Tough Justice Series Box Set, Parts 1-8

by Carla Cassidy

  It wasn’t wholly calm, but it wasn’t treacherous either. Little waves broke here and there. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  But then he heard a shot got off and then the unmistakable sound of splashing.

  Someone had jumped—or been shot—off the pier.

  Nick ran to the very edge of his to get a better view. From this distance he couldn’t make out the head that was bobbing at the surface.

  A woman’s voice called out something, but the ringing from the pain in his head made him miss who that was. He scanned the surrounding area in the distance, again, looking for someone at the edge of the pier who had been responsible, when a figure caught his attention.

  It fell through the air from the top of the unfinished building and splashed into the water.

  Even in the dim light, Nick knew it was Lara.

  Without hesitation he turned and ran across the wood, not caring of the loud bangs it created. His head didn’t like any of the motion or racket as he tore across the main thoroughfare, in the back of his head thankful that for once the pedestrians had stayed a good distance away from the gunshots.

  Why had Lara jumped? Who had gone before her? Was she hurt before she’d gone in? Or had the fall and subsequent impact done that job?

  Nick’s mind raced faster than his feet. Regardless of any of the possible answers, he turned down the pier that was directly parallel to 17. The boat anchored at its head moved up and down as the water lapped against it, way too high to be of assistance to the people below in the water. It was the only movement, and he raced in its direction.

  When he neared the vessel he turned back to the water. He took his jacket off and started to push out of his shoes and socks as he scanned the dark water. His stomach knotted, worry so strong he nearly jumped in then, but he knew he needed to find them first.

  The lights on the piers lit their wood with halfhearted ease, but the water was a different story. Had Lara not cried out when she did, Nick might never have found the two heads, moving together in the waves.

  His leg muscles started to coil, readying for the jump and not thinking about the cold. He gave Pier 17 one last look.

  And someone stopped and looked right back.

  “Nick!” the person called. He squinted until the man moved over into a better lit spot. It was Xander.

  Nick had so many questions, if he’d had time, he wouldn’t have known what to ask first. So, instead, he didn’t ask one at all.

  “Lara is in the water,” he yelled back.

  And as if that was enough of an explanation, Nick shut the knife and put it in his pocket, then dove in.

  The water didn’t burn or sting. It sliced into his skin with such strength in temperature that any breath he’d hope to keep coughed out in one fluid motion. He readjusted his bearings and hurriedly swam to the surface. Breaking it, he struggled to get in another few breaths, before bringing his arms up in rotating arcs. He kicked his feet and ignored the roll of nausea that stemmed from his head.

  A few yards away he could see the two figures in the water, moving beneath the tall Pier 17.

  Nick turned his head side to side as he swam as fast he could in that direction, losing himself to the sound and feel of the freezing water. Seconds felt like minutes, hours. Each stroke, each kick, was another breath Lara might not have.

  That thought alone seemed to send fire across his body, propelling him forward with new speed.

  Soon the air became colder, sharper. He was beneath the pier’s edge and could just barely make out Lara and Mason Moretti, both struggling against each other, a tangle of fighting limbs.

  Both drowning.

  The sound of coughing and half-yells was all he could hear in the atmosphere.

  Nick didn’t even have time to pull his knife from his pocket, ready to tip the fight in Lara’s favor quickly, when Mason made a horrifying sound. Seconds later he went limp. His body stalled and then began to sink.

  “Lara,” Nick called, moving across the distance between them.

  Her head disappeared beneath the water for a split second before rising and finding him.

  “Don’t...let...let him drown,” she yelled, struggling to pull Mason’s body to the surface. Nick finally made it to her side and decided not to question her motive. There was no time. He just followed orders.

  She kept her grip on the unconscious man while Nick positioned himself beneath his back. He lifted Mason’s head, propping the back of it on his shoulder, and looped his arms beneath his floating ones. The waves that had appeared small from above became somewhat of an obstacle below. The awkward weight of Mason’s body didn’t entirely stay afloat, and Nick’s head went under twice before he realized that, although Lara was no longer in charge of the body, she was also struggling. Whether it was exhaustion or pain or both, she was having a hard time staying above water, too.

  Nick’s head dunked under again before he came up with a potentially idiotic plan. Snaking his hand down to his pocket, he retrieved his knife. Half of Mason’s body subsequently tilted into the water, but his head remained floating. Nick backstroked with knife in hand until he was next to one of the pier’s pylons. It was covered in barnacles, but there were a few spots where the wood could still be seen. Unsure of how successful his attempt would be, Nick angled himself to face the pylon. He moved out from under Mason and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He held it above water and brought his knife out, cutting through the fabric of his jacket. Both men bobbed under the water, but Nick kicked his legs with all of his might until they could both breathe again. Then, with as much strength as he could muster, he kept the grip of the knife in his hand and drove the blade into a spot of wood with nothing more than a last-ditch effort. And a good amount of prayer.

  Nick waited a beat.

  To his utter surprise, the knife actually stuck. Nick let go of Mason’s body and swam in place for a second. The man slumped forward but didn’t fall into the water.

  Son of a bitch, it actually worked.

  The knife seemed to have done its job and had pinned the man to the pylon, keeping him from drowning. Nick could have hooted at his dumb luck but quickly remembered why he’d even attempted such a Hail Mary in the first place.

  Lara.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kicking and arcing his arms, Nick turned around to find that his partner was still above the water. But barely.

  “Hold on, Lara!”

  Lara said something, but he couldn’t make it out, which worried him more. Soon Nick was at her side, doing just as he’d done with Mason’s prone body.

  “Le-Lean back and float,” he yelled over the waves, taking the first part with a good dose of water. He spit it out, and Lara, a woman he had already pegged as liking her control, surprisingly didn’t struggle against the command. Which worried him more. She leaned back and let Nick keep them up, swimming for the both of them. He would never tell her how much he actually struggled to get them to the nearest pylon, but even in the cold water, he had sweated it.

  “Can you tread water?” he coughed out. As an answer Lara rolled out of his grip and began to kick. When he was sure she wasn’t going under, he turned his attention to the pylon. This one did not have any obvious spots of open wood. It was all barnacles.

  All sharp fucking barnacles.

  Already preparing to have his hands destroyed, he grabbed a hold of each side of the pylon and its clusters of doom. The pain was barely noticeable. His hands were close to numb.

  “Use me to float!”

  Lara didn’t fight that order either. She looped her arms around his neck, not too tight, and put a majority of weight on his back. Nick almost lost his hold but managed to keep them both above the freezing water.

  Now all he had to do was keep them like that until Xander sent rescue. If he hadn’t seen the man before jumping in the water, he didn’t know how everything would have played out.

  “You okay back there?” Nick asked after a minute or so had passed. Lara’s foreh
ead was resting against the back side of his head. He felt her nod. He was going to ask her something else—he wanted her to stay talking, to stay conscious—when she moved so her lips were near his ear.

  “He said he always gets away,” she whispered, stammering slightly from the cold. Nick tightened his grip on the pylon, knowing his hand was getting cut but unable to feel it through the numbness. “But—but you know what?”

  A weird sound split the air. He turned his head. It was a lifeboat, gliding toward them. Relief seemed to pump an ounce of warmth through him. He knew Lara couldn’t feel it, but he wished she could. Glancing over to the pylon across from them, he didn’t know how to feel about what he saw. Mason was still stuck to it, head above water but drooping slightly. If he fell into the water before the boat got to them, Nick decided he would stay firm in his decision to not save the man again. Not with Lara in the shape she was.

  There was no way in this world or the next that he’d sacrifice her life for Mason Moretti’s.

  “What?” he asked, turning back to the approaching boat. Lara gave a small laugh that was so quiet, the water nearly silenced it.

  “I got him.”

  * * *

  The one woman among the four men on the boat looked at Lara with an expression of awe. She had platinum-blond hair that in the moonlight acted as its own beacon.

  “You could have killed yourself jumping from that high, you know,” she said as the boat moved across the water. Agent Walsh was behind the wheel, while Xander and Nick were checking out an unconscious Mason. The cold from that water had slowed the bleeding from his gunshot, but he needed medical attention fast if they had any hope of getting answers. The woman, whom Lara placed somewhere south of twenty-five, didn’t appear to be caught up to speed in any way. She proved that assumption further with her follow-up question. “And why you would do such a thing in your undies is beyond me.”

  Lara cut her eyes to the men on the boat. James was focused on steering them back, shivering as the wind hit his wet clothes. Nick was shaking as well as Xander, but they did a better job at hiding it. None seemed to be listening to the freckled young woman.

  Lara looked down at her body. She was soaked through and through. Her jeans were black with water, and her boots were ruined. She should have taken off her shoes, but in the moment she’d felt she didn’t have the time. Out of everything she was thankful she’d worn one of her black, lace-less bras instead of a frilly one that would have been as good as transparent when wet. Not that any of the men aboard seemed to be ogling her. They respected her too much. Not to mention there were much more important things to be doing right now.

  “In my head I was afraid the wire would electrocute me,” she answered honestly, tired. But not too tired to make a joke. “Would have been a shame to go out like that and ruin my shoes.”

  The woman smiled.

  “Well, the good news is, you probably needed to ice that anyway.” She motioned to Lara’s side and back with the flashlight she’d used to help spotlight Mason, Nick and her for the other two to jump in and help out. The light brought Nick’s attention over to what Lara suspected was a mighty large bruise. Thanks to Mason’s chair attack.

  She cut her eyes to the man at his feet, not wanting to meet her partner’s stare just yet.

  “That’s a silver lining I can get behind,” she said. The younger woman, wearing only a polo and slacks, looked apologetic.

  “Let that silver lining keep you warm until we get you to the EMTs and those big fuzzy blankets they always seem to have in the movies. They were pulling up when your guy over there was yelling at me to ‘move it or lose it.’” She looked over to James.

  “Agent Walsh?” Lara asked, confused. “You aren’t NYPD?”

  The woman basically giggled.

  “Oh, definitely not. I mean, I watch enough TV that I feel like I could be sometimes, but I’m in a much more boring field.”

  “So this is your boat?”

  The woman shook her head again.

  “It belongs to a client.” She stuck out her hand. “Hi, my name is Barb Hanely, and I clean houses and boats for a living.” Lara couldn’t help but laugh at the way she admitted her profession. She unwrapped her arms around herself and shook. “I was behind on work and got a late start in cleaning this particular boat when I was boarded by them.” She looked at the other agents. “I gave them the key to the ignition without a fuss, and they let me stay on.” She gave a little smile. “It’s all very exciting.” Her eyes trailed over to Mason’s body. “Looks like I’ll be cleaning blood off tonight, though.”

  Lara knew she was talking about the gunshot wound. The one she’d put her fingers in and twisted until Mason had passed out from the pain. While she had a lot to think about, having almost died several times that night, Lara couldn’t help but think of Nick’s hands instead. She’d seen the blood on them when he’d climbed up the ladder Barb had thrown over the side of the boat. She knew they were from the barnacles, just as she knew he’d done it to help keep her afloat.

  Looking at him now, clothes clinging to his body, hair slicked down from the water and feet bare, Lara felt gratitude so great that it nearly moved her to tears. Despite what he’d learned about her that night, he had jumped into the dark depths to help her. He’d had her back even when she’d had no clue he was anywhere near her. Another wave of gratefulness swept across the gooseflesh raising her skin at the fact that Nick was okay. Mason hadn’t killed him.

  Which he’d realize was a good thing since Nick was the reason he’d been saved.

  Barb gave Lara some quiet as they docked and even helped her back onto the pier and into waiting EMTs’ arms. Ty was also there to greet them, helping Xander with Mason’s body while Nick was checked over. Before Lara was enveloped with one of those magical big fuzzy blankets, she stopped Agent Walsh and did something very uncharacteristic in the situation.

  “Hey, can you hang back and help her clean up the blood?” she asked, voice lowered. James looked over at the pretty woman and cocked his head to the side. “I mean, you did yell at her and all.”

  James didn’t argue. Which was good. Lara was too tired to push him.

  Gloved fingers were looking her over minutes later, but she barely registered them against her skin. She’d been dry for ten minutes, stripped off her wet clothes, and changed into a new pair of everything from her recently refreshed Go bag, and still the cold clung.

  When the EMT gave her the all’s okay after a cursory look in the back of the ambulance showed that nothing seemed to be broken, Nick made his way over. The concern on his face was so palpable it broke whatever ice might have formed had they seen each other for the first time after Cass’s information dropped without any life-threatening events happening in between.

  “They’re letting you walk, huh?” he greeted. “No trips to get scans or stern scoldings about the dangers of putting yourself in an insane situation?”

  Lara smirked. “I’m afraid that last one will probably only come courtesy of my partner. Plus, I promised I’d stop by the hospital for a check-up after I’m finished here.”

  Nick copied the smirk, but it didn’t last long. “Did Xander tell you what happened while you were inside the building?” he asked, sobering.

  Lara shook her head. “No, he didn’t have the time before he left with Mason to the hospital. Do you know?”

  Nick held his hand out to help Lara stand from the back of the ambulance. The EMTs had driven them from the pier farthest away with a port for smaller boats back closer to where their sting had taken place. Lara didn’t think it had been their way of helping out but more of a direct order from Xander, who had taken command of their little rescue operation. Either way, Lara was happy for the ride. Her entire body might have just gone through a rigorous, slightly extreme icing, but she couldn’t deny she was hurting still. The less she had to move right now, the better.

  Nick thanked the EMTs, publically ignoring when his suggested—apparently for th
e third time—that he go get his concussion checked out, and turned Lara toward Pier 17. Lara frowned. She had quickly grown not so fond of the once-hopeful tourist trap within the past hour or so.

  “Right before Mason knocked me out he had me destroy my earbud,” Nick said when they were out of earshot of the people behind them. “I thought that he assumed I was only linked up to you and not the team but turns out he came prepared.” Lara stumbled a second, feet still warming up. Pins and needles pricked at her soles. Nick was quick and caught her elbow. He kept it in his hand as he continued. Lara found she was grateful for the stability. “They didn’t know my COMM went off until apparently Mason mentioned me to you. I guess the man likes to gloat. That’s when James and an NYPD officer headed my way. The cop, a man named Michaels, was shot and killed before they even got close.” Lara’s eyes widened. That must have been the first shot she’d heard when inside the building.

  “If Mason was with me, then who shot him?”

  “Some two-bit thug Mason apparently paid to help out if things went south,” he answered, pure disgust in his voice.

  “There was a man that tried to shoot me in the building,” she said. “I didn’t recognize him.”

  “Mason didn’t hire one or two no-good criminals—he hired six. He was more than prepared, it seems. When things went sideways with you, these guys came out of the crowd like fucking piranhas after blood—Xander’s words, not mine.”

  “That’s why no one came in right away,” Lara realized. Nick nodded.

  “Two cops and a pedestrian were shot—only one dead—and four of their guys were gunned down. The rest are being taken in for questioning.”

  Lara let out a long exhale. “Well, this night didn’t go as planned,” she said, sarcasm rampant. What had seemed like a solid, uncomplicated meeting had turned into a chaotic mess.