Duck and Run

by TL Schaefer

  If they’d been caught in the bathroom by England’s goons, they would have been mincemeat.

  Because he was a man, he had absolutely no problem dividing his attention between the warm woman plastered against his body and the threat outside. It wasn’t as if he could do much unless and until they discovered the crawl space, which he seriously doubted. Cristine had been right, it was a perfect hiding spot.

  As they listened to the search going on above them via ancient floor joists, Nick inhaled the scent of the woman who’d captured him, for good or bad.

  Her voice, when she’d been comparing herself to the black plague, had been so matter of fact, so dry, he’d had to restrain himself from showing her how gorgeous she was. When her gaze had met his, he’d seen how much she believed her pronouncement, even if she was applying it to their current circumstances. Instead, he’d seen the woman beneath, the woman who’d been tried and condemned by the very people who should have stood beside her. Her brethren. Cops. Him.

  And as much as he’d like to pawn his kiss off as something altruistic, it was anything but. The moment his lips had touched hers, the world had erupted in flame.

  The door to the basement stairs creaked open, the sound of wood on wood slithering up Nick’s spine. He tightened his grip on the pistol and pushed the tiny door leading to the crawlspace open an inch.

  The room was still cast in iffy darkness, then a flashlight beam pierced the gloom. Nick eased the door back half an inch, and seconds later the overhead bulb blazed to life, sending a shaft of light into their hidey-hole. Nick pulled Cris even harder against his body and nosed the barrel of the pistol up against the crack. If anyone got curious, they’d get a face full of lead.

  “Clear down here, boss,” a male voice sang out before plunging the room back into darkness.

  Beneath the curve of his arm, Nick felt Cristine give out a soundless huff of relief. While he shared the emotion, he wouldn’t put it above these goombahs to lay in wait, especially if they spied the cell phone.

  He leaned in until his lips grazed her ear. Pure male satisfaction surged through him as she shivered beneath his breath. “Let’s give them a few minutes to clear out.”

  She nodded and moved away, or at least as far away as she could, given their circumstances. It didn’t make all that much of a difference, and Nick allowed himself a few moments to soak in the warmth of her beneath his arm, the curve of her hip against his.

  The dampness and humidity in the air began to creep into his bones for the second time that day, stiffening his left knee, making it throb dully.

  The creak and groan of the old floorboards above their heads finally ceased, and they waited another ten minutes before sliding out of the crawlspace. Nick egressed first, then reached up to help Cristine down. She slipped down his body, bringing the erection that had been at half-mast the entire time they’d been enclosed in the tiny space to raging life. When she stepped away with a long exhale, he immediately felt the loss, but soldiered up. They would discuss what had happened between them today…later.

  He shook out his leg and headed for the stairs. This time, he took point, his back against the staircase wall, Beretta at the ready. He edged into the kitchen, finding it empty, then cleared each room with the same caution, and the same result. England and his goons were gone, or at least not in the house. Where they went from here was a whole ‘nother story.

  Chapter 7

  Cris stood in the office, cursing as she looked at charging cord that should have been attached to her phone. The bastards had taken it.

  “I’m so screwed,” she turned to Nick, angrier than she could remember being in a long, long time. In fact, pure rage boiled through her in a way she hadn’t experienced, even two years ago. “That thing has my whole life in it. Direct contact to my family, everything.” They’d know exactly who she was.

  Nick leaned against the wall, arms crossed, the expression on his face pure alpha male, pure pissed-off cop. “You’re not in this alone, Cristine,” he said quietly. “I pulled you into this mess, even if it was unintentionally. I’ll get you out of it.”

  She laughed, and it wasn’t kind. “Don’t think you can shoulder all the blame on this. I embroiled myself when I suggested you come here. I should have kicked you to the curb.”

  “Yes, you should have,” he replied, his body vibrating with coiled violence. “But that doesn’t do us any good in the here and now.” He pushed away from the wall and stalked toward her. There was no other way to describe it.

  The Beretta hung loose in one big hand as he closed the distance until a scant inch of charged air separated them. He reached out with his other hand and pushed a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind one ear. The gesture was surprisingly tender given their circumstances. “We need to get out of here. Any ideas?”

  Cris took a deep breath, and instead of calming her, she drew in the clean, spicy scent of him, again. In helpless response, she took a long step back, distancing herself from him, from the temptation of doing exactly the opposite and closing the distance, crushing her mouth to his, regardless of the danger they were currently in.

  When she spoke, her voice came out stronger than she’d expected. “We have to believe they’re watching the place. While they have the cell, I’ve still got a landline. They know I’m affiliated with Linc already, so what’s to stop him from coming to get us? I don’t want to go to OCPD because England might be a cop, regardless of what moniker he’s going by, so we need to find a place to hole up until Linc can give us better intel.”

  Nick grunted in agreement, his eyes never leaving her face. She wished she knew what he was thinking. Instead of doing something stupid like asking, she brushed past him, striding down the hall to the phone in the kitchen. Then, for the second time that day, she called Linc. This time she got him.

  “Linc, it’s Cris. They found us. Before you ask, we’re fine. We hid out in the basement. But now we’re stuck in case they’re running surveillance. Can you get us out of here?” As she spoke, she wondered briefly if her phone, her home, had been bugged, then shook it off. The search had been cursory at best, and she’d bet dollars to donuts that they hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Brute violence seemed to be more their style.

  “Damn straight,” her mentor replied, anger lacing his voice. “I’ll call in SWAT if I have to.”

  “I don’t think we need to go to that extreme,” Cris said, smiling, as she knew he’d meant her to. “Just get us out of here, and in the meantime, Nick and I will figure out a place to go to ground until we find out what is going on.”

  “Give me twenty minutes,” Linc promised, then hung up.

  “We’ve got twenty minutes to come up with a short-term solution,” she told Nick, glancing at the clock as she did. “Wow, is it only two?”

  Nick sighed, and in it she heard his weariness. It echoed her own. “Yeah, it’s been one heck of a long day.”

  “So,” she said, and began pacing, humming beneath her breath, “where are we going to go?”

  “What are you singing?” Nick asked, his tone sharp.

  “Huh?” Cris stopped in mid-stride. “Oh, Living on Tulsa Time. You know, Don Williams. Sorry, it makes me think better.”

  “That’s it. Tulsa, at least for a few days. They don’t know who I am, they can’t. My cover is deep.”

  “So was mine,” she reminded him bitterly.

  “Yeah, but you were hiding from news people and such, not guys like these. We knew that going in, and using Nick Coleman only made it easier. My backstory is close to impenetrable, shy of having someone on the inside at the OSBI or within the task force, which I seriously doubt. We can hunker down at my place, bring Jacobsen in on all the details, and figure out what is going on.”

  Cris mulled it over for a moment. It made sense. But his statement about someone on the inside bothered her--a lot. She should doubt it, push it away as mere words, but she couldn’t, at least not yet. First they had to get
out of here in one piece.

  “Okay,” she dipped her head, acknowledging his idea was sound, “but we need to consider what the real Nick Coleman would have done. If I were him, I’d be on the first plane back to Detroit. The hotel could mail his things, settle his bill on a credit card, that sort of thing, so Jacobsen or Linc needs to book a bogus seat on one of the airlines. They can’t cover every entrance to the airport, or every ticket counter, and getting a passenger manifest these days is really hard, so all they’d be able to find out is that he skedaddled after the fact.”

  “Good, good,” Nick muttered, and began pacing, a mimic to her motion a moment ago. “I’ll call Jacobsen in a minute and have him set the wheels in motion.”

  Cris watched him, allowing herself a moment to admire the way the soft material of the sweatpants and tee shirt clung to his muscled body. Then that moment was gone and rage and more than a bit of shame licked through her as she realized what had bugged her a moment ago. She was running. Again.

  No, it wasn’t the same as Austin, but it was running all the same.

  “What?” Nick asked from the other side of the kitchen, bringing his weapon up as he did.

  Cris spun, sure he saw one of their foes in the doorway. But there was no one. She realized he’d seen the expression on her face and reacted accordingly.

  “No, it’s nothing like that. I’m tired of running,” she ground out. “I’ve done enough of that.”

  It was a dandy of an opening, and one Nick didn’t hesitate to take.

  “So what really happened in Austin?” he asked, making sure he maintained eye contact with her.

  “None of your business,” she snapped.

  “It is my business if it’s going to factor into how you respond to a situation. Like it or not, we’re in this together now.”

  With his statement, her shoulders slumped. As much as he hated to see her this way, his statement was a valid one. He needed to know exactly what had happened in case it came into play in the here and now.

  Cristine raised her head. “It was a bloodbath.” Her words were stark, full of a bone-deep anguish. “They called me in on a hostage situation. The perp took three hostages when the bank job he was running went south. The FBI was still on their way in, and he was unstable enough to make the locals worry, so they called in their pet headshrinker.”

  “You’re a psychiatrist?”

  “Psychologist, or at least I was. I let my license lapse after Austin. Didn’t seem to be much of a reason to keep it.” Her tone was bitter now, defeated.

  “What happened?” Nick asked gently. Inside, his heart was breaking for her. For the strong woman who blamed herself for a what had happened.

  “We knew who he was, and a fast profile said he wouldn’t hurt a woman, so I went in, in full gear. Totally against protocols, but it felt right to me, and I convinced the incident commander.”

  She was there again. He could see it in the thousand-yard stare she’d developed. It was a look he knew all too well from his years in the Corps, from both men and women. That a civilian had it tore him to shreds.

  “I got close, real close. I should have taken him out immediately. The hostages were all men, people he’d have no compunction about killing if things got even worse. I should have listened to my gut.” Hopelessness, and a bit of self-directed fury colored her voice now. “Instead, I felt like I’d broken enough of the rules by getting on site and in his chili, so I followed protocol, tried to talk him out, tried to reason with him.”

  “You’re a doctor. You had to do it because of the Hippocratic Oath,” Nick said, but wasn’t sure if she heard him until her next words.

  “I was a cop first. A cop who knew the score, dammit. He wigged on something I said, we were never sure what, and killed the hostages. In the end, I did what I should have done the moment I stepped through the bank doors. I killed him, a single shot between the eyes. I was glad I did it, and honestly? I never lost a bit of sleep over it. But killing that bastard was just the start of it.

  “Lori Wright, his widow, couldn't accept that her husband was dead, insisted he’d been an innocent bystander who was caught up in it. She even went so far as to say I’d killed them all. Didn’t matter that everything had been recorded on the bank’s surveillance system. After IA cleared me, she went ballistic. Went on every talk show who would listen to her, claiming my family was covering it up. When that didn't get any traction, she filed a civil suit against me for wrongful death, tried to get the ACLU involved, claiming it was police brutality, and that his civil rights had been violated.

  “She tried everything, and when that didn't work, she tried to kill me."

  "What the f..." Nick started, but she held up one hand, forestalling him.

  "You asked for it, you're going to get it. All of it, even the stuff Linc complains I never talk about." She drew in a deep breath. "We kept most of her craziness out of the spotlight. No, we weren’t covering it up, but we weren’t going to let her turn it into more of a circus than it already was. It took a heap of money and a lot of family influence, but it worked. Yeah, the tabloids picked up on it, but no one really cared. Even Dad's political opponents couldn't find a way to turn it to their advantage, so it mostly went away. And that made Wright even nuttier.”

  Cristine paused, her gaze gone even more distant, if that was possible. “She road-raged me on this little side road about four months after the shooting. Scared me to death. I was just out for a drive, you know? Next thing I know, I’m basically running half in a ditch, and there’s an overpass coming up, and I’ve already passed the exit, and if I kept going the way I was going, I was as good as dead. Then she started firing, blew out the back window. I knew I couldn’t hit the brakes, otherwise she’d just do the same, and then shoot me. So, I did exactly the opposite. I cranked the wheel right back at her and prayed no one was coming the other way. And as I did, I caught sight of her through the window. She looked…unhinged. She was driving this tiny little aluminum POS and thought a tin can could actually take on a ‘68 Mustang. She was wrong. She ended up rolling the car, over and over and over. I didn’t stop, at least not for the first mile or so. When I finally did, my hands were shaking so badly I almost couldn’t dial 911.

  “The first responders found her unconscious, jacked up pretty good, but they were able to save her. She hasn’t been outside of custody since. Once she’d healed from her injuries, the psych eval showed her off the charts. She’s been on psych hold since then, they said she’s too disturbed to stand trial. Obviously I agree.”

  A lone tear escaped, streaking down her face before she angrily knuckled it away. “So, there you have it. And now you know why you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve been through the worst I can possibly imagine and come out the other side, mostly intact. If nothing else, the whole thing taught me something about myself. I always go with my intuition now. If I had followed it back then, none of this would’ve happened. It’s why I put down my piece, why I’ll never pick one up again. It’s why you’re standing here right now, rather than being zipped up in a body bag after England killed ‘Nick Coleman.’”

  Now she bordered on defiance, and Nick was glad to see it. Even after years of practice with his mother, he’d never known how to take a weeping woman. It wasn’t the tears, so much as the feeling that no matter what he said or did, he couldn’t make it right. As a man, he needed to fix things, to put them back in their normal order. And with women in tears, nothing he’d ever done had accomplished it. So, he’d stopped even trying, because he was all about being productive. He’d grown tired of the futility of failing too many years ago. But there was one thing he could do.

  He opened his arms. “C’mere.” His word wasn’t a request, but a command.

  She stiffened for a long moment, considering him through wary eyes. Whatever she saw must have reassured her, because she stepped into his embrace with only a modicum of resistance.

  He folded his arms around her, appreciating the feel of her sl
ight build, of the soft swell of her breasts against his chest, marveling at the concept that a woman so small, so dainty, should hold such a burden on her shoulders and still manage to spit in the world’s eye.

  He dropped a kiss to the top of her hair, and the action raised her head. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” she growled, sounding like a tigress.

  “I could never feel sorry for you, Cristine,” he replied, and dropped his lips to hers. It was instinctive, as natural as breathing. The kiss was as hot, as incendiary as their first, and filled his mind with images of silky sheets and sweat-slick bodies. He sunk into her taste, twining his hands through her hair as he held her captive, plundering her mouth with an intensity that bordered on desperation.

  It was Cristine who broke their embrace, just as she had not an hour ago. “Can’t,” she gasped as she pushed away, her breath as rough and choppy as his, her face flushed with rising desire.

  “What’s your gut say about this?” he asked, running the pad of his thumb over her swollen lower lip.

  She laughed, a soundless exhalation of air that drew his eyes to her breasts. She lifted his chin with her finger. “It’s telling me to drop down on the tile and have my way with you.”

  Nick’s blood boiled at her admission.

  “But we both know that now isn’t the time or the place.”

  He nodded in agreement. It galled that she was altogether correct. She had a clearer head than him, and what did that say about him as a cop? That he was too long out of the field, that’s what. He needed to start thinking with his big head, rather than his little one, if they were going to get out of this alive and see England and his cronies behind bars.

  “Linc should be here any minute. I’d like to pack a few changes of clothes. I’m also going to call Rob and see if he can hook us up with a car.”

  “He’d give you one of the yard’s cars?” Nick asked in surprise. From the few one-sided conversations he’d heard, her boss didn’t exactly strike him as the altruistic sort. And the cars he’d seen in that garage had been exceedingly high end. Like ridiculous expensive. Stuff he never would have touched as a kid, no matter what the payoff.