Tank (Moonshine Task Force Book 2)

by Laramie Briscoe

  “Is there anything you need, Leonard?” I hear the negotiator ask.

  “Don’t wanna go back to that hospital,” he cries.

  I can hear the despair and fear in his voice, and for a split-second I feel sorry for him. He’s been dealt an obviously shitty life card. He has an illness, one that needs treatment, but the illness doesn’t allow him to admit it.

  “They won’t keep you Leonard, they’ll make you feel better.”

  He shouts again, this time anger fills his voice. “They’ll give me those pills and I won’t feel like myself. I don’t like it when I don’t feel like myself. I walk around in a haze and days go by before I realize what’s going on.”

  “You and I both know it’ll happen in the beginning, but after a few weeks you’ll be able to go back to your job at the Quick Stop. Don’t you miss your friends there?”

  Everyone stops talking, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding before I turn around and look at the scene again. This time I’m as calm and composed as I can be – as I’ll get. My eyes focus on Blaze and my heart rips out of my chest. Anyone who doesn’t know her will think she’s got this together. Her façade appears unaffected, but me, I see it. Her bottom lip is slightly trembling. She’s got her hands formed into fists, gripping the uniform material at her thighs. And that’s when I make my biggest mistake of all – I let myself look into her eyes.

  It’s like a scene out of a movie. Between people, distance, and the intensity in the air, the two of us lock gazes. My stomach drops like it does on the first hill of a roller coaster, it’s somewhere down at my feet as I see the fear in her eyes. Tears are pooled behind the black stuff she uses to make her green eyes pop, and I want so badly to reach out to her and take her in my arms. Tell her this is all gonna be okay. I mouth to her I LOVE YOU, because I want her to know. We’ve been saying it a little here and there, it wasn’t this grand declaration of feelings. Nothing with us ever is. It was organic, and to be honest, I can’t even remember the first time I told her. All I know is one day she kissed me on the cheek as I left, told me she loved me, and I said it back. Everything with our relationship has been easy. Until today. Today I feel as if someone’s dropped an anvil on my head and it woke me the fuck up. We can’t continue to live in our bubble. Neither one of us have jobs that will allow us to.

  Blaze nods, her bottom lip sticking a bit further out and I see her trying to keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. She’s a proud woman, and the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “You’re gonna be fine, babe.”

  People look at me, I can feel their eyes on me, but the only person I care about it is the redhead with the green eyes, looking at me like I’m a superhero for giving her a little bit of hope.

  “Don’t do that,” Ryan warns me. “Don’t turn his attention on you.”

  I would gladly take every bit of his attention. I’d trade places with her in a nanosecond. I rest my hand on the butt of my gun, ready to pull it if I need to. God, I want to. As a sniper, I had kills that I can never talk about, ones that left me upset for days, but this one – to save her – I would do it without any kind of hesitation.

  Our hostage negotiator is talking to him again. “Leonard, aren’t you hot? It’s a hot day, let us bring you some water. If not you, let us bring the lady some.”

  His hand shakes uncontrollably as he holds the gun to her head. I watch a trail of sweat as it runs from his forehead, down his cheek, and pools at his neck, getting soaked up by the cotton of his shirt. Damn right he’s hot, he’s tired, and he’s scared. He’s probably got the most amazing adrenaline high of his life, which means he’s the most dangerous motherfucker on the planet right now.

  “I wanna go inside,” he announces. “There’s air conditioning, and she’ll be comfortable,” he runs a hand down Blaze’s neck, caressing the column, before he closes his palm around her throat. I almost roar with anger. Nobody touches her but me, not like that, not the way he is. I make another move, and this time Ryan loops an arm around my waist from behind, using his body weight to keep me from going at them.

  “Take it down a notch, bro. You can’t do what you want to. I get it though, I get it,” he’s telling me, trying to calm me down. “The best thing you can do right now is cool off. If Holden sees this, he will pull you outta here so fast, your head will spin. Get your shit together.”

  It’s easier said than done, but I regulate my breathing, slow my heart rate down, and try to take stock of the situation in front of us. My girl is holding on like a champ. The only one who can tell she’s freaking out is me, and it’s because I know her so well. She seems like she has it all together; I send her every bit of good energy I have. Until my heart drops in my feet again as he starts pulling her back toward the house.

  “No!” Everyone yells, me included.

  “Leonard, you can’t take her inside. You take her inside, we will come get her out,” the negotiator threatens.

  I wonder at that moment if it’s smart to be threatening this man. He’s crying now, his moods are shifting quickly.

  “I just want a friend, and she can be my friend,” he tightens his grip on her throat. I can tell by the way she grimaces.

  “I can be your friend,” Holden steps up from where he’s been standing to the side, putting his gun down on the ground, holding his hands up. “Let her come out here, and I can be your friend. You can take me and do whatever you want with me. She’s tired, Leonard. Aren’t you tired? She’s just as tired as you are.”

  “But she tried to help me,” he argues. “She told me things were going to be fine, and she’d make sure of it.”

  “She did try to help you buddy, and you put a gun to her head. How can she trust you?”

  “How can I trust her?” He shifts again.

  This is bad, his shifting moods. He’s hot, he’s irritated, and he’s got a gun to the woman I love’s head. Right now I’m not even interested in how this ends. All I want is my arms around her. I want to feel her heartbeat against mine. More than anything I want to tuck her head under my chin and feel the bite of her nails around my waist. When Blaze hugs, she hugs for all she’s worth. I need that hug right now, I want to give one back in return.

  It’s then I see someone approaching from behind. Leonard can’t see Mason, the quietest member of our team, who goes by the name of Mace because basically because he gets in, gets the job done, and does it with the quickest efficiency any of us have ever seen. We joke it’s because he’s a single dad, and has to jerk it fast. Today I’m not joking, and my heart is in my throat as I see him get closer to the two standing on the sidewalk.

  I can’t even hear anymore what’s being said, I’m not even paying attention to it. My eyes are again locked with Blaze’s and I’m trying to communicate to her to wait, we’re coming. Quick as a cobra, Mace puts his arms around Leonard, takes the gun, subdues him, and has him on the ground. Literally it was in the blink of an eye.

  Blaze’s knees give out as I run to her, gathering her up as she collapses. We crumble in a heap against the hot concrete. She’s shaking and crying, burying her head in my chest. Her tears wet the piece of skin that’s not covered by my vest and I want to rage again for the fact someone’s upset her this much.

  “I got you babe, I got you,” I’m breathing like I’ve run a marathon. Pulling back, I frame her face with my hands, running them over her, making sure she’s still in one piece.

  “I know,” she nods, swallowing those tears. “I know, but oh my God, I was so scared. I’ve never been that scared before.”

  Neither have I, and it’s hard to keep my own hands and body from shaking. The adrenaline is coursing through me, making it hard for me to take in anything going on around us except for Blaze. I capture her lips with mine, not caring who sees. We’ve tried to keep our relationship on the quiet side just because we didn’t want any of the usual teasing our friends are capable of, but right now I couldn’t give two fucks.
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  “Sorry you two, but Blaze, they say I have to check you out,” Logan interrupts us, the look on his face one of regret. “I told them we could wait a minute, but all the supervisors want to make sure you’re okay.”

  She looks at me, almost as if she’s asking for permission, which is nothing like her. She’s more of the ask forgiveness rather than permission sort. That alone tells me how much this has affected her. “Go on,” I push her toward Logan. “Put everybody’s mind at ease, I’ll come get you in a minute.”

  She leans into me, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I love you, Trevor.”

  The broken tone of her voice does me in. “Love you, too,” I whisper as I kiss her forehead. We stand up, and I help her to the ambulance, before I go to find a moment alone.

  Once I’m around the back of the house, I lean into the brick wall, bracing myself with my hand. It doesn’t take much until everything I’ve eaten all day comes up. I try to tell myself I’m okay, it’s just reaction and it won’t be so bad in a few hours, but I know that’s kind of a lie. I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay again.

  “And now I have to be okay, because I’ve seen you save people we care about. I see the joy it brings you and the safety and security it brings to the people around you,” he reaches in, grabbing hold of my waist. “It’s scary, sharing you with the world.”

  “If I explain to you why I do what I do, why I have to do it, will you listen? Will you try to understand?”

  Her voice is thick, strained, and so full of emotion I can’t help but agree to it. In this moment, she’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen her, and I know if I don’t meet her in the middle, she’s going to eventually run.

  “Please,” I grasp her chin, pulling her to me for a forceful kiss, one of ownership, but also one of a desperate man trying to hold onto the most important thing in his life. “Let me in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Blaze

  “You asked me once why I do what I do and I told you it was because I just like to help people. I haven’t been totally honest with you, and I feel like I need to be. If we’re going to go headlong into this ‘new’ relationship of ours, then it needs to be with the truth being shared between the two of us.”

  I have his attention now. “Nothing’s going to change how I feel about you. I understand why you love your profession and I support you totally in it. This isn’t going to be a problem between us again, Blaze. I swear.”

  I take his hand in mine, relishing the energy and comfort I take from the simple touch. “No, I know, but I still want to be completely honest and more than anything I feel like it’s time. I’ve never told another person this story,” I admit. I do my best not to think about this part of my life.

  “Now you’re starting to scare me,” he lets go of my hand and palms the back of my neck, bringing my gaze level with his. “But if I’m the person you’ve decided to trust with this secret of yours, I’m honored. We’ve come too far to let things come between us, Blaze. So you go ahead and tell me what you need to. I can say with one hundred percent certainty, it’s not going to change the way I feel about you.”

  I want to cry as soon as I hear those words come out of his mouth. I’ve never opened myself up about this to anyone, and it’s almost as if proof and memories were wiped away. It fucking hurts to remember. I swallow harshly against the swelling in my throat as I open this wound.

  “I didn’t necessarily become a paramedic because I wanted to help people. It’s way more personal than that.” I’m already crying, I can feel the wetness of the tears streaking their way down my face. This may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. For minutes I struggle with what to say next. Countless times I open and close my lips, but no sound comes from between them.

  “Babe, you do what you need to in order to tell me this. Obviously it’s painful for you.”

  Grabbing my phone, I do the one thing I can do. Going into my pictures, I pull up the most coveted I have there. It’s a fifteen-year-old me, laughing with the person she looked up to most in the world. I trace her face for a second with my fingertip before I turn the screen so Trevor can look at the image.

  “She looks like you, who is she?”

  I bite my bottom lip and quirk my eyebrow as I push the words past my tight throat. “My sister.”

  The shock is apparent on his face. “I never knew you had a sister.”

  I laugh, but it’s harsh and filled with so much hurt that even I can hear it. “My parents would love it if no one remembered her,” I stop and take a fortifying breath. “But I do, every day I remember her.”

  He leans in, kissing my lips softly, taking some of the salty tears that have flowed past those speed bumps while the rest of them roll down my chin and neck, gathering in the spot where my clavicles meet. “Tell me about her, baby. Let it all out.”

  “Annabelle was sixteen years older than me. Mom and Dad had a teenage pregnancy that they tried to pass off as a honeymoon baby. They tell everyone they got married when they were seventeen, but the truth is they got married when they were twenty – money can change any fact and hide so many secrets,” I give him a mirthful smile. “It’s exactly why I don’t care to ever have the type of money I grew up with.”

  I take a minute, trying to figure out how I want to go into this story, how I want to portray my sister. Over the years I’ve come to learn some hard truths, but I don’t want to taint her memory in any way and I don’t want Trevor to get the wrong idea about her.

  “Annabelle was different. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, danced to songs only she heard, and tried to live her life the best way she knew how,” I finally decide that’s the very best way to explain her. “She tried to be everything my parents wanted her to be and she was my hero. When the pressure got to be too much, I could always go to her little apartment, crawl in bed with her, and she’d tell me a funny story. Somewhere around her twenty-fifth birthday, things started to change a little. At first I think I’m the only one who noticed it.”

  Immediately I get a flashback of her overexcited behavior about a pair of shoes being on sale, which had been so unlike her months before.

  “She would get really excited about an idea, over-the-top excited, and she’d put everything she had in her toward it, but then it would crash. She’d not get out of bed for days at a time, she’d cry, talk about how much of a failure she was, and how she couldn’t do anything right. It was this never-ending cycle.”

  I get up to pace, because I can’t take Trevor’s eyes on me anymore, can’t stand the way he’s looking at me with pity.

  “Around that time, my parents decided she was too old to be single. For the next three years, they pushed men at her, told her bullshit about men not wanting to be around her because she liked to color her hair. She hated being a blonde, I mean absolutely hated it. Red was her favorite color,” I admit, a soft smile on my face.

  “Oh babe,” he sighs.

  “Yeah,” I tilt the corners of my mouth up. “She got a tattoo that year and they said at twenty-eight she was too old to be doing that type of thing. But she got it where no one could see it, ya know? On her back so it could be covered unless she was wearing a bikini. While she was at the tattoo parlor, she ran into a friend of our family. Jake was the son of one of my dad’s business partners, and he was a lot like her. They both loved to rebel. Neither one of them wanted to be stifled by the lifestyle our parents liked to lead. At twenty-eight years old, my sister fell in love for the first time,” I continue to pace, but now I look at Trevor.

  “Why do I get the feeling this is the beginning of the end?” He asks.

  I want to answer him and tell him it’s not. To tell him it was the beginning of an absolutely beautiful relationship that goes on today away from everyone, but I fucking can’t.

  “Jake was the love of her life, but it didn’t stop her weird mood swings. He had them too, actually.” I stop for a second. “What Jake did was introduce her to a way of dealing with them. Ja
ke was a hardcore drug user. Within two years of being with him, she lost sixty pounds and was skin and bones. My parents didn’t know what to do for her, so they wrote her off. Me? I couldn’t,” I fight the tears again. “No matter how many times she hurt and disappointed me, I couldn’t let her go,” I put my hands up on my head, clasping my fingers together.

  “That’s not unusual, babe. You know as well as I do – it’s hard.”

  “It’s impossible if it’s your family,” I argue with him. “Completely and totally impossible. One day she called me and asked me to come meet her. Mom and Dad had cut her off of the family money, but even at fifteen I had a debit and credit card. My driver picked her up, and we drove to Birmingham where I withdrew two thousand dollars from my account and gave it all to her. After that we went to this horrible neighborhood. She had me wait out in the car. My driver kept asking if I wanted to leave, and I did Trevor, I wanted to leave her there because I was so scared.”

  “You probably should have.”

  “What happened next I will never forget in my life. She came out of the house and got back in the car. I told the driver to take us back to Laurel Springs. I felt dirty and knew I’d never be able to do this for her again. I had to stop enabling her, and none of this felt good. We got on I-65 and she was okay for the next twenty minutes or so. She told me, ‘It’s not working the way I need it to, Daphne. I need more now.’ I didn’t know what that meant, Trevor, I swear to God.”

  “Of course not,” he’s still keeping his distance, almost like he’s afraid to come too close. “You had absolutely no idea what it meant.”

  “I watched her pull out a tourniquet and a syringe. I started screaming, asking her what the hell she was doing, and she said the most horrible things to me. About how I was the favorite child, and she was a throwaway, and the only reason she put up with me was because I gave her money. It was so painful to hear her talk to me that way. And back then, when I got hurt, I hurt the other person back. It’s what my parents taught me to do, it’s what they did to one another. I told her have fun killing herself then, because that’s what would happen.”