by J. M. Madden
In the end, TJ Rector had been the one to die, and it had sent a brutal, debilitating bolt of pain across Aiden’s mind, stunning him. He’d fallen to the ground, unable to make sense of the blinding vise-grip of pain around his head. Immediately he’d started building a metaphorical brick wall in his mind, to cut himself off from TJ. The unknown operative had moved in while he’d been immobile. It was literally a stroke of luck when Aiden raised his arms in a defensive move, and accidentally caught the operative on the inside of his arm, slicing through tendons. Blood spurted and the operative had suddenly been the one scrambling, his dominant arm useless. Aiden had rolled to his knees, then pushed to his feet and pressed the attack, managing to slice him across the other arm, then on the thigh as the other man had fallen to the ground. With a hard lunge, Aiden had sliced high on the opposite thigh. The other man had refused to give up though. He’d pounded Aiden in the ribs and head, grappling for Aiden’s knife. But he’d managed to fight him off. Then the lean, dark-eyed man had made a fatal mistake. He’d tried to knee Aiden. Catching the leg, Aiden had drawn a vicious swipe up the thigh, through the femoral artery. Within seconds the operative was too weak to even stand. He collapsed to the ground, losing consciousness. Aiden knew the man would be dead within minutes. Fuck him. Digging in the man’s pockets, he found the drives and shoved them into his own pockets.
Then the shockwave of TJ’s death had swelled over his protective mental wall and Aiden went to his knees, gripping his head in his hands. It felt like his skull was about to rip apart. The pain was so debilitating that he couldn’t breathe. Black spots swam in front of his eyes.
It took him several long minutes to even get up off the ground. He needed to get away from this body. Shudders wracked him and for the first time that night he felt the cold.
In the muddled chaos of his mind, Aiden had one clear thought. Protect the drives. Struggling, leaning on alley walls and trees, he took them blocks away from that location and hid them in another alley, just in case he was being pursued. His head was too messed up to feel danger approaching so he would find a place to hide, recover, then come back for the drives. He’d taken off, trying to get away from the pain in his head. There was no recollection of how he’d ended up in the back of the semi-trailer, let alone how he’d ended up in Kansas City.
If it hadn’t been for Duncan Wilde and the cash card he’d left him at the hospital, Aiden would have been sitting out there until he’d scrounged enough funds to make his way back to Denver.
In the back of his mind, though, he’d been worried about TJ’s body.
Now that he’d been to the alley where TJ had been killed, he realized the only way he would get any info on what had happened there was if he talked to the detective that had responded to the original call. She’d know whether or not there had been a body there. Aiden didn’t think there had been. The Collaborative would have been monitoring their operative, if not Rector somehow, and would have cleaned up the crime scene.
Coming to a small, derelict park, he settled onto a bench as the world swung back into focus. So much of the past several years were foggy to him. When he’d been approached by a government type four years ago, he hadn’t thought much about it. He’d been happy as a SEAL. Did his job well. Kept his guys out of trouble for the most part. So he’d passed when the suit had approached him in the desert and offered him a new challenge. At the time he’d thought the guy had been nuts. Hell, he was in the Navy SEALs, what kind of new challenge could there have been that he hadn’t already done?
Oh, if he’d only known.
The suit left him alone for several months, then, after that harrowing experience in Kandahar when they’d gotten their asses royally kicked, the guy had approached him again, this time offering a huge bonus. Aiden had listened more closely that time.
Damn it.
He scrubbed his face, wishing he could change the past four and a half years. When he’d finally given the guy the nod that he would accept the job, things had changed drastically. He’d left Afghanistan the next day and been flown to Washington for a huge meet and greet ass-kissing session. They’d thrown him into a training program with nineteen other guys, all similar in their bearing and experience, but dissimilar in the fact that they all seemed to have come from different special forces. Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Force Recon Marines, they were all there. Two other guys had been SEALs, but one Aiden hadn’t had a chance to talk to before he’d died in that godforsaken jungle. The second SEAL was running around right now being their distraction, and Aiden considered him one of his best friends, a Dogs of War teammate, a brother.
Aiden glanced up and down the street as surreptitiously as he could. Though there was nothing to see, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. Time to go.
The reason for his unease turned the corner, heading toward him. Aiden dropped his head and slumped a little till the cruiser had passed. The neighborhood wasn’t a great area. Surely it was just a random patrol.
Aiden refused to believe that anything was as innocent as it seemed. That had been beaten out of him long ago.
The softness of Detective Holloway’s lips under his haunted him. It had been years since he’d kissed a woman. Just the thought of her incredibly soft lips on his made his heart thump and wish for a better life.
Frowning, he tried to remember when he’d actually done something for himself.
Well, he’d come to Denver for himself, in a way. Two years ago. On the slimmest chance he might be able to find a connection to his past, his family.
It was wrong to have come here then. He knew that now. And it had been how he’d been located. But now he stayed to protect his brother and his new family.
The Silverstone Collaborative just didn’t release their operatives into the world and hope they kept their mouths shut. They made sure those mouths stayed shut.
Stomach rumbling with hunger, he turned toward the center of the city.
Chapter Two
Angela was hyper aware of everything, but she was getting tired. After she’d freed herself from the handcuffs, she’d hopped into her Ford Explorer and driven for hours, circling the blocks of the industrial district then moving outward. But she hadn’t seen the man again.
Anger made her blood boil. The mangled loop at the back of her jeans felt like it was going to burn through her body. She was glad she hadn’t called the incident in because if she had, she’d never hear the end of the ribbing. Handcuffed with her own cuffs, what a shit show. That humiliation would have followed her for years. Fuck, her entire career.
Eventually she turned for home, the alley case nagging at her. She’d been a new detective then and had taken over from the responding detective when he’d pissed somebody off. It had been her first investigation, and her first unsolved case. There had been a big damn puddle of blood in that ice and snow. Too much, she would think, for any average person to lose and still be mobile. But there had been no body there or anywhere else in Denver that could be matched to the scene.
She switched directions and merged left, turning toward the department’s gym. It was a great time to work out. There was no way she could relax in her apartment with this much aggravation burning in her.
As she turned the corner onto Patterson, her breath hitched in her throat. Fuck. Was that him? Jerking the car to the curb she shut off the engine then dug in her glove box for her binocs. When she held them to her eyes and focused on the man walking almost a block away, her heart raced. It was him. It was a fairly nice day for April. The sun was setting and there were several other people walking along the street. They were almost to downtown and she knew if she didn’t get closer she would lose him.
Shoving the shifter into drive, she eased out slowly into traffic and made up as much distance as she dared. Then, head down, she hopped out of the Explorer and circled to the rear. Her taser was in the lockbox in back and she would use it if she needed to. She paused for a moment, debating whether or not she should call in for back-up. It
should have been a no-brainer but for some reason the thought of making this official didn’t sit well with her. Listening to her gut, she left the radio in its charger, but she did slip her cell phone into her pocket.
Then she was on the street, jogging lightly to catch up with him. Her heart raced at the thought of the takedown. She needed to do it off the main street if possible, away from public eyes.
As if in answer to her prayers, the man turned into an alley between two high-rise buildings. When Angela reached the corner of the alley and peered down its length, she didn’t see anything. Shit! How had he disappeared so quickly? Treading carefully, avoiding trash and puddles of indescribable filth, she entered the darkened area. As she moved down the length of the alley, her heart tried to thud out of her chest.
She didn’t find the perp, but as she peered around a corner she did see a drug deal going down. Two young punks were leaning into the open driver’s side window of a pimped out metallic purple Crown Vic. She clearly saw the bag of pills they were collecting, but she couldn’t see the driver’s face.
She pulled back around the corner and rested her head back against the brick. If she took these guys down there was no way she would find the guy from the alley. Damn it.
Angela pulled out her cell phone and called in a request for back-up, giving the dispatcher the plate number of the Crown Vic. For good measure she leaned around and snapped a picture of the deal going down, then tucked her phone away.
The two young guys, one white and one black, eyed her as she walked toward them. The car sped away, but she wasn’t worried about it. She drew her Sig and motioned for the two men to turn around. “Hello, gentleman. Denver PD. I would appreciate it if you would place your hands on the wall. Now, please.”
The men grumbled but turned toward the wall. Angela moved close enough to pat them down, removing the bag of pills from the white kid’s pocket. He had dirty blond hair and didn’t smell very good. “You guys don’t seem very old. Why are you out here doing this?”
The second guy barked out a bitter laugh. “Fuck you, pig. And don’t bother lecturing us.”
Angela patted them both down but the black kid on the right shifted away from her touch. “Hold still.”
As Angela patted her way down to his waist he spun away, knocking the gun from her hand. It skittered across the dirty concrete. Within seconds the guy had turned on her. He swung his right fist but she ducked, then lunged into his gut. She slammed him against the wall but he landed a fist to her midsection. Angela tried to protect her ribs but he landed another solid fist to her kidney and she went down on one knee. When she felt an arm go around her throat from behind she knew she was about to get her ass kicked. She reached for the taser tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
As the black kid lunged at her again, she fired the taser. He went down like a ton of bricks, prongs quivering from his chest, wires still connected to the weapon in her hand. Pushing to her full height, she shoved backwards, hoping to slam the kid holding her into the brick wall. He wasn’t as big as the other one but damn, he was wiry. Her strong legs propelled them toward the wall but at the last second the kid jerked her around. Angela’s shoulder took the brunt of the hit and she thought she felt something pop, but she continued to struggle.
When the kid tightened his arm around her neck trying to choke her out, the situation went a level hotter. If he managed to knock her out he could grab her service weapon and kill her. With another squeeze of the taser trigger, she knocked the first kid down again then popped the cartridge off the end of the weapon. Angling the taser down and backwards she strained to touch him with the muzzle. If she could get the metal prongs against him she could let the fifty thousand volts take him down. The down side to that was because she was in contact with him, it would take her down as well. She’d been shocked before, several times, so maybe she would be able to recover faster.
Angela reached her arm back hard, slamming the metal projections into the kid’s lower body and squeezed the trigger. The shock was instantaneous. Dazed, they both went down in a heap but Angela scrambled away, the taser still in her hand.
Everything was going her way until the kid who had been choking her rolled over onto his ass, his buddy’s gun shaking in his hand. Angela lunged to the left, toward her own weapon, but there was no cover to be found. The report of the gun went off a fraction of a second before fire burned down her left arm. Angela cried out and grabbed her weapon but as she leveled her arm, she realized the fight was over. The kid had been subdued.
By the bearded man from the alley.
As she watched, the kid was stripped of his weapon and knocked unconscious with a single sharp blow to the jaw. The black kid had started to scramble to his feet but the other guy took him out just as quickly, knocking the punk on his ass. Alley Guy held out his hand to her and she realized he was asking for her cuffs. It took Angela a couple of seconds to reach behind, grab the cuffs and toss them to him. He secured the drug dealers calmly and efficiently, snapping one cuff onto each of them.
Angela’s gun arm shook as her adrenaline began to drain away. The bearded man turned and walked toward her, stepping inside her wavering gun arm. “You were doing good until you let him get his arm around your neck,” he told her, deep voice rumbling. “That put you at a real disadvantage.”
No shit.
He ripped a strip off his dark blue T-shirt and reached for her left arm, which still burned with fire. He snapped open a lock blade knife and cut her sleeve away. “This looks like a flesh wound. I think you’ll be fine with a few stitches.”
Without giving her a chance to answer he tied the t-shirt strip around her arm, tight enough to slow the blood but not so tight to cut off circulation. Angela cringed but kept her eye on the kids on the ground. Sirens cut through the evening, growing closer.
The confusing man stepped back. Angela felt torn. Though he’d been the one she’d been after, she now had to deal with the drug deal gone bad. “Who are you?” she asked.
Smiling, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Just a passing bystander that helped you subdue a couple of felons. An innocent, wandering bystander that disappeared before you could get any details from him.”
His dark eyes held hers for a long, speaking moment before he turned and left the alley.
And that was exactly what she told the responding officers.
It was also exactly what she’d told her superiors. How the hell was she supposed to explain she’d kissed a potential witness/suspect in a murder, then the same man had saved her from getting her ass kicked by a couple of wayward drug dealers? Hell, he had saved her life. That drug dealer had not been shooting to wound. If he hadn’t intervened, she had no doubt she would be laid out on a slab right now.
Talk about a conflict of interest.
The next day she sat in the doctor’s office waiting to get her arm and shoulder checked out. Angela was still in a state of denial. Yesterday had been wrong on so many levels it wasn’t even funny. Her moral compass had been spun upside down and she was seriously hating herself right now. She had more integrity than to let a suspect manipulate her like that.
Didn’t she?
Her only defense was that it had been a long time since she’d been involved with anyone. But was that a real defense? It just made her sound sad and desperate if she was considering criminals. If he was a criminal.
The doctor eyed her wound and warned her that the seven stitches she’d gotten at the emergency room would have to be removed in a week or so, and to not strain herself until then. Same with the opposite shoulder. Not broken but definitely sore. Rest and heating pad. In other words, she was on desk duty. Her captain was a stickler for the rules. He wouldn’t release her for street work until the doctor did.
Angela signed her paperwork and left the office, at loose ends. Captain Mitchell had given her three days off, with orders to stay out of the office. Though he’d been impressed with her bagging of the drug dealers, he’d been curious abo
ut her lack of information on the mysterious helpful citizen. Angela was a better cop than to let those kinds of details slip by her, even if she was dazed from the knock-down, drag out fight.
When she got into the car she had no clear direction in mind. She was just restless. It was damn frustrating being a wounded duck. When she found herself on Sixteenth Street she treated herself to a bowl of salted caramel peanut butter cup from the Little Man Ice Cream Company. As she sat at one of the tables surrounding the milk can shaped creamery, she wondered what she could do with herself for the next three days. She could go see her parents. Ugh. Like she wanted to deal with all that drama.
Maybe she’d go talk to Mr. Wilde again at that detective agency. If the guy in the alley was the guy he’d been looking for a while ago it may be worth taking the time.
Aiden blinked awake, rolling his head against the brick wall. When he’d finally been too tired to walk anymore, he’d found a dark corner and sat on the ground. He wouldn’t lay down— that would make him too vulnerable— but he would lean his head back and snooze.
But of course the dreams had come, just like they always did. They were so clear they were chilling. Even as he blinked the predawn light into his vision, and the Denver skyline loomed above him, he could still see the jungle superimposed over everything. And stalking every move he made were Priscilla Mattingly’s ice blue eyes.
She’d been such a cold-hearted bitch and one scene played in his dreams regularly. It would always be his first impression of the woman. The first day she’d flown in to evaluate the camp she’d walked up to his cage and stared at him like he was less than dirt. He didn’t realize it at the time but he’d been surveyed and evaluated in those few seconds she’d looked at him, and deemed barely passable in the Spartan program. Minutes later, two men he hadn’t known by name, only sight, had been deemed unsuitable. They’d been close to dead already, suffering, so it had almost been a mercy when she’d ordered one of the Brazilian Army guards to shoot them. He’d heard the shots and felt the ripples of anxiety from the other men, but it hadn’t been until the bodies had been carried into the med center that he’d known they were dead.
