The driver’s door opened. Tasha heard his boots hit the pavement. She turned around and gave him the finger. “You know what? I don’t need this shit! I’m fine on my own. I was doing just fine. Thanks for the info, but I’ll be on my way.”
She spun on her heel and stalked off toward the front of the building. Yates thought she was going to be a problem because of her overemotional tendencies? Fine. She’d just solve the damn case on her own. It wasn’t like she didn’t have more info now than she had before she’d met the guy. She’d gotten what she needed, and that didn’t include his ongoing help. She’d been working on her own for years. No overbearing military SEAL was going to stand there and question her ability to be objective!
She’d made it halfway down the block before she realized that she had basically thrown a tantrum. Tasha stopped walking and flung her head back, staring up at the tiny sliver of sky visible around the towering buildings. She took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. That was about the time she noticed the shadow peeling itself away from the alley to her right.
Chapter Eight
Romero glanced up from the tabletop when Yates let himself into the apartment. “Hey. Where’s your partner?”
“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘partner’,” Yates said quietly. “I made a comment about her being too close to the situation emotionally, and she just sort of exploded and then took off.”
This seemed to pique Cassidy’s interest. She straightened and gave Yates a thoughtful look. “How is she too close emotionally?”
Yates scratched his head, feeling uncomfortable. Should he really be telling Romero and Cassidy what he suspected about Tasha and this Roddy character? It was her private business, although the decision she’d made to walk away made it everyone’s problem. Yates sighed. “Let’s just say that there was a little more history between her and the undercover drug dealing cop we just finished talking to.”
“What sort of history?” Cassidy pressed. “She said they were an item, right? What? Was he abusive towards her?”
Yates latched onto that idea. “Yeah. I think so.”
“So you suspect that the reason she’s been so dogged in trying to figure out what happened to these women, has to do with her identifying with them. Like a fellow victim thing,” Cassidy suggested.
“Yeah.” Yates had to admit that it sounded bad when Cassidy said it like that. Was that how it had sounded to Tasha?
Cassidy gave a low whistle. Then she and Romero exchanged a significant look. “Wow. You challenged her ability to be objective. That’s harsh.” Then Cassidy shrugged. “But if you believe it’s true, I’m sure you didn’t really mean anything by it.”
Romero snorted. Yates didn’t have to hear the words to know that his friend was thinking it didn’t matter what Tasha thought or didn’t think, that the important thing was what information they now had that would help them find the Broker.
“So,” Romero said pointedly. “What did you find out from the undercover cop at the warehouse?”
Yates forced himself to think about the situation at hand. It didn’t matter about Tasha right now. She was responsible for her own choices. Right? So why did Yates feel so off balance? He struggled to focus. “The deal with the Hunting Ground goes down on Tuesday night.”
“At least we don’t have to wait a whole week or something,” Cassidy reasoned. “That’s tomorrow night.”
Yates plowed through his brain, extracting the rest. “The contact is just some man named Joe. The cops are most definitely involved though. Roddy claimed his sergeant is the one who gives him the high THC product and says to sell it to this Joe person.”
“Then Joe is our way into the Hunting Ground,” Romero mused. “Although it would be helpful to have some kind of a plan before we just waltz in there.”
“What did you find out about the pharmaceutical operations?” Yates asked, trying to keep his mind on the task. “Can we break in there tonight?”
“We can try,” Romero said with a shrug. “The building is pretty well guarded, but they’re on the complacent side. The manufacturing operation takes place overseas I would imagine, but the packaging for distribution takes place here.”
“So management isn’t there at night, but the workers on the night shift are. Is that what I’m understanding?” Yates thought about this. That wasn’t entirely a bad thing. They could most certainly work with it.
“Pretty much.” Romero shrugged. “It shouldn’t be too hard to get a look at their files.”
“Then let’s go.” Yates didn’t wait for Romero and Cassidy. He turned around and exited the apartment. He needed something to distract him, and fast.
TASHA BACKED INTO a pool of light created by a streetlamp. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she watched two cops step out of the shadows of an alley just a few yards away. Obviously the visit she and Yates had paid to Roddy had ruffled a few feathers within the department.
“Hello, Tasha,” the man on the left rumbled.
She recognized him as a beat cop named Jones. Swallowing back her fear, she wished she’d at least brought her Taser. “Jones, this is awfully far out of your usual beat, isn’t it?”
Jones chuckled, the sinister sound bouncing off the buildings and echoing down the alley. “You really never get the message, do you, Tasha?”
“What message?” Tasha was mentally listing her options.
Jones and his partner were advancing slowly. Tasha couldn’t help but think that their plan probably involved dragging her into that alley and doing something unspeakable. She could barely breathe. Her heart was beating too quickly. Her lungs were blowing in and out like a bellows, but she couldn’t get any air.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jones asked. He gestured to the street. There were a few cars driving by, but they weren’t likely to offer much in the way of help. “Nobody is going to help you now, you stupid bitch.”
“It’s pathetic really,” Tasha said slowly. “All of you cops swear an oath to uphold the law and protect the community. But none of you seem to take that seriously enough to actually do it!”
“Don’t tell me about my job!” Jones was angry now. She could see the ugly expression on his face. “You think I like being someone’s lackey? Coming out here and tracking you down just to give you a warning for the sergeant? No!” Jones smacked himself on his barrel chest. “I’ve got better things to do with my time.”
“Is that right?” She was taunting him now. “What? Kicking puppies?”
“Bitch!” Jones lunged for Tasha, but she was already gone.
Her boots thump-thumped on the sidewalk as she bolted for the pub where her night had begun. She would be safe there. It wasn’t far. If she could just get a little farther ahead of these lowlife dirty cops, she would be safe.
YATES COULD NOT shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. He stood outside the door of his apartment, just listening to everything going on around him. Behind him, Romero and Cassidy were trying to get out the door.
“Would you move it?” Cassidy said, putting one finger in the center of his spine and giving a gentle nudge. “Don’t you know that hovering in a doorway is rude?”
“Don’t you hear it?” he asked softly.
Cassidy cocked her head to one side. “Hear what?”
“I don’t know.” Yates wandered a little farther down the sidewalk. Behind him, he heard Romero shut the apartment door with a muffled snick.
The crash of garbage cans nearly made Yates’s heart stop. He took off down the sidewalk at a dead run. Tasha had gone this way only a short time earlier. There was no question in his mind that she’d encountered trouble.
Behind him, Yates heard Romero and Cassidy hustling along. That was fine. The more the merrier, especially if the more happened to be on his team. There was more noise. A metallic screeching, men shouting, and Yates swore he heard Tasha cursing.
“Tasha!” he called out.
On the street there were a few car
s, but almost no pedestrian traffic. The streets of DC weren’t exactly the safest place at night. Most of the traffic stayed to the more populated tourist areas, including foot traffic of an unsavory nature like prostitutes and pimps.
She didn’t answer, but instinct told Yates that she was nearby. He could feel it. Stretching his legs, he sprinting the last hundred yards to an alley that opened up to the right. Here were the trashcans. They’d been knocked into the street from the alley. Yates paused, holding his breath in order to listen. He heard something muffled down inside the alley. Without even considering that he might be walking into a nest of trouble, he headed into the darkness.
“Yates.” Romero’s short, terse voice drifted behind Yates.
Yates waved his friend on, knowing he was likely to need Romero’s help. He had no question that Romero could see what he was doing in the darkness. The man had eyes like a cat.
Two shapes loomed in the darkness. Or rather, there were two distinct shapes, and one amorphous blob between them. Yates lengthened his stride. He had a bad feeling that the blob was actually Tasha.
There was no time to wonder whether this was a wise choice. “Hey!” Yates called out. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We’re cops,” a voice said. There was a gleam of dim reflected light on metal as someone flashed a badge. “Just move along.”
“Not until you let her go,” Yates demanded, not even bothering to pretend respect. “That’s Tasha you’re carrying. You’d best step away before I make you.”
“Oh really?”
The cops actually dumped Tasha on the ground. Yates ground his teeth in anger. The utter lack of regard or respect for Tasha as a person was despicable in his mind. No doubt these idiots had orders from a superior officer. That was fine. Yates would happily shove their orders down their throats.
TASHA DRIFTED IN and out of consciousness. She remembered being struck on the back of the head with a nightstick. Or that was what it had felt like, at least. She’d been running from Jones and his partner. She had been so close to her goal of getting to the pub. Then something had struck her on the back of the head, and she’d gone down.
She was on the ground. It was cold. Something had jarred her back to consciousness. Had the men dropped her? They’d been carrying her, presumably to wherever they’d left their squad car. Now there was cold, hard asphalt beneath her cheek. She could smell the oily, tarry scent of it and feel the alley scum on her face.
“And you are?” That was Jones’s voice. She recognized it.
“You can call me something bad that just happened to you.”
Yates.
Tasha struggled to open her eyes, to roll over, to get up or something. Yates was here! She was saved. But surely he couldn’t take Jones and his partner by himself. She managed to get an eye open. She saw the shape of Yates standing loose and ready. Jones charged. Yates pivoted gracefully, grabbing the cop around his beefy neck and swinging him around on a new trajectory that sent him right into the wall. Jones bounced off, his big body plopping onto the ground.
Then the partner lunged for Yates. He caught Yates around the midsection. The two of them grappled, but then Romero emerged from the darkness. He grabbed the second cop’s feet and heaved upward. The guy went down, but took Yates with him. Then men were rolling on the ground now, punching each other. Yates suddenly sprang to his feet, lithe as a jungle cat. He drew back and kicked the cop in the ribs. The man flipped over onto his back.
By this time Jones had lumbered back to his feet. He was holding his hands out in front of him. “Don’t! I give up!” Jones said pathetically. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Don’t mess with Tasha Campbell and you’ll never have to find out,” Yates growled. “And whatever is going on in your department to help cover up these missing persons cases, you’d better say clear. This shit is going down, and you don’t want to be caught when it does.”
“Fine. Fine!” Jones grabbed his partner. The two men dragged themselves up and limped off into the darkness at the far end of the alley. It was a short few moments until Tasha heard the sound of a car.
“Tasha?”
She blinked. Yates was kneeling beside her. When had he approached? She hadn’t even heard him. Of course, that might have been because of the ringing in her ears.
“Come on, tough girl. Let’s get you back to my place.”
She was about to protest, but he scooped her into his arms and picked her up as though she weighed nothing at all. He was warm and safe, and he smelled so damn good. She rested her cheek against his chest and forgot everything she wanted to say.
Chapter Nine
Tasha blinked slowly, trying to focus. She felt disoriented. Her brain was fuzzy, and she had no idea where she was. Surely she hadn’t passed out somewhere while she was doing surveillance or something. Sure, stakeouts were boring as hell. But she’d never actually fallen asleep on the job before.
“Hey. There she is.”
The low male murmur came from her right side. Tasha turned her head and managed to focus blearily on a man sitting beside her. Yates. Her brain remembered his handsome features and inscrutable eyes. There was a sort of half smile on his face that she couldn’t interpret.
“What happened?” she croaked. Her throat hurt. In fact, it felt like she’d smoked ten packs of cigarettes. Why?
“Here.” He lifted a straw to her lips. “Have some of this water. It’ll help.”
It did help. She swallowed a couple of times. It hurt when the muscles in her neck moved as she swallowed. There was no doubt that she’d been in some kind of skirmish. Why couldn’t she remember?
She tried asking another question. This lack of information was really starting to bug her. “Where am I?”
“You’re at my apartment,” Yates told her. “You don’t remember what happened?”
She started to speak and thought better of it, shaking her head instead.
“You got angry at me and left. You went up the street, and from what I can tell after that, you got into an argument with a couple of cops.”
“Jones and Hodges,” she whispered. Memories started trickling back into her mind. It was as if she’d needed Yates to say something in order to pull the plug out and let the thoughts back into her head. “They were following me, basically telling me to stay out of police business and keep my nose clean.”
“Except they were dragging you out of the alley when I caught up to you,” Yates explained. “Do you remember what happened between them warning you off and you getting knocked practically unconscious?”
“No. It was just threats.” Tasha let her eyes drift shut, trying to remember. “Jones said something about running this errand for his sergeant.”
Her brain stuck on that point. Then it drifted back to earlier that very day when she had been thrown out of the police station by a desk sergeant. Somehow those two things went together. She just had to figure out if the desk sergeant was the guy making the decisions, or if it went further up the chain.
Yates rubbed his hand down his face. “I never should have let you go out there by yourself.”
“Like you had much choice,” she snorted. “I’m not exactly easy to order around. I’m sure you might have noticed by now.”
“Maybe.” He was smiling.
YATES FELT AS if there was a really stupid-looking grin of epic proportions on his face. Tasha was lying on his bed. Or rather, she was on his sofa sleeper, where he’d been camping out for the last week. He could have put her on the actual bed, but that hadn’t felt right, since Romero and Cassidy were bunking in there.
At the moment he was on the floor beside the sofa, sitting with his arm resting against the couch. He’d never seen anything quite as beautiful as the sight of Tasha Campbell snoozing away with her cheek resting almost daintily against his pillow. Reaching out now, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Yates?”
“Yes?”
“Will you climb up here?
I’m cold, and”—she sucked in a deep breath—“I feel like I just can’t get warm.”
Yates didn’t have to be invited twice. He got onto the sofa sleeper and stretched out beside Tasha. She did feel cold against him. He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her back against his chest and unfortunately—or fortunately—nestling her rounded backside right up next to his groin. This was pure, unmitigated torture. Yet he could easily stand it if it meant being close to her.
Inhaling, he caught the light feminine scent of her. Yates rested his cheek beside her on the pillow, feeling his nose gently brush her hair. She suddenly squirmed against him, turning in his embrace and pressing her face to his chest.
“Umm, you’re really warm.” She sniffed him. “And you smell good.”
For a woman who had been ready to rip him a new one less than two hours ago, this was somewhat confusing behavior. The thing was, though, Yates got Tasha. Whether she understood it or not, and maybe in spite of his own misgivings as well, Yates understood Tasha on a deeper level than he’d ever expected.
“Yates?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I got so mad earlier.”
“I’m sorry I pushed. I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t.” She swallowed. He could feel each breath she took as her breasts brushed against him. “I’m just really sensitive about that topic.”
“Understandable.” Truthfully, Yates was really sensitive about that topic.
He couldn’t abide the thought of anyone mistreating this woman. And he couldn’t even begin to figure out why he cared about that so much. She was practically a stranger. And yet she was so much more than he’d ever found in any other human being. She truly cared about things. That character trait was in short supply these days.
“I have”—she seemed to be struggling for the right words—“trouble, with relationships. I always have. But after Roddy things just got worse.”
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