There’s no one around that I can see, nothing I can hear besides the thudding of my heart in my chest. Opening the door, I hold it again so that it doesn’t close loudly and start making my way down the empty hallway.
This is where the courtrooms are, and I figure this is also where the library is. As I come to an intersection, I hear a scuffle at one end of the hallway, so I duck down to the other side. Looking down, I gasp. There’s a trail of blood leading from where I am, down toward where I’m going.
Now I’m nervous. Is this the right decision I’m making? There’s definitely danger the other way, but the unknown with this one could be just as dangerous. Both of them are dangers I’m not aware of, but I manage to convince myself this one is the least of the two. Perhaps this way I’ll be able to find out exactly where I am, and call for help.
From experience, I knew my cell wouldn’t work upstairs. So hopefully the farther I get down, the better off I will be, and help won’t be far behind. Continuing to follow the trail of blood, I notice it goes under a closed door.
Glancing up, I realize I’m at the law library. As carefully as I’ve done with all the other doors, I open it quietly and slip inside. The blood trail continues, and I’m nervous to guess what I might find.
Rounding a corner, I look on the ground and put my hand over my mouth to hold in the scream. Fogel lies there, blood gushing from a wound above his pant line and below his vest. He’s pale and sweating. When he sees me, he shakes his head for me to keep quiet. Pointing to the door, he gestures for me to leave.
He’s shown me kindness over the years, and there’s no way I’m going to leave him in his moment of need. I drop down to his level.
“Oh my God, what the hell has gone on here?” I whisper, trying to see where the blood’s coming from.
“Alec.” He winces as he tries to sit up straighter. “Got a bailiff’s gun and took some shots. He’s got a hostage in one of the rooms, but I don’t know which one, which is why I told you to leave. I don’t think he’s in here, but I’ve heard him walking the hallway back and forth.”
“I’m not leaving you. Somehow I’ll get us help.”
“Justice.” He grabs hold of my arm. “This wound is bad, I might not make it outta here,” he struggles to say.
“Save your strength and don’t talk. You have a baby to go home to.” I tear up, trying not to cry. “We’re going to get outta here.”
“I don’t know,” he croaks. “I don’t have a good feeling.”
Me either, but I refuse to give into any kind of negative talk. Grabbing my cell phone out of my bag, I see that I finally have some bars.
“Do you have service?” he whispers. “Maybe we can let the people outside of here know where he’s at and what’s going on.”
“Let me try to call Caelin,” I whisper back at him. My hands shake as I slide my finger to unlock the device and then press the programmed button for him.
Please pick up, I beg silently. I don’t know if I can do this on my own. I need guidance, and he’s the one I want it from.
When he answers, I almost pass out from relief. His voice is a balm to the anxiety coursing through my body.
I quickly fill him in on the situation. As he passes me off to Rooster to instruct me on how to do first aid, I want to be to hear Caelin’s voice again. It’s the one thing keeping me sane, letting me hold onto a thread of reality that maybe we might get out of this alive. “Okay, Justice,” Rooster continues. “I’m going to pass you back to Caelin so we can try to figure out how to get ya’ll through this. Be safe, okay?”
“Thank you.” I rub at the sweat on my face, trying to keep Fogel’s blood out of my eyes.
“Babe.” It’s Caelin again. “Tell me what you have.”
I look between Fogel and I. He points to his duty belt and radio. “We’ve got Fogel’s radio, gun, and taser. On me, I have my laptop and my phone. Unfortunately I wasn’t prepared for this kind of situation,” I say, doing my best to tease.
“Wait, you have your laptop?” he questions.
“Yes, I brought it with me just in case. You know when I wanna feel safe, I gotta have her.”
“Is it your new one?”
“Yes.” I’m getting annoyed that he’s asking all these stupid questions.
“Perfect.” I hear him moving around and I wonder what the fuck he’s planning on doing because no one has let me in on whatever the plan may be. “There’s a tracking device on that laptop, and there’s a camera option I stuck on it. Now listen to me carefully. When they renovated the courthouse, somehow the plans were lost. They aren’t at city hall where they’re supposed to be. Law enforcement needs a look inside, and it’s going to drain your cell phone quick. I need you to do a few things to your laptop for me.”
He instructs me on how to put into some mode that he activated when he set it up for me, and then tells me how to turn on a camera and flip the screen around. I didn’t even know my laptop could do any of this.
“Like that?” I ask into the phone.
“Perfect.” I can hear the smile in his voice. People are talking around him. “Okay, babe, can you do us a favor? Can you walk a little bit with that so we can get a lay of the land, and see exactly what we’re working with? If there are window openings on that section, SWAT’s going to breach that way.”
“Okay.” I’m breathless as I answer. Nerves getting the best of me, but more than anything I want to help, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of this situation. “Here I go.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Caelin
“Goddammit, Rooster, I want in there, and I want in there now,” I tell the older member of our club. It’s probably not the best thing for me to be doing, demanding an elder to bow down to me, but Justice is in there with a fucking deranged psycho. He’s killed once, and who’s to say he won’t kill again.
“Look, I respect your feelings about this. But they’re not allowing anyone in, and I don’t think it’s smart to fuck with the Feds.”
Glancing over at Drew, my eyes do their best to convey a silent message of let’s fuck shit up. Harley comes to stand beside me. Her scared voice is louder than the rest of them. “We gotta figure out how to go in there and save her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need to be saved,” my mom says as she comes to stand with our group. “Justice is strong. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and she’s been through a lot already. Maybe, just maybe, she can save herself and doesn’t need all of you to get in her way.”
I want badly to believe what my mom is saying, but there are certain facts that are killing me right now.
I’ve never told her I love her.
My brave girl told me, and I never reciprocated because I was a scared pussy who wasn’t sure what saying the words would mean for us.
I don’t know that I can live without her.
She’s burrowed so deep under my skin at this point, losing her would be akin to losing a fucking limb. It’s not something I’m willing to do.
“I know she’s strong,” I sigh, running my fingers through my hair. “But it’s in my blood to want to help her, and fuck it all if that’s not what I want to do.”
While we’re standing there, my cell phone starts buzzing. Glancing down at it, I do a double-take.
“Holy fuck, it’s Justice,” I almost whimper.
Answering, I put her on speaker so the rest of our group can here. “Baby, are you okay?”
She’s whispering. “I’m scared, but okay. It’s Fogel I’m worried about. He’s taken a shot between his vest and his belt. He’s bleeding pretty bad. I don’t know first aid.”
Her voice is scared to death, and I wish with everything I have I was there with her, right at this moment.
Rooster takes point, telling her how to try and staunch the flow of blood. It’s a blur to me as I think about the woman who I just had in my bed now in this type of danger.
“You guys have to try and get us help,” she continues to whis
per. “His wife is pregnant, and I won’t leave him here.”
I groan audibly, then try to bite back my reaction. “Okay, Jus, is there anything you can use to get us eyes on this besides your phone? We don’t want to burn the battery.”
“Fogel’s isn’t going to work,” she says. “The bullet hit it.”
“What do y’all have between the two of you.”
She answers with a couple of things from Fogel and then she mentions something I’d never even thought of her having. The laptop I formatted for her. “Perfect, we need you to do a few things with that.”
Beside me one of the Feds taps me on the shoulder.
“There should have been new plans filed when that building was renovated, but we can’t find them.” His face is grim. “If she can give us a look at what we’re dealing with that would be great. If there’s a landing we can go through with the SWAT team it would be perfect. Can she take us around?”
It goes against everything I believe in, ever type of the kind of person I am to ask her to put herself in danger, but I also want her out of this situation as quickly as possible. The only way to do that it to get an inside look at that building. When I tell Justice what’s being asked of her, my brave girl doesn’t back down.
“Okay,” she says. “Here I go.”
I expect to see her moving along, but she doesn’t.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just forgot something.” She turns back to where Fogel is. When we get a good look at him, we can see it’s bad. It’s fucking deadly. “Can I have your gun and taser?” she asks softly.
His eyes meet hers, barely nodding. “You’ll have to…”
“I can get it,” she whispers back at him.
I watch as the woman I love arms herself.
“Justice, are you familiar with these types of guns?” the Fed asks.
“Not really, but I’ve shot before. Same as any other right? Point and shoot.”
“Right, but if you have to use anything, try the taser first.”
“Bullshit,” I interject. “You shoot to kill, babe. Whatever is in your way, make sure you come home.”
The Fed grunts at my butting in, but to say I don’t give a fuck actually gives more fucks than I do.
“Alright,” she whispers again. “I’m on the move, only talk if you need me to do something. It’s really quiet in here.”
“That’s what scares me,” the Fed says. “There should be a whole bunch of armed people in that courthouse, and the fact it seems to be her and the officer against everybody, it doesn’t make sense.”
I want to say the same thing, but it’s not my place. The only thing I want to do is get Justice out of this alive. “Here’s the landing,” she whispers, giving us a good look of the staircase leading up to the floor she’s on. There are windows that would allow SWAT to breach.
“Good enough for me,” another person says. “SWAT is heading in as soon as we can get up there.”
Those words make me feel better than anything else ever has. “Should I go back and wait for them?” Justice asks.
“Wait for who?”
I would know that voice anywhere, and judging by the way Justice freezes, she knows she’s in deep shit. She turns, giving us a glimpse of Alec standing there, holding a gun on her. He’s been through hell. Blood streams down the side of his face, and it looks as if he has a graze wound on his shoulder.
“Nobody,” she answers, her voice strong.
That’s my fucking girl.
“Why are you holding that laptop? Are you letting them see in here? I got the goddamn cameras cut and the plans pulled. Do you know what it took for me to get this worked out? Now you’re about to destroy it? I don’t think so.”
“Talk to him, Justice, we’re seconds away.”
“Fuck that,” I raise my voice. “Protect yourself.”
“It’s my work laptop,” she answers.
“Put it down.” He motions with the gun.
“It’s expensive.” She does her best to stall.
“I said put the fucking thing down now. Unless you want it and your brains splattered all over this marble floor.”
He has no problem doing it either, judging from the way he speaks.
She slowly puts it on the ground. When she does, her shirt comes down, exposing the gun at the waistband of her back.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he stops her. “Give me the gun.”
“Don’t give him the gun,” I beg.
“I’m reaching for it.” She holds up one of her hands. “Reaching for it.”
She’s got us set up in a way we can see the both of them – OK Corral style – when she grabs hold of it, she pulls it out, holding it out in front of her, pointing it at him. “You put yours down.”
“Do you wanna die here today?”
“I’d rather die than let you take me out.” She adjusts her stance.
My heart is pounding as I’m watching this as if it’s some sort of movie. There’s nothing I can do to reach into the screen and help her.
“Too bad.” He shrugs. “I thought you’d be smarter than that.”
When he pulls the trigger, nothing happens, and my heart threatens to stop beating. She lines up her shot, getting him in the leg. As he goes down, the glass breaks and she screams.
Just like always, the cavalry arrived a little too late.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Drew
The courthouse door opens and I nearly lose it as I see my daughter come out, flanked by cops and emergency personnel. She’s holding the hand of the person who’s on the stretcher. Must be the bailiff she’s grown to be so fond of.
Behind them, there’s another stretcher, surrounded with even more police. It’s the injured body of Alec Tinsdale.
As soon as she comes out, Charity runs for her, wrapping her up in her arms. Then Caelin and Harley volley for their position with her.
But when they’re done, I step forward, crushing her into my arms, crying softly. This is the second time we’ve almost lost her, and I’m fucking getting sick of it.
“I’m okay, Daddy,” she whispers, her grip holding me up from collapsing onto the sidewalk. “I’m okay. I made it.”
“You shoulda never been in that situation to begin with,” I mumble.
“Life doesn’t tell us what situations we’re going to be given,” she reminds me. Those are the words of an intelligence far beyond her years.
“I hate to break this up,” Jake, an officer Caelin’s friendly with interrupts, “but we need to ask Justice some questions.”
Immediately Charity wipes the tears from under her eyes and composes herself. “Not without me there you won’t.”
Jake has the audacity to grin at my wife. “Never once thought of it, Mrs. Walker. It’s honestly a technicality, as you all seem to be aware, there are cameras in the library. Alec thought he caught all of them, but he missed those.”
“All the same, I’d like to come with her. She needs to have adequate counsel, and I intend to see that she does.”
God it’s hot when Charity starts taking charge of a situation. “Keep me informed,” I speak into Charity’s ear and watch as two of the most important women in my life are taken off, flanked by uniformed officers.
“What the fuck is going on?” Caelin asks as he watches.
“They want to question Justice.”
“That was justified if I’ve ever seen anything justified,” he rages. “It’s on the hard drives of the camera system in the courthouse, why are they going to make her relive it again? Fuckin’ assholes,” he continues.
As he yells, he starts to attract attention. It’s definitely attention we don’t need, so I nod at Tyler to make sure he’s taken care of. Tyler nods back at me, and takes Caelin in hand, walking him across the street.
I’m just as pissed, but I’ve learned how to control my physical and emotional reactions to it. Especially since I became the head of the club.
“What are t
hey going to do with her?” Harley asks, worry all over her face.
“Nothing, they more than likely just need to get a statement. As Caelin announced for the world to hear, it’s going to be on their tapes. I think it’s just a technicality.”
“She doesn’t deserve to go through this.”
“No.” I hug my other daughter to me. “She doesn’t, but she’s got your mom with her.”
And even though those words are supposed to comfort us all, they don’t. I would give anything to be in that room with the both of them right now. To know what’s being said, and being implied. My wife is as much a fighter as my daughter, and while I realize I don’t have to worry – I do.
Harley doesn’t seem comforted. “I’m scared.” Her bottom lip wobbles in a show of vulnerability I haven’t seen in years.
“We all are,” I concede. “But we can’t do anything. We’ve got to trust in your mom.”
“I trust her,” Harley whispers. “But I’m still worried.”
“So am I.” I hug her to me tighter. “So am I.”
Charity
“This is bullshit and you know it,” I hiss at the county prosecutor. “There’s no reason to bring her into all of this.”
“If I’m being an asshole, Charity, I’d tell you to recuse yourself. This is the biggest conflict of interest I’ve ever seen.”
I can literally feel my eyes flash, almost feel my teeth crack. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“No, I wouldn’t, which is why you should know at this point you can trust me.”
I don’t trust anyone. Not when it comes to my family. “I’m going to give you leeway here, but if you fuck us over, know there will be hell rained down on you by a bunch of guys with questionable morals and access to everything about your personal life.”
“Understood.”
Restraint (Heaven Hill Generations Book 5) Page 17
