Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  Sam was acting like a child in the company of the movie star he’d admired all his life. It was weird, hearing him act that way.

  “This bitch was one of several Gray Wolf operatives I vetted with a friend of mine. We were pulling a game on that woman—Joss Michaels—and we needed to know as much as we could about the female operatives. I remember her because that red hair stands out.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck! He knew who she was!

  I had to get her out of there. I pressed my back to the side of the building, FBI protocol playing in my mind. I needed to call for back up. I needed to do this by the book. But if I waited for help, Kari could be dead before they arrived. I couldn’t take that risk.

  I compromised. I stepped away from the building and tugged my burner phone out of my pocket. The phone they had was the one Sam had issued me when he gave me the job, the phone he used to boss me around when I wasn’t on the premises. But there were a dozen burner phones hidden in the back of my getaway car.

  I tried to anticipate every need.

  I dialed 911. When the operator answered, I gave the address of the warehouse, then dropped the phone, leaving the line open.

  I charged back up to the warehouse, tugging the two pistols out of my waistband. I fired as I stepped through the open door, hitting Jorge in the shoulder. He spun around even as his blood was still flying around him, pulling his gun free of his holster. We fired at the same instant, my bullet hitting him square in the chest, his grazing the flesh on my outer thigh.

  Sam dove behind the chair where Kari was handcuffed, her muffled voice calling out to me from under the piece of tape. I didn’t see Michaels at first, but felt the bullet that slammed into my hip. I spun around, firing as I did. I hit his arm, but not bad enough to slow him down. I fired again—over and again—watching as three, six, eight bullets slammed into his body. He didn’t go down until the tenth hit him, slicing a hole between his eyes. He fell back, slamming hard against the concrete.

  I walked over, my gun trained on him. Michaels was gone, obliterated from this earth by my bullets.

  I turned and checked Jorge. He was still alive, but he was bleeding out quickly, a pool of blood the size of a small car spreading out around him.

  Kari was jerking against her restraints, mumbling from under the tape over her mouth.

  Sam fired his weapon, aiming for my head but grazing my shoulder instead. I smiled, barely registering the damage.

  “Thank you. You just gave me cause to blow you off this planet!”

  Sam scurried back, moving behind a concrete pillar like I could walk around it and fire directly into his head.

  “We didn’t hurt her, man! We just wanted to talk to her. Michaels wanted to know why Gray Wolf won’t leave him alone!”

  “I’m sure he knows.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  I limped around the pillar just in time to find Sam trying to reload his gun. I’d only been aware of one shot he’d fired, but he must have fired more while I was dealing with Michaels and Jorge. I pressed the muzzle of my gun to his forehead and watched as he released his bladder right there on the floor.

  “The name Lisa Boyles mean anything to you, Sam?”

  He shivered, making the gun vibrate in my hand. “It’s just a story I tell, man.”

  “You didn’t kill her?”

  He hesitated, trying not to look at me at the same time he angled his head to look up. “You’re going to kill me either way.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Yeah, man, I shot her.”

  I pulled the trigger on my gun, but the clip was empty. I pulled it again and again, listened to the click, watching Sam shutter with each sound.

  “What did you do to her?”

  Sam shook his head, his whole body shaking as I continued to hold one gun against his head, the other at my side. His eyes wouldn’t leave the other gun as he tried to remember how many times I’d fired.

  I couldn’t remember how many times I’d fired. I might have a bullet in the other gun. Might not.

  “What did you do?”

  Sam shuddered. “It wasn’t my idea, man! She wasn’t my type. But Rahul said I couldn’t let her talk to me that way, couldn’t let her get away with that sort of behavior. He was the one who told me to take her, where to take her. But he was the one who…”

  “Who what?”

  Sam shuttered again, turning his head slightly away from me. “He’s crazy, man. He likes to do these insane things to girls before he kills them. I couldn’t even watch!”

  “What did he do?”

  “He raped her, man. And not just rape. Humiliation. He forced her—”

  I hit him with the butt of the gun and watched his nose break into a pile of bloody mush. He cried out, his hands immediately moving to the mess.

  “You watched? You didn’t do anything?”

  “What was I supposed to do? I’m just a flunky, man! They let me stick around to do the dirty work, but I’m not like them. I’m not a leader!”

  “You watched him torture my sister and did nothing to stop it and you want me to feel sorry for you!?”

  A new fear filled Sam’s eyes. “She was your sister?”

  “Surprised?”

  Sam shook his head. “It’s just…she’s white and you…”

  “Not all families fit a cookie-cutter mold, asshole.”

  I hit him again with the butt of the gun, watching him fall into a heap at the base of the pillar, no longer able to sit up. I lifted the other gun and pressed it to his temple. He began to cry, big sobbing cry that added to the mess of his nose. I pulled the trigger on both guns. His scream drowned out the double click.

  Sirens filled the air around us. Kari was mumbling against the tape over her mouth, trying to say something to me. I ignored it all, popping out the clips on both guns and watching them fall to the floor before I pulled out new ones. Sam began to cry louder, begging for his life in a voice muffled by his broken nose.

  “I waited eight years to find out what happened to her. Eight years of holding on to the hope that the cops were right and she’d, for some inexplicable reason, left behind all our plans and ran off with some guy. Eight years of asking questions of people who didn’t like giving answers, eight years of missing her and praying every day that whatever had happened was not as dark and deprived as I was afraid it was.”

  I slammed one clip into the butt of one gun, watching him cower at my feet.

  “All those years, I knew about you, knew about the Mahoney taking over the club. I knew your reputation, knew there was a possibility you were behind it all. And then they found her body.”

  I slammed the other clip into the other gun.

  “I knew the moment I saw a copy of the autopsy report that it was you. The way you place your bullets? It’s your signature, isn’t it, Sam?’

  He was bawling now, curled into a fetal position on the cold, concrete floor.

  “I’ve dreamed of this moment, played it out in my head a million times. I’ve imagined what it would look like, a bullet in your fucking head! One in your groin and one in your chest, just like you did to her.”

  I aimed one gun at his crotch, the other at his head. He wouldn’t even look up now. He was crying like a child denied dessert.

  I fired, the satisfaction almost as good as I’d always imagined.

  Chapter 21

  Kari

  “Don’t rip the damn shirt, man! It’s vintage!”

  Tommy grabbed the bottom hem of his shirt and tugged it over his head, exposing the bullet wound in his shoulder. I wondered if he was going to strip out of his jeans, too, to expose the two bullets below his waist, but he sat heavily on the gurney, largely ignoring the activity around him. Instead, he tugged me into his arms and kissed my forehead, my nose, my lips – much to the frustration of the paramedic.

  “You’re okay?” he asked for the thousandth time.

  “I’m f
ine. They didn’t hurt me.”

  “He kept his hands to himself?”

  “Knowledge that I was a cop, as he put it, cooled his ardor.”

  Tommy nodded, refusing to let go of me even as the paramedic kept attempting to push me aside with his elbow. It wasn’t until the massive rolling doors at the front of the warehouse popped open that Tommy let me go, watching as they two body bags left the warehouse, followed by Sam Wilson in handcuffs. Sam looked a little worse for wear, but was the only other person beside me to leave the warehouse without a bullet in him.

  Tommy had threatened to put a bullet in him, but when he finally fired his weapons, he aimed at the floor next to Sam’s body. Chips of concrete buried themselves in his skin, but he was otherwise unharmed by the shot.

  I had to admit, I’d been a little frightened that Tommy would kill Sam. I was relieved to find he hadn’t.

  Though, hearing what Sam said, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.

  I turned back to Tommy, stealing a kiss as the paramedic fussed around him. He kissed me back quite willingly, his hands coming around my waist to tug me higher up on his lap. But my knee knocked into the wound on his hip and he groaned, prompting me to move away.

  “You’ve been shot. You need to go to the hospital.”

  “These can wait.”

  “Don’t care. You still need to go to the hospital.”

  He grabbed for me, but I ducked out of his reach. He smiled, but then the paramedic pressed a bandage against his hip and he cried out, pain clear on every inch of his handsome face.

  “We’ll be taking him to Medical Center.”

  I watched them load him into the ambulance and slam the doors before they drove away. I turned and nearly walked straight into Joss.

  “What a night,” she said.

  I nodded, accepting the blanket she draped over my shoulders. I tugged it closer, not realizing how cold I’d been until I felt its warmth.

  “You’ll need to answer some questions about all this, but I think it can wait until this afternoon.”

  I turned to watch the sun come up over the horizon. “I’m sorry Michaels is dead. I guess we won’t be able to find out where Rahul Rush is now.”

  “It’s alright. We got these bad guys off the street. That’s what matters.”

  Despite her words, I could hear the disappointment underneath. I turned back to her and studied her face, saw the exhaustion marked by the dark circles under her eyes.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She just nodded, patting my shoulder lightly. “There’s a car waiting to take you to the hospital. We’ll be in touch later in the day.”

  I was taken to the hospital and checked out in the emergency room before I was allowed to go upstairs where they were already operating on Tommy. Audra and Shaw showed up as I waited, as did Erin and Tony and Jules and a couple other operatives from Gray Wolf. As we sat there waiting, my needs quickly met before I could even express them, I realized what a family I’d developed here at Gray Wolf. I’d never felt a part of something as quickly as I did this group of people. And I was deeply grateful for them.

  But I was alone when I was finally allowed to see Tommy. He looked so big and dark in the small bed, the white sheets pulled up over his chest. I knew there were bandages, at least one bullet removed, and torn flesh repaired. He’d have scars now, his perfect flesh marred. I held his hand and whispered my feelings for him as I waited for him to wake.

  “Me, too,” he whispered gruffly when he finally woke, squeezing my fingers in his. “I love you, too.”

  I leaned close and kissed him, our lips lingering despite the sour smell of sleep on his breath. I smoothed his hair away from his face and then smacked him lightly.

  “Don’t get shot again!”

  “I’d do it again and again if it meant saving you from monsters like that.”

  How could I argue with that? I kissed him again, tears finally making their way down my face.

  “I don’t love easily. Don’t make me regret wasting it on you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He made a movement to salute, but his IV prevented his arm from bending properly. Instead, he just patted my arm. “I won’t make you regret anything.”

  I sighed, telling myself how incredibly lucky I was, when the door opened and a couple of FBI agents came in, one snapping a pair of handcuffs on Tommy’s wrist.

  “Thomas Roberts, you’re under arrest for interference in a federal investigation and the attempted murder of Sam Wilson.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I jumped up, confronting one of the agents. “You’re charging him with attempting to murder the man who murdered his sister? What about the other two men who died in that warehouse tonight?”

  “More charges might be pending, but this is where we’re starting,” a new man said as he came through the door. I recognized him.

  Mike Spencer.

  “You can’t arrest him! Without him, I would be dead!”

  “We’re taking that into consideration, Ms. Reyes.”

  “You’re taking it into consideration? Well, isn’t that big of you! You people and your—”

  “Stop, Kari,” Tommy said, his voice firm despite his recent surgery. “We both knew this would happen.”

  “I can’t just sit back and let them do this!”

  “It’s just for now. We’ll fight it.”

  I turned, stopped glaring at Spencer long enough to take in the exhaustion in Tommy’s voice. I went back to the bed and crawled up beside him, laying my head on his chest.

  “You’re not taking him anywhere now.”

  “No.”

  “Damn right.”

  Chapter 22

  Joss

  “You had to place him under arrest?”

  “It’s protocol.”

  I sighed as I sank into my office chair, studying Mike as I did. He looked as exhausted as I felt.

  “What happens now?”

  “He’ll be arraigned once he’s out of the hospital. And then the district attorney decides what the final charges should be.”

  “Attempted murder on Sam Wilson is a bit of a stretch.”

  “Yeah, well, my boss is pretty pissed that he took out Michaels. Like you, we thought Michaels could point us not only to Rahul Rush, but any other members of the Mahoney Cartel still lingering in the state.”

  “That I might be able to help you with.” I set a file on the center of my desk and watched him pick it up. “Ash has a source, the same source who pointed us toward the Red Door. This source named a dozen people associated with Mahoney who are still active in the state.”

  “This is credible?”

  I inclined my head.

  “Who’s the source?”

  “I don’t know. Someone in the governor’s office, I believe.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me! The governor’s office?”

  “It’s what Ash said to me when I asked. I don’t know how true it is. He has been known to lie to protect a source.”

  “That’s a hell of a lie.”

  “It’s not necessarily a lie.”

  Mike shook his head. “If you could get your hands on this all along, why go through with this damn case?”

  “I didn’t know he had it until he presented it to me this morning.”

  Mike was clearly annoyed. He picked up his case and headed for the door. “Tell Ash that he and I need to talk.”

  “That’s something you should probably do yourself.”

  Mike slammed out of the office and the sounds of a confrontation followed. I got up and pressed myself between him and Kari while Jules did her best to get Kari under control. Kari made a threating move toward me and Jules jerked her back much harder than necessary, causing her to hit her head on the wall.

  “Stop it!” I cried as Kari jumped to her feet and made a threatening move toward Jules.

  Jules moved between me and Kari, backing into me so that I was pressed back against Mike. He took my arms and pulled m
e backward. I shook loose, annoyed by the whole damn thing.

  “Everyone calm down, for goodness sakes! We’re all on the same team here.”

  “Are we?” Kari demanded, smoothing down the front of her blazer. “I don’t see anyone besides Mike arresting the man who saved my life!”

  “I explained—”

  “Stop!” I turned and gestured for him to go into my office. Then I focused on Kari, gesturing to her, too. “Let’s get this all out into the open so we can stop this nonsense once and for all.”

  Jules stood off to one side, watching Kari closely. If everyone hadn’t been so mad, they might have seen something on her face that would give my secret away and that was the last thing I wanted. Once Kari was in my office with Mike, I focused on her.

  “You’re my office manager, Jules. Please try to remember that.”

  Hurt flashed across her face, but she inclined her head in agreement.

  I walked into my office to find Mike and Kari glaring at each other from opposite corners. I briefly wondered who would win in a boxing match and decided it would likely be Kari, much to Mike’s humiliation.

  That made me smile—forgive me, Mike.

  “Mike, you want to explain to us why the bureau felt the need to arrest Thomas Roberts?”

  He glanced at me, the same hurt look on his face that had been on Jules’.

  “Thomas Roberts conducted an unauthorized investigation into Sam Wilson and then he put himself—and the bureau—at unnecessary risk in order to follow through with his investigation. Mr. Roberts then tortured an unarmed man—”

  “Unarmed? Sam took shots at him while he was trying to save my life!”

  “But he was unarmed by the time he approached him. And, according to Mr. Wilson’s affidavit, he held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger several times.”

  “And you’re going to believe a criminal over a decorated soldier?”

  Kari glared at Mike. Mike glanced at me, but when he saw I wasn’t going to be helpful, he sighed.

  “I don’t want to do this, either, Ms. Reyes, but I have no choice. Roberts never found any substantial proof that Wilson killed Ms. Boyles. If we had that proof, the bureau would be in a position to treat this as an internal disciplinary issue rather than a criminal issue. Without it…”