by D. D. Ayres
“Fuck that.” The bikers moved back to their bikes, gunned their motors, then burned rubber as they swung their motorcycles around and roared out of the alley in the opposite direction.
Scott turned his head toward Cole, a ghost of a smile on his features. “Reholster my weapon, and then don’t move or speak.”
He turned, arms raised, toward the police officers coming their way with drawn guns and flashlights. He remained so that his body almost completely shielded her.
“Step away, slowly, sir.”
“I’d rather not.” He turned his hand slowly to show he held his badge in his right hand. “DEA law enforcement.”
One of the officers shone his light on the badge.
“Who do you have with you, sir?”
“My wife.”
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Cole stuck her left hand out from under Scott’s right sleeve and offered them a little wave. At the same time she reached up under his shirttail with her right and tucked his gun into his waistband.
“She’s shy.” Scott smiled at the two officers. He saw them exchange glances. “I know. We were breaking a few rules. We were just warming up for the ride home. No fault no foul.”
One of the officers snickered. “Take it home. It’s not safe out here.”
“So I noticed. Thanks.”
When the police had turned away Scott pivoted toward her. She plowed into him and gripped him as tight as she possibly could.
“You’re shivering.” Scott took her by the shoulders and tried to push her away so he could see her face. “Cole?” But she clung to him like he was a life raft.
He closed his arms and held her. “It’s okay. We were never in serious trouble. I would have announced I was in law enforcement next. I just didn’t want—” He felt her body heave and shudder inside his embrace. It felt suspiciously like a sob.
He couldn’t quite believe it. Nothing made her cry but slaughtered puppies and—him.
“Shit. I’m sorry, baby. I know I shouldn’t have brought you out here like this. I didn’t think…” He closed his mouth. That was the problem. He’d been too horny to think—about her, about the possible dangers, about her reputation, and worse.
Bikers. Coincidence, or something more? He needed to get her off the street to find out.
After a few more seconds he bent and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry but we need to get off the street. Now.”
She dropped her arms and stepped back. In the dim light he could see tear tracks on her face. He scrubbed one away with a thumb. “You poor kid.”
Cole pushed his hand away. “I’m sorry. I freaked. That was unprofessional.”
Scott didn’t reply to that. It was one thing to be a police officer in full gear facing down the bad guys you knew were out there. It was another thing altogether to be caught butt naked in a public alley. “Don’t worry about it. It’s over.”
For a few seconds Cole didn’t move, locked in the creepy-crawly sensation of nightmare memories hatched by the last few minutes.
The outlaw biker grabbing her butt on the empty stretch of highway.
His leer as he moved in close to let her know he had rape, and probably worse, on his mind.
If she hadn’t had her gun …
If Scott hadn’t been carrying tonight.…
“Cole?”
Cole jerked as if slapped. Scott was standing in front her with her shoes in his hand. Slowly the chill of the alley asphalt under her bare feet began to penetrate her senses. She took them. “My panties?”
Grim-faced, he moved a little away and scooped up a rag of red lace from a darkness her eyes could not penetrate. “There you go.”
She waved them away. The action helped move her back to the edge of rational thought. The way she had behaved required an explanation. She put on her shoes saying, “I need to explain.”
“Later.”
He glanced back up the alley, still as Hugo on alert. She could feel the air around him vibrate with watchfulness and something she couldn’t guess at.
He turned and grabbed her hand. “Let’s move.”
As he moved toward the street, he pulled her in under the protection of his arm until he could get them off the street.
Instead of returning to the pizzeria, he hurried her into a coffee shop and ordered two double espressos. His expression was harsh as he waited for her to take a sip. “Tell me what happened out there.”
“I had a flashback, sort of.” Cole felt her cheeks catch fire with embarrassment. “There was an incident near Harmonie Kennels last week. With a guy on a motorcycle.”
Scott went still as stone. “What guy?”
“I didn’t know him. But he wore a Pagan jacket.”
“Start at the beginning. I want to know everything.” The passionate lover in the alley had been replaced by the law-enforcement officer interrogating a witness.
She told him the story as matter-of-factly as she could.
Scott tried to hear what she was telling him about how she’d pulled her weapon on her assailant and held him off. But the primitive protect-my-woman rage building in him was quickly blocking reason and logic, or even his relief that she was a trained and prepared law-enforcement officer who knew how to protect herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this at the time?”
Cole met his hard stare. In the bright lights of the shop she felt that she had overreacted. Scott’s pissed-off expression seemed to confirm that.
“You were with your family. But that’s not the only reason. I didn’t tell anyone.”
Scott’s gaze sharpened. “What about Richards? He loaned you the bike.”
“No. I didn’t want to come off as a victim.” She paused. She’d probably blown whatever credibility she had on that score in the alley just now. Even so, it helped her ego to say the words out loud. “I’m a cop. I was armed. I can take care of myself. I did that.”
When she was done Scott’s expression was so hard and cold his face might as well have been made from local Cockeysville granite. His eyes were scary. His once kissable mouth was pinched to a white line.
After a second he scraped back in an almost violent action and left the table.
Worry curled through Cole’s middle as she watched him stiff-arm his way through the front doors of the coffee shop. But she had seen the look on his face. It said Follow at your own risk.
He needed space. She would respect that. For five minutes. And then she was pretty sure she’d be in need of something to smash, too.
Scott paced back and forth in front of the shop, trying to marshal his emotions. Three years earlier he wouldn’t have stopped on the sidewalk. He would have thrown a leg over his motorcycle and roared off into the night in search of X. He would have searched until he found him or, if not him, some Pagan with whom he could start a fight so he could pound on him until he felt better. The outlaw way. He’d absorbed that part of his undercover persona a little too well. He’d been a Ranger, and SWAT. He knew how to inflict pain. But his temper was what had washed him out of the most elite Special Ops.
“You think with your heart, dickwad” was Gabe’s affectionate explanation after Scott had been told he was out. “You can’t do what we do and think with heart or dick or any part of you that is attached to emotion. You’re a good man. Lots of good men aren’t cut out for this. That’s not a bad thing. Hell, it might be a good thing. Learning to live without essential parts of yourself comes at a great cost. The folks got one idiot for a son. You be the upstanding citizen.”
Except his parents were minus one son. And “the upstanding citizen” was not how he was viewed by at least one of them. Not that that mattered a flying fuck at the moment.
Scott wiped his mouth with a hand. Even in the so-called real world emotions could fuck a guy up. Rage roiled within him, making the coffee in his belly feel like lit jet fuel.
A year of anger management teetered on being blown to hell because some
thing had finally gotten under that bunker of control he’d built between “then” and “now” with real blood, sweat, and unshed tears. That something was Cole’s safety.
The thought of anyone hurting Cole made him want to tear up shit.
Instead, he gulped back the hot tangle of rage and anxiety choking him, and continued pacing until the action began to slow the hammering of his heart.
Cole had had to face X without any idea of who he was or why he had accosted her. If she’d been any less prepared, or unarmed, that meeting might have had a far different conclusion. And that would have been on his head. He hadn’t warned her.
Scott’s sudden burst of profanity, while spoken low, startled a couple coming toward him. They hesitated on the sidewalk then gave him a wide berth as they hurried past into the coffee shop.
He gave himself points for continuing to pace but the need to punch something took a while to control.
When the blinding haze of anger lifted he noticed Cole standing a few feet away, arms and legs crossed as she leaned against a lamppost.
When he stopped before her, she tilted her head to look up at him. “You done?”
His face was still hard with anger. “You should have told me.”
Worn out and battered by ecstasy run over by terror, Cole could no longer be calm or accommodating.
She launched herself away from the pole, getting up in his face as righteous anger powered her words. “I’m not your damn girlfriend.”
She lowered her voice but not its intensity. “I’m your partner. So you’re going to tell me what it is that I don’t know. Now.”
Scott found he still had the capacity to smile. “You want to take this somewhere private?”
* * *
“What part of ‘don’t get yourself dead’ did you not get?” Dave Wilson rubbed his forehead, an action Scott could perceive through his cell phone, because they were doing FaceTime.
“The essential part.” Scott shifted on the park bench where he sat. “You know as well as I do, he’s calling me out. First my parents, now my task force partner. X will continue to escalate. I need to stop him before people instead of things get hurt. At least this way I can control when and where.”
“I can’t get you backup on this, you know that.”
“Right. No probable cause.” By the time he got hard evidence people might have been injured, or worse.
“What about the woman? If she pressed charges that would change the game.”
“She can’t do that without blowing her cover.” At least X didn’t know about their undercover operation. They weren’t undercover when he’d accosted Cole. Since then they’d been living under aliases. Still, X had been savvy enough to put them together, and have them terrorized in an alley. Which meant X or the people he was paying were watching Scott’s every move.
That sent Scott’s temper flaring a few degrees. It was like he was a damn lab rat, watched for his reactions to stimuli X applied.
“What about the task force?” Dave’s pale face seemed to float forward, free of his body. “You could put that in jeopardy if you go after X. You can bet your ass Lattimore will have something to say about it.”
“I’m not telling him anything, unless I have to.” Scott shoved a hand through his hair. “I’m the expendable part of this operation. I can be replaced. But that doesn’t mean X will back off from my partner.”
“What’s your number one priority here?” That had been Dave’s favorite phrase three years ago when he thought Scott was about to screw up because he’d become too passionate about an idea or a cause.
“The job.” Scott’s tone gave nothing away. Protecting Cole was actually his number one priority. But that wasn’t something Dave needed to hear.
“Then act like it. Let me handle X. You complete your mission and then we’ll talk to the right people about this.”
Scott nodded but they both knew it was only to move the conversation along. “I need you to dig deeper into X’s background. There’s something we’re missing. Not even the Pagans would dare go publicly after a cop. He’s after me. Yet I haven’t been knifed in the dark. I need to know why.”
“Maybe he’s just a sick twisted sumbitch. He doesn’t need a reason for what he does.”
“Screw that. Even crazy has motivation. I need to know what kind his crazy is.”
“Meanwhile?”
“I’m going to have a little talk with the ass wipe. What’s his parole officer’s number?”
Dave shook his head like a disappointed parent. “Let me know what you’re going to do before you do it, just so I can keep the paperwork current.”
Scott punched to end the call and stared out at nothing while his thoughts rearranged themselves.
Eventually the park and Cole came into focus. She was on the far side of the green lawn park where they’d come so she could exercise Hugo in an Agility-ring-sized environment for the competition tomorrow in Baltimore.
She wore shorts and a tee that read AGILITY: BE THE DOG. As she ran, taking Hugo over the three jumps she set up, he could hear her voice offering her partner encouragement. Hugo’s happy barks carried back to him more clearly than her words but he understood them both. They were in sync. The running and sudden swerves and double backs were a game. The flash of tan legs caught his attention for a while. Then he let her laughter echo in his ears like some sort of goddamn sultry siren wind chimes.
He had thought what might bring them back together would be the sex. Damn. It was better than before, if that was possible. Cole had become a woman very sure of herself and her needs, and of how to get what she wanted.
He’d learned something else last night, after every lustful feeling had been satisfied. Standing in that alley in that awful moment when he realized his actions had put her in jeopardy, he’d understood what he had only given lip service to before. She was a good police officer. Afraid, sure, but she still unconditionally had his back.
And he knew now he would willingly protect her life with his.
Not just because it was his sworn duty to protect and serve. Not because it was the right thing to do. Not even because he was responsible for their trouble.
I love her. That simple. No greater reason.
He’d known it all along but buried it so deep he thought he could live with it thumping underground like an undead thing. Yet the moment he heard her voice on the phone a month or so ago, those feelings shot from the earth like a phoenix from the ashes of their marriage. And now he knew something more.
He wasn’t going to make it without her in his life.
Even her blistering anger was a hundred times better than the bitter lonely regrets that had gnawed at him these past two years. The first time she set eyes on him in Lattimore’s office, it had been like she’d set fire to him. He felt fully alive for the first time since she walked out. This feeling wasn’t something he would willingly give up again.
What they had was still searing hot. But this humming feeling inside him, even when she wasn’t looking at him, was what she did for him. He was one mangy lovesick sorry-ass bastard not to own it all along. She made him feel worthy.
No one before Nicole Jamieson had ever made him feel worthy. Not his parents. Certainly not his untouchable older brother, Gabe. Only Cole did that for him. And he was grateful enough to learn that lesson a second time. He would never, no matter what happened now, squander it with less than his best.
X was after Cole, had been stalking her while Scott hadn’t even considered that possibility after his parents’ home was wrecked. Once again he’d allowed passion to overrule methodical good sense. Gabe would be laughing his ass off at the mistake.
Scott swallowed hard, forcing down personal emotions as he tried to think objectively. X had not succeeded. Cole was not helpless. Twice she’d made the correct judgments. He could trust her professionalism and instincts to keep her safe now that she was aware of the danger X presented.
They had talked after they got home last
night. He’d told her about X, and his suspicions about the reason his parents’ home was wrecked. She was surprised but not frightened. Law-enforcement professionals, particularly local police officers, knew it was just a matter of time before they were confronted by a felon they had had a part in putting away. Occasionally one of them came looking for vengeance. Most of them could be faced down by simply calling them out on the spot. Big talk was cheap. Even felons knew that taking on one police officer meant taking on the entire force. The Blue took care of their own.
So now Cole was warned.
But that didn’t exactly solve the problem.
Dave was right. He should tell Lattimore about X. But if he did so, Lattimore might pull him, probably would pull him, off the task force. The Pagans ran drugs, among other things, for a living. If X continued to track him he could learn enough to jeopardize the task force operation. However, if he, Scott, bowed out there was no guarantee that X would follow him and leave Cole and the operation alone.
Scott rubbed his jaw, trying to think dispassionately like the DEA agent he was. He’d never before let personal feelings get between him and cold hard reality.
But Cole had never been up against anyone like X.
And that made it personal.
He was probably breaking protocol, maybe even DEA rules, but he needed to stay very close to Cole until he had neutralized X. He wasn’t going to give Lattimore an excuse to pull him. He’d deal with the consequences if and when he needed to. Until then, Cole’s welfare was his main objective.
His past couldn’t be allowed to further jeopardize his family or Cole. He’d have to find a way to take X out before the prick had a chance to make his next move.
X wanted his attention? He had it. One hundred and fifty percent. He just hoped the bastard made it easy for him to take him down the hard way.
Cole came running up with Hugo bouncing along beside her as if he not yet had a workout. Cole was another story. Sweat plastered her slant of bangs to her forehead and made her face gleam. But it was her smile that pushed the air from his lungs.
