In Too Deep: Station Seventeen Book 3

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Luke shook his head, adamant. “We can, and we should have right from the beginning. We aren’t doing anyone we care about any favors by keeping what happened to ourselves. The longer Ice gets away with threatening us, the longer they’re all in danger regardless. We’re not taking care of them by ignoring what happened.” He paused, an odd emotion flickering through his stare for less than a breath before it disappeared. “And we’re not looking out for each other by pretending everything is fine.”

  Quinn’s threadbare composure tilted further. Easy. Breathe, came Luke’s voice from her memory, combining with the unwavering closeness of his body in front of hers to unstick the truth from her throat. “I…I’m scared.”

  “I know,” Luke said, quiet and calm, and God, didn’t anything rock him? “But we can’t just move on like everything is normal, Quinn. It’s not, and it won’t be until we fix this.”

  “Fix this.” She repeated the words on a whisper. As much as she hated it, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Faking her way through this whole thing was only putting her nerves—not to mention her conscience—through a blender. She’d never last if she tried to keep it up, and the truth was, Ice could change his mind and come after everyone at any time if he felt like taking care of loose ends. He could be out there, hurting other people. Maybe even innocent people.

  Still… “Ice is a cold-blooded killer,” Quinn said. She might not have technically seen him commit the act, but she’d seen the look in his eyes when he’d threatened to kill her and Luke, and it had been enough to know he was neither bluffing nor inexperienced. “We can’t just waltz right in to the Thirty-Third and spill our guts. He could be watching our every move.”

  Luke exhaled, scrubbing a hand over his clean-shaven face. “He could. Which means we’ll have to come up with a plan to outsmart him.”

  “He’s a gang leader, Luke. He’s probably got tons of experience staying off the cops’ radar, not to mention he’s ruthless as hell and he knows everything about us. How on earth are we going to outsmart him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  For the first time since they’d come out here to the engine bay, Luke looked uncertain, and yeah, she felt his pain. They needed a plan—an impossible plan—and right now, they had no information, no advantage—God, all they had was each other.

  Wait.

  “I think I know what we need to do,” Quinn said, her pulse threatening to outrun the air in her lungs.

  Luke’s brows popped, his stare widening in the harsh fluorescent light spilling down from overhead. “You do?”

  She nodded. The idea forming in her brain scared the shit out of her, yes, but she couldn’t deny the truth behind it.

  She and Luke were in this together. They were partners. They needed to rely on the person they trusted most above all.

  “I do. Now let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

  13

  For one of the good guys, Captain Tanner Bridges was still scary as shit under the right circumstances. Case in point, when you were about to tell him you’d withheld reporting a brutal drive-by shooting, and oh, by the way, a kidnapping/assault by a gang lord who could viciously kill your grandmother and sister with one simple phone call.

  No. No. Luke hadn’t watched his grandmother mourn her only child and nursed his sister through the debilitating illness that had destroyed her ability to hear only to lose them both to a cold-hearted bastard like Ice.

  This wouldn’t go pear-shaped. It couldn’t.

  He wouldn’t let it.

  Quinn sat next to him, her shoulders a rigid line beneath her dark gray RFD T-shirt and her spine straight against the chair across from Captain Bridges’s desk. Luke had known bullying her wouldn’t get her past her fear of coming forward, no matter how much they needed to tell the police about the kidnapping, just as he’d known she was both strong enough and smart enough to realize the truth for herself. What he hadn’t been prepared for was how deeply that fear would tear at him, how the two simple words I’m scared would slice so cleanly through his carefully crafted composure.

  How the hell was he supposed to keep her at arm’s length when all he’d wanted to do in that engine bay was wrap his arms around her and hold her until she felt safe again?

  “Copeland. Slater.” Captain Bridges crossed the threshold into his office and shut the door. No turning back now. “You said this is urgent, so let’s cut to the chase. What’s going on?”

  Quinn took an audible breath. “Well…there was an, um…incident at one of our calls last shift,” she started, and Bridges pinned them both with a concern-filled stare as he took a seat at his desk.

  “An incident.”

  “Yes, sir. We responded to a call for a person down of unknown causes, but the address turned out to be an abandoned warehouse with no victim present.”

  Although her voice was steady enough and her words sounded official, Luke could see her hands shaking where she’d folded them together in her lap, her fingers knotted in a white-knuckled grip. Her gaze said she wasn’t having second thoughts—in fact, her expression was determined as hell. But that fear was right back in place in her eyes, and Luke’s impulsive need to crush it roared back to life.

  She’d had his back. When his fear of blood had broken free of its box and threatened to sink him as they’d started to treat Jayden. When Ice had asked which one of them was in charge. Shit, when she’d insisted on staying quiet about this whole fucking thing in the first place. Quinn had done those things because she’d had his back, without question.

  And now he would have hers.

  “We were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to North Point to care for the victim of a drive-by shooting.” Luke heard the words only after he’d let them launch, but now that they were out, there was no point in holding back. “We tried to save the guy, but he had a nasty GSW to the chest. He was barely alive when we got there, and obviously we couldn’t transport him.”

  “Jesus,” Bridges bit out, his frame having snapped to the sort of stern attention his crisp navy blue and white uniform usually commanded. “You two were kidnapped at gunpoint during last shift? Why didn’t you report this?”

  Luke’s heart tripped. Still, he said, “Because our kidnapper belongs to a gang whose leader is pretty persuasive.”

  He outlined enough of the story to give Bridges the idea, but not so much that the fear in Quinn’s eyes came rushing back with a vengeance. The tension in her shoulders actually seemed to ease (albeit only by the tiniest fraction) as he finished, and finally, Captain Bridges sat back to look at them both.

  “First things first. Were either of you injured on the call?”

  Of all the things the man could have led with, Luke had been expecting that the least. “No,” he and Quinn both answered together, and Bridges nodded.

  “Good. We’re going to need to proceed with extreme care, obviously. But you did the right thing coming forward, and I can assure you both that we’ll get this taken care of.” Without another word, he reached for the phone on his desk, punching in a few numbers. “Yes, January? Will you do me a favor, please, and call dispatch? I need to have Ambulance Twenty-Two taken off rotation, effective immediately.”

  Quinn flinched, and for as big a fan as Luke was of the ol’ poker face, he was right there with her. Taking them off rotation would be a huge red flag to anyone who might be tracking them. “Captain—”

  Bridges held up a hand. “Yes, the vehicle is down for maintenance. It seems the repair on the gurney latch didn’t hold. Copeland and Slater will stand by here for the time being until we can sort it out. Thank you.”

  Luke exhaled in relief. If Ice was watching, he’d think they were at the fire house, waiting for a new vehicle. A fact that Quinn had obviously realized, too, because she’d scaled back from panic mode.

  “Okay,” she said after Bridges had replaced the phone in its cradle. “So what do we do now?”

  “Now we figure out how to get you two to the Thirty-Third without anyone seein
g you.”

  Right. Luke frowned. “That’s going to be easier said than done.”

  “Not necessarily,” Quinn said, biting her lip as she fixed him with a stare. “I have an idea. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  If Luke never had to lie down in the back seat of an SUV again, he’d die a seriously happy man. Granted, the much-roomier cargo space in Captain Bridges’s department-issued Suburban was a far cry from the dirty floor in Damien’s Escalade. But still. The flashback factor fucking sucked.

  Nope. Not going there. They were fixing this. He needed to lock up his goddamn emotions while they did.

  Calibrating his breathing, Luke turned on his side to look at Quinn. She’d curled up almost as soon as she’d stealthed into the back of the Suburban under the cover of the engine bay, closing her eyes and lying perfectly still beside him. Sunlight filtered in past the tinted windows, turning her blond hair into a sort of glowy halo and spotlighting the tight crease between her eyebrows, and so much for locking up his emotions.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “You okay hiding like this?”

  “Mmm hmm,” Quinn hummed, although her eyes remained cranked shut. “It was my idea, remember?”

  “That doesn’t mean you love it.”

  That earned him a tiny smile. “Fair enough. I don’t love it. But I’m okay. Anyway, the Thirty-Third isn’t that far. We’ll only be here for a few more minutes, tops.”

  Okay, so she was right. But Luke’s fingers still itched to touch her, to erase the tension on her face even a little, and he nearly said fuck it to do just that. But God, he’d already blown past so many boundaries with her, so he settled for, “We’re doing the right thing, Quinn.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Okay.” Captain Bridges’s voice filtered in from the front seat of the Suburban. “We’re nearly there. I’ve already called Sergeant Sinclair to let him know we’ve got a matter to discuss that requires discretion, so he’ll be waiting for us at the rear entrance to the precinct.”

  “Copy that,” Luke said. Unless Ice had X-ray vision, chances were pretty much nil that the guy knew he and Quinn had embarked on this little field trip to the Thirty-Third, Luke knew. But he was still grateful for the precautions. Just because he hadn’t seen any hint of danger at Momma Billie’s house in the last three mornings he’d dropped by didn’t mean it wasn’t there, and he sure as shit wasn’t about to invite any by not being top-notch careful.

  A minute later, the Suburban rolled to a stop. They all made quick work of getting out and walking over to the nondescript metal door where Sergeant Sam Sinclair waited as promised. Luke had only seen Sinclair a time or two when he’d come by to visit January at the fire house, but yeah, if anyone could protect him and Quinn, the lean, steely-eyed sergeant looked like a dead ringer for the job.

  “Sam.” Captain Bridges extended his hand. “Thanks for agreeing to see us so quickly. You know my paramedic, Quinn Copeland, and my engine rookie, Luke Slater.”

  “I do.” Sinclair nodded, first at Quinn, then at Luke, before turning to use an electronic keycard and ID code to gain access to the building. “Gotta admit, you three have my curiosity piqued.”

  “I wish we were here under better circumstances,” Bridges said. Sinclair seemed to take that for the bid for privacy that it was—thank fuck—because he didn’t push. Instead, he led them deeper into the building, past a pair of uniformed officers at the metal detectors in the precinct’s main hallway, then up one staircase that was open to the bustling lobby. Luke had never been to the intelligence unit’s home base before, and after three days of trying to figure out a way to get here undetected, he couldn’t deny the twinge of relief in his chest as he put the last of the stairs behind him and followed Sinclair past the glass double doors leading into the large office space.

  Scanning a new environment for the basics was Firefighter 101, the habit so ingrained after only seven months that Luke now did it off-duty as much as he did on. The intelligence office was essentially a big, open rectangle, with four large windows on the wall to his left, and a narrow hallway shooting off from the back of the office that bore a backlit sign for another exit. Four desks—complete with detectives—filled the room at regular intervals, with one longer workstation along the right-hand wall. The crazy six-way monitor-type above the desk there told Luke it had to belong to Capelli, and hey, what do you know, there was the tech guru, sitting at the keyboard and looking as serious as ever.

  “Whoa.” Detective Addison Hale’s head popped up from her laptop screen, followed quickly by her partner, Shawn Maxwell’s, who had been reading over her shoulder. “Hey, Quinn,” the female detective said. “Everything okay?”

  Ah, right. Luke had forgotten Quinn was good friends with Hale. And Kellan’s girlfriend, Isabella, who was now looking on with curiosity-slash-concern from her own desk a few feet away, too. Hell, there wasn’t really anybody Quinn wasn’t friends with.

  “Oh, I uh…”

  “Copeland and Slater are just coming in to make a report,” Sinclair said. That probably would’ve been the end of the group disclosure—God knew the intelligence unit had to operate by the chain of command as much as they did at Seventeen, so if Sinclair wanted the full monty on discretion, Luke had a funny feeling the guy would get it.

  But Quinn’s boots didn’t budge from the middle of the room. “Actually, Sergeant, this might be something the whole team will want to hear.”

  Sinclair’s gray-blond brows winged up toward his crew cut. Quinn wasn’t wrong, though—they were going to need the whole team in on taking down a guy like Ice—and Luke stepped toward her with a nod.

  “Quinn is right. Sir,” he tacked on, because a) his mother and grandmother hadn’t raised him to be disrespectful, and b) they also hadn’t raised him to be a dumbass. “Having your detectives here for this is probably going to save time.”

  “By all means, then.” Sinclair nodded to the pair of chairs that Isabella’s partner, Detective Liam Hollister, had just pulled from beside their desks and placed at the front of the office. The detectives’ faces were mostly business, and Capelli’s was downright impassive, although Luke could see the covert glances being exchanged between the five of them like nonverbal shorthand. They knew something was up.

  Hell if that wasn’t a star nominee for the Understatement of the Year Award.

  Sinclair leaned a hip against Isabella’s file-covered desk, sending a quick gaze at Captain Bridges in the back of the room before focusing on Quinn and Luke. “So what’s going on, you two?”

  “We, ah…” Quinn stopped nearly as soon as she’d started. The expression she’d worn in Captain Bridges’s office was back in all its tension-filled glory, and her whisper from the engine bay, so simple and yet so fucking complicated, flew through Luke’s mind.

  I’m scared.

  “On our last shift, we were kidnapped at gunpoint while responding to a call,” Luke said so Quinn wouldn’t have to, and even though he’d fully expected the hiccup of pin-drop silence that ensued, it didn’t make it any less deafening.

  “I’m sorry,” Hale said, her shoulders thumping against the back of her chair as she pulled back to stare at him. “You were…what?”

  Luke inhaled on a three-count. Give up the information. Fix the problem. “We were kidnapped at gunpoint from a warehouse on Beaumont Place. The guy took us to a gang safe house in North Point—at least, I’m ninety percent sure it was North Point—to provide medical care for his brother, who had been shot.”

  The silence that followed combined with the balls-out seriousness on the faces of every last member in the unit, so Luke kept going. “Quinn and I administered as much medical care as we could. But the guys in the gang wouldn’t let us take the patient to Remington Mem even though he had a GSW to the chest, so…” He dropped his chin slightly to get the message across, which seemed to work, because both Isabella and Hollister nodded slightly in return. “After he died, his gang leader took our cell
phones and IDs and told us that if we said anything to anyone, he’d kill us and our families.”

  Sinclair didn’t blink or budge. He simply looked at Maxwell and said, “Get Garza on the phone. Tell him to drop whatever he’s doing and get his ass out here. Now.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Luke didn’t know who Garza was or why the guy was important, but he did feel a flash of relief at the seriousness in Sinclair’s tone as he asked for the guy, then another when Maxwell reported that Garza was already in the building regarding a different case and was on his way up. Isabella excused herself to grab bottles of water for both him and Quinn, and Hollister and Hale used the wait-time to team up to clear the intelligence unit’s schedule. Quinn sat quietly beside him, staring at the scuffed toes of her black work boots, and Christ, his gut panged with all sorts of shit he didn’t want to contemplate but couldn’t ignore.

  “Hey. Are you okay?”

  Her blond hair rustled over the shoulders of her uniform top, bringing with it a subtle, flowery scent that stirred something very primal under his skin. “I’m fine.”

  Damn, she used that word a lot. Too bad her eyes, her shoulders—shit, everything else about her—told a very different story. But before Luke could say as much, the door to the intelligence unit’s office swung open to reveal a tough-looking Hispanic guy in plainclothes with a gun on one hip and an RPD badge on the other.

  “Hey, Sergeant. Heard you needed me?”

  Sinclair nodded. “Garza, come on in. Quinn, Luke, Captain Bridges, this is Detective Matteo Garza. He works over in the department’s gang unit.” After a set of quick nods that translated to hey-how-ya-doing, Sinclair continued with, “Quinn and Luke have some information you’re going to find of interest.” He spared a lightning-fast glance at Capelli, who clacked out a few keystrokes on his computer, then looked at Luke and Quinn with all the seriousness of an acute MI with an open-fracture chaser. “We’re going to need you to start at the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.”