Saint

by Mazzy King

  SAINT

  A Badge Bunnies Novel Book 3

  Mazzy King

  MZK Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by Mazzy King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  SAINT: Badge Bunnies 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  Subscribe to Mazzy King’s Newsletter!

  Sneak Peek of GUNNER: Badge Bunnies 4

  About the Author

  Also by Mazzy King

  SAINT: Badge Bunnies 3

  A Steamy Alpha Bad Boy Cop Romance

  The good Bad Boys of Ridge City…and the women who love them.

  Put your hands where he can feel them…

  Saint

  The last thing in the world I expected when I went undercover to meet the head of a luxury car theft ring in Ridge City was Lyra—the raven-haired dark angel from my past who immediately grabbed my heart again with her beautiful face and sexy body.

  She’s not a bad person. She's just made some bad decisions. And now, more than ever, she needs my help. I can’t bust her just yet. I need time to explore her mind…and hopefully something more.

  She makes me want to forget my name and get down to all kinds of devilish actions with her.

  She needs protecting…and I’m the only man for the job.

  Lyra

  I never wanted to be part of this criminal underworld, but my abusive ex is threatening me.

  But I never imagined he’d actually set me up to take the fall for him until a detective’s flashlight is in my eyes. A detective who I know from a past that seems so long ago.

  He’s always been the sexiest man I’ve ever seen…and despite our past history, he might want to take me to jail.

  His name is Saint.

  I desperately need Saint to save me from my ex and the dangerous game I've been playing…and I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  But can he set the law to the side to be my archangel and protect me, or will he devil me to prison for God knows how long?

  Saint: Badge Bunnies 3 is an insta-love, happily-ever-after, STEAMY romance. No cliffhangers, no cheating. This is a standalone story part of the BADGE BUNNIES series.

  1

  Saint Rivers

  “Are we clear on the operation?”

  I glance around the table at my assembled team, clenching my jaw. Tonight cannot go sideways. What we’ve accomplished—what I’ve managed to do—is a one-shot only situation, and the margin for error for tonight is small.

  Heads nod, and I feel only a glimmer of satisfaction, but that’s still a good thing. The best of the best sit at this table at HQ with me now—detectives from auto theft, undercover patrol officers, a few members of SWAT. Gunner Hansen, a top undercover officer, gives me a nod across the table. He’s got my back if no one else does.

  I only wish my older brother Jaxson was on this op with me. He’s a year older, but it’s almost like we’re twins. We’re as close as if we came into this world together, and we even got our first tattoos together—a cross in the middle of our chests, and the word “Trust” on our left ribs.

  But he’s got his own cases, and this one is mine. This one is the one that could make or break my career in Auto Theft.

  I’m finally going to get my hands on Max Hendricks, the suspected lead of a luxury car theft ring in Ridge City.

  Suspected, my ass. He’s guilty, and tonight I’m going to bring his sorry ass in where he belongs. He and his team are responsible for a string of seventy-five thefts over the past two months. Benzes, Beamers, Range Rovers, Ferraris, Lambos. You name it, they’ve stolen it.

  I’ve orchestrated tonight’s meeting with him as delicately as handling a bomb. It’s been a meeting that’s been a month in the works. He’s been evasive and occasionally impossible to get a hold of, giving me the runaround while, I’m sure, he tried to determine whether or not I was who I said I was—a fence for those luxury vehicles. I produced falsified reports of “transactions” I told him I’d completed for similar hot products, selling these cars overseas to buyers willing to pay top dollar. I engaged the tech team and the cybercrimes department to make the transactions appear as legit as possible.

  Finally, finally, last week, he agreed to meet with me, to discuss a plan for getting the cars overseas and into buyers’ hands.

  “Let’s run it down one more time,” I say to my team. “We’re supposed to meet at one of his properties, an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of downtown. I sent Gunner’s team to recon the location earlier this week.”

  Gunner nods and glances around at the team. “Confirmed the location as being Hendricks’s. But it’s only abandoned on paper. And it’s only one of his bases.”

  Another auto theft detective leans forward. “How many bases are we talking?”

  Gunner shrugs. “We suspect it’s close to a dozen. They’re places where the cars are being stored, where they do transactions and meets from, and they’re constantly rotating.”

  “Can’t have the cops getting onto them,” I add drily. “One thing at a time. We get Hendricks, we get everything. He’s the key. That’s why tonight is so fucking important. No mistakes.”

  Heads nod again. I don’t have to say it. Some officers take shit like that to offense. Others know to put their pride to the side and focus on the mission.

  “The meet is scheduled for eleven,” I go on, glancing at my watch. “So we’ve got an hour to get in place, an hour to set up surveillance. Make sure you keep an extra-sharp eye out for tails. If anyone sees you, if anything feels off, get out of there.”

  “You gonna be wired?” Gunner asks.

  I hesitate. “He’s not a stupid guy. He’s going to take any and all precautions to make sure I am who I say I am. So, no.”

  Gunner shakes his head. “I don’t like that.”

  Neither would Jaxson.

  “Shit, me neither,” I say. “But what option is there? I go in wired, he finds it, I’m a dead man.”

  It means I’ll be alone, essentially, but that’s why I have a team.

  “No worries, Saint,” Gunner says finally, mustering up a good impression of a confident grin. “We’ve got your back.”

  Tonight, I’m not driving one of the force’s unmarked cars. I’m driving a current-model black Camaro, rented especially for tonight. It’s a super-souped-up version that would cost about seventy grand on the market. For my persona, it’s just his everyday car.

  My unmarked car is a few blocks away near the bar Triple Six. Gunner and I dropped it there earlier in the day. You never know when shit will go wrong and you need to get the hell out of somewhere.

  I check my phone. I’ve got messages from the team stating everyone is position. I cruise down the street toward the address Hendricks gave me during our last phone call, then rev my engine a few times for good measure to announce my arrival.

  The warehouse sits on the corner, and a large garage bay door starts to rise. I step out of the car and stride toward the two men who stand there to greet me. They both have guns—one has an AK-47, the other an Uzi. They clearly fucking mean business.

  “You Saint?” one of them asks gruffly.

  I used my real first name when I introduced myself to Hendricks, but a fake last name. I nod, affecting a cocky grin. “Sometimes they call me Devil, though.”

  Neither of the men cracks
a smile, but they exchange a look.

  I shrug. “Tough crowd. We doing this, or what?”

  One of them nods. “She’s waiting.”

  She? What the fuck? I frown, and it’s not fake. “I thought I was supposed to be meeting with Hendricks.”

  The guy fixes me with a hard stare. “Yeah, well. Something came up. You’ll meet with his right hand instead. You got a problem with that? If you do, you can turn around and fuck right off in your loud-ass Camaro.”

  I lift my hands. “Hey, man. Whatever. I’m just going off what I was told. I don’t want to be sharing all the info with someone who’s not supposed to know it.”

  “We don’t have any secrets,” the other guy says, and they both turn their backs on me.

  I follow them through a cavernous garage bay. It smells like old motor oil, half-smoked cigarettes, singed metal. It’s pretty brightly lit for a place that’s supposed to be abandoned, but I don’t see any of the stolen luxury cars anywhere. There are regular cars scattered around, but they’re in various states—and not one looks to be a whole, complete car.

  Chop shop.

  I keep my face neutral as I follow them through the open area to a short hallway that opens to another area with a large garage door at the back of it. I imagine it faces the other side of the block, which is good—there are at least three teams of officers waiting there. I’m not wired, but we decided I’ll pretend to check my phone during the meet and send a pre-typed text message to them to alert them it’s go-time.

  There are a few more men standing around all dressed in black. They’re talking to a woman who has her back to me.

  I don’t miss the petite, curvy body showcased to perfection in tight black jeans and a black leather jacket, or the thick, waist-length hair the color of espresso.

  Damn.

  Then I shove the all-male part of me—hard.

  Knock that shit off, Detective.

  “Our guest has arrived,” one of my tour guides says.

  The woman turns around, long hair swinging.

  All the breath leaves my body, and not only because she’s the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.

  It’s because I know her.

  Lyra.

  2

  Lyra Michaels

  I pace in the back of the warehouse, my boots clattering on the concrete floor. I’m anxious, and when I’m anxious, I can’t settle down.

  Earlier today, Max ordered me to take over this meeting, even though I said I didn’t want to. I’ve been wanting to get out of this life, and I’ve told him that, over and over. I don’t want to be a car thief anymore, but more than that, I don’t want to be around him anymore. As much I hate him, I can’t get away from him. He holds every bad thing I’ve ever done with him over my head, and he’s threatened to rat me out via his many secret sources more times than I can count.

  This last heist we’ve pulled—seventy-five cars in fifty days—was supposed to be my last job. I was supposed to get my cut, and then I was leaving Ridge City for good to never, ever come back. When I told him that right after the last car was stolen, he hit me so hard it made all the other times he hit me seem like kisses.

  He’s my ex. He’s been my ex for over two years now, and yet, he still has control over me. It makes me hate myself more than I hate him, and hate him bad.

  Today, he told me something came up and he wouldn’t be able to make the meeting tonight, with some hotshot fence who could get the cars overseas to the black market.

  “I need you to do it, Lyra,” he said in that sickly sweet way of his. “Please. Just this last one. Let’s get the cars lined up with the fence, and then you can go do whatever you want and I’ll leave you alone forever.”

  What Max has in mind, I have no idea, but I don’t care. I just want to do this job, take this stupid meeting, get my cut, and get the fuck out. I’ve earned enough money over the years to buy myself a whole new identity, make myself disappear where he can never find me again.

  “Why don’t you settle down?” one of the guys asks me, lazily watching me pace. “You nervous you get to be in charge of the classroom?”

  I shoot him a glare. “Shut the fuck up. I just want to get this over with.”

  He shakes his head. He and the other guy—both of them low-level thieves—smirk at each other. “You can run, Lyra, but you can’t hide. You’ll never fully be rid of Max. You know that, right?”

  I want to flick the butterfly knife in my back pocket out and slice his stupid smirk off his face, but I restrain myself. I’d be playing into their insults, proving myself to be the overly emotional and incapable team member they thought me to be. I’ve always just been known as “Max’s girl” even long after I’d stopped being Max’s girl.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth and focus on the task at hand?” I say coolly.

  He shrugs, then his gaze fixes on something over my shoulder. “They’re here.”

  Behind me, I hear one of the guards call out, “Our guest has arrived.”

  I whip around, ready to put on the act Max always taught me to have during business meetings, even when he was doing the talking.

  But my rehearsed speech fails me when I get a good look at the man approaching me. Well over six feet, sandy hair, light eyes, a chest full of tattoos. My gaze first lands on his full lips, then drops lower, where his black shirt, unbuttoned to his sternum, offers a peek of a familiar tattoo. A black cross.

  Saint Rivers strides toward me.

  My heart stops.

  When his gaze meets mine, his eyes widen, and he halts in his tracks.

  It’s probably the first time since I met him two months ago that I’ve ever seen his cool demeanor drop.

  We both stare at each other for a minute that stretches on until an uncomfortable and noticeable amount of time has passed.

  One of the guys heckling me rises to his feet. “Cat got your tongue, Saint?”

  “Yeah,” the guard behind him drawls. His hand hovers above the gun on his hip. “Is there a problem here?”

  “No,” I manage to choke out, backing up fast toward the big bay door. “No!”

  I catch a fleeting glimpse of Saint whipping around and disarming one of the guards as he brings his gun up, then quickly shooting the other in the knee before he can get off a shot. I yank the lever for the garage door to open, and as soon as it lifts just enough for me to fit under, I throw myself to the ground and wiggle under the opening.

  “Lyra!” he shouts behind me, and his voice sends a shiver down my spine.

  Nope nope nope.

  I struggle to my feet. Across the street, out of seemingly nowhere, five or six men rush toward the building out of the shadows.

  “Stop!” several of them yell at me, but I pay them no mind and take off in a dead run up the street. I have no idea where I’m headed, just that I need to get the fuck away from here now.

  I spare them no backward glance as my feet slam against the sidewalk. If I reach the corner and turn left and head down that block, then cut over another couple of blocks, there’s an underground bar, Triple Six, on that street, that I know I can disappear in. It’s the kind of place you go to get lost, and that’s exactly what I need to do.

  As I dart across the street, I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder. The sight of a large, speedy form following me makes my heart lurch into my throat.

  It’s him—Saint. He’s following me.

  There’s no time to waste. I kick my legs into an even higher gear. The heeled boots I’m wearing tonight turned out to be a bad choice, but I didn’t anticipate I’d be running half a mile in them. But adrenaline pumps so hard and fast through me that I can’t feel a thing. Tomorrow I will—if I get a tomorrow.

  Behind me, faintly, I hear, “Lyra! Stop!”

  I reach the end of the second block and know I’ll never make it to Triple Six. I’ve got to find a place to hide. I cross the street to continue in the same direction I was heading in, desperate to put distance between me
and Saint. There’s a narrow alley between a couple of brick buildings, so I duck into it and head for the dumpster at the end of the alley. I swing myself behind it and crouch down, the rusted metal against my left side and the brick wall of the building at my back. My chest heaves with the need to suck in oxygen, and I clap a hand hard over my mouth so my gasps don’t fill the still air of the night.

  It’s quiet—too quiet.

  I hear footsteps, measured and deliberate, coming down the street I just ducked off of. I will myself not to breathe, but my heart thuds in my chest, in my throat, against my temples. The desire to flee burns in my legs, but I hold still. However, if he comes down the alley and checks on the other side of the dumpster…I’m done.

  The footsteps stop about halfway down. There’s a long beat of silence. I press my other hand over the first, still against my mouth. After a moment, I hear more footsteps, but they’re heading back toward the entrance of the alley.

  I wait a moment longer, then risk a peek around the side of the dumpster. The alley is empty.

  I draw a deep breath, then slowly rise from my position behind the dumpster. It looks clear. I creep to the mouth of the alley and lean around the corner, checking up and down the street to make sure no one’s there. I can still go to Triple Six—that’s the best place to hide out for a couple of hours until the cops are done checking the area.

  I don’t even take a single a step outside of the alley before a large, heavy hand drops over my mouth and a thick arm snakes around my waist, trapping my arms at my sides, and pulls me back into the alley.