she looked up to his face it was obvious that he was uncomfortable.
“He hit you,” he said quietly. “He hurt you.”
Izzy nodded and let go of his hand. “He did. Thanks.”
Caleb didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he leaned away from her. “Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”
She watched him walk across the lot. As the adrenaline from the last few hours finally ebbed, she found herself needing to relax. A drink and a hot shower, that’s what she needed. Or a drink and a hot shower—both with Caleb—would be even better. She leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and pictured the man naked… not for the first time.
Chapter 17
Caleb stalked to the garage, not looking back but fighting the urge. Why had he told her so much? he wondered, but looking at Shooter as he crosse
d the lot, it wasn’t that hard to understand. His brothers would judge him, maybe not too harshly, maybe not out loud, but they would. They couldn’t help it. Isabelle was probably judging him, too, but he didn’t know her and didn’t care as much about her opinion of him. As much as he’d wanted to avoid this conversation just a few hours ago, it seemed inevitable now. He’d rarely shown up at the garage during a shift, and certainly never with a woman in tow. He couldn’t blame them for being curious.
He sighed as he neared the building. He didn’t relish the thought of all his secrets being laid bare. Not that he was embarrassed by them, but he didn’t like being reminded that among the circle of his closest friends, he’d never quite measure up to their standards. Even Easy, the most badly wounded, having lost his leg in the roadside bomb that decimated their unit, had managed to slay his demons just a few years after they’d discharged. But Caleb’s demons were far older and could not be slain, only leashed, for the safety of everyone around him.
His boots hit the smooth concrete of the garage bay and he reached into his jeans pocket. He separated the key to his bike from his house key and handed it over. “I left my bike at Maria’s,” he said. “I need someone to get it and drop it off at my place.”
Shooter nodded and pocketed the key. “Busy afternoon?” he asked. Caleb wasn’t sure what to say to that. Shooter nodded, indicating his hands. “Doing some bare knuckle boxing?”
Hawk and the others put down their tools and edged closer to them. Caleb grimaced. “Nothing serious,” he told them. “Just a dust-up.”
“This… dust-up… have anything to do with the girl?” Shooter pressed.
“You fought?” Easy asked, squinting his eyes and looking at the car parked across the lot. “With who? Over her?”
“Who is this girl, Caleb?” Shooter asked. “Because her license plate doesn’t say South Dakota. It says Colorado.”
“Holy shit!” Easy declared. “You’re right! I thought she was Sioux Falls. I thought she was your woman.”
“She’s not Sioux Falls,” Caleb began carefully. “She’s a bounty hunter from Denver. She’s looking for a guy, a murderer, who’s got connections to the Buzzards.” He watched Shooter’s face darken.
“Caleb,” he said quietly.
“I know,” Caleb replied.
“Jack Prior does not like people sniffing around his club. If he finds out, she’s as good as dead.”
“I know,” Caleb repeated. “I know who he is, what they are.”
“I am serious, Caleb. He won’t care that she’s a woman. He’ll skin her alive and you too if he thinks you’re helping her. I won’t be able to talk him down.”
In another life, his pre-Army life, Chris Sullivan’s father had been the president of the Badlands Buzzards, though he’d been killed in prison when Chris was a teenager. If Chris hadn’t enlisted, he’d be the president now, with Jack Prior his second. Caleb couldn’t envision Chris intentionally hurting much less killing a woman, but sometimes life had a way of turning hard men dark, especially if you were born to it, the way Chris was, the way Caleb was. He looked down at his bruised knuckles and lifted his hand.
“This is just from some asshole who broke into her room at the Rainbow. Nothing to do with Prior or the guy she’s looking for. But,” and he hadn’t realized this until he was saying it out loud, “I am going to help her.”
Shooter did not look happy.
“Well, what’s RCPD say about it?” Easy asked. “Are they giving you back up or—?”
Caleb shook his head. “No. RCPD’s not involved.”
Easy frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“I’m not—” Caleb cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m not RCPD,” he told them. “Not officially, not at the moment.” He sighed. “I got suspended.”
“For what?” Easy asked.
“Shooting some asshole.”
“Did he need to be shot?” Hawk asked.
“Absolutely,” Caleb said firmly. “But brass might not agree. They’re investigating. Going to decide whether or not they’re going to let me come back.”
“Will they?” Shooter asked bluntly.
Caleb hesitated, rolling it around in his mind, then shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t think so.”
Hawk let out a low whistle.
“Jesus,” Easy said quietly. “Just… Jesus.”
“So, I’m helping Isabelle,” he announced, though he hadn’t yet asked her what she thought about that. “Got nothing better to do. And I’m not keen on letting a woman get killed in my town. While it still is my town,” he added quietly.
“You don’t know her,” Shooter reminded him. “She could be trouble.”
“Yeah, I’m aware,” Caleb replied. He wasn’t certain if this girl was trouble in the way Shooter meant it, but he glowered as he remembered ordering her to go back to her car and how she’d come into the room anyway.
Isabelle Boucher was going to be some kind of trouble, no doubt about it.
“We’ll get your bike to your house,” Shooter told him. “After closing time.”
Caleb nodded his thanks and turned to go.
“So, if this girl isn’t Sioux Falls,” Easy called after him, “then who’s Sioux Falls?”
Caleb paused and turned back to face the men.
“Easy,” Shooter said quietly.
“What?” Easy replied. “I want to know. All this time, we’ve never met her. We don’t even know her name. So, what’s up… Doc?” he asked with a grin. But he was the only one smiling.
Caleb had never told them exactly where he was going one weekend a month, every month since he’d settled in South Dakota. But between Shooter’s ability to read men (he had been their lieutenant, after all) and Tex’s degree in psychology, Caleb was fairly certain that the older men had their suspicions about his road trips. Out of respect for him, they’d never asked for confirmation.
“She’s no one,” Caleb told the youngest man.
Easy frowned. “What do you mean no one? Like she doesn’t exist?”
Caleb sighed and shook his head.
“Easy,” Shooter chastised again quietly.
Easy looked around at the other. “What?! You know you want to know. What’s with all the cloak and dagger shit? What—”
“She’s a pro,” Caleb finally admitted.
Easy paused, mouth open, eyebrows raised. In the ensuing silence, he said, “Oh.”
“I met her in a hotel bar. Went there to find her, or a woman like her. She’s nice enough, doesn’t hustle too hard.”
“I can’t believe you pay for it,” Easy told him.
“Alright,” Shooter said, concluding the family meeting. “We’ll get your bike back. I want to know what’s going on with Prior. Keep me in the loop. Let’s finish up,” he told the others.
“But why do you pay for it?” Easy pressed. “You could have any woman you want for free. Why—”
“Work, Turnbull,” Shooter ordered, laying on his lieutenant-tone. “Now.”
Caleb walked back to the car and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Everything okay?” Izzy asked.
“More or less,” he replied and started the engine. He left the garage and headed across town. They rode in blissful silence—blissful because he wouldn’t have known what to say. Small talk wasn’t exactly his strong suit. Izzy seemed comfortable enough, though, just looking out the window.
“Getting chilly,” she remarked. “What’s winter like here?”
“Brutal,” he said. “But summer is nice.”
He turned onto his own street, past the small houses with well-kept yards.
“Good neighborhood?”
“So-so.”
Izzy took the keys from him and slipped a small silver one into the top of the lockbox at her feet. She popped the top and pulled out not a pistol but a digital camera. Caleb didn’t know much about equipment like that, but it looked fairly expensive. She cradled it in one arm as she opened the passenge
r door and stepped out.
“Your back-up piece?” he asked her, grinning.
“Cost more than my gun,” she replied.
He jogged up the steps and unlocked the front door. His house was small, but was all he needed it to be. Just one bedroom, the living room, and an eat-in kitchen. As he flipped on the lights, he was grateful that he hadn’t yet let go of his Army training. Everything was neat and tidy and tucked away. No wayward pairs of boxer briefs littered the floors or furniture. He rarely had people here, just one of the guys every once in a while. His place wasn’t big enough for all of them, so he mostly just showed up to shower, and sleep, and nuke the occasional frozen burrito.
As she put her camera on the kitchen table, he frowned and realized that not everything was in its place today. He strode quickly across the room, swept up the mail from the table and deposited it into the drawer. He risked a glance at her when he turned around. She’d definitely seen the prison logo on the envelope he’d carelessly tossed on top of the pile earlier. He’d been busy that morning, otherwise it would have gone straight into the trash with the others.
He glowered. Even though she didn’t say anything, he felt as though he should say something, clear the air. “My father,” he told her quietly.
She actually looked surprised.
“The background check you did on me didn’t turn that up?”
She shook her head. “I just checked your service records, with the Army and the department. I have a contact at Denver PD.”
“He’s been locked up most of my life.”
“In California?”
He nodded. “That’s where I’m from.”
“Why’d you move here?” she asked.
“It’s where the rest of the guys are. They’re all that’s left of my old unit and the only family I have. That I want to talk to, anyway.”
He was done talking. It wouldn’t lead anywhere good and he didn’t like dredging up the past. He walked to the living room and she followed behind him. “You take the bedroom,” he said, pointing toward the closed door. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
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