He took up a position in the back where he could still see the screen. Right now all he could make out was a dark, grainy shot of a backyard.
“Teda is in position,” Jameson said. Teda was the name the bomb team had given their robot. It was a combination of the original team’s names and stood as an active memorial to the retired officers.
“Get her in there,” O’Neil replied.
They all held their breath as the robot shifted into drive, bouncing and trucking across the yard to a deck. Jameson jabbed keys and the robot reversed, then began to rise, going up, jostling, up and jostling some more. The Teda unit was a large robot, nearly four feet in length and capable of expanding five feet vertically, with an arm that worked much like a human’s did.
Teda leveled off on the deck and approached the back door. It was fascinating to watch the arm extend and the “hand” reach for the knob. The top of the hand hit the doorknob. Jameson cursed under her breath, drew the arm back and adjusted the height. The depth perception on the camera was difficult to manage. Add to that they were working in near blackout conditions, and Cole was amazed with what they were able to do.
The back door swung inward on the second try and darkness yawned before them.
O’Neil leaned over the controller’s shoulder. “You should be in the kitchen now. If you go straight ahead you’ll end up in a hall. The closest we can figure out is that there’s either a door that leads directly into the front of the house, or you’ll have to go to the entry we can see at the opposite end of the hall.”
“Yes sir,” was all she said. Jameson was nothing if not dedicated to her job.
Teda advanced through the empty kitchen, Jameson sweeping it twice with the camera to check for the suspect or hostage. By the looks of the space, the house was completely vacant.
“Entering the doorway now,” Jameson announced.
There was movement in one of the lower corners of the camera.
“Pan down,” O’Neil said.
Teda’s perspective changed and the camera was directed toward to the ground.
A man lay on the floor, a handgun pointed straight up at what would be the abdominals of an officer entering the house. Without a breathing target, the shooter pushed up to his knees and peered at the robot.
“He doesn’t know what to do. He’s probably never seen one,” O’Neil muttered. “Cole, get your guys in there now while he’s distracted.”
“Yes sir.” Cole bolted for the door and sprinted as fast as he could with his gear on toward the B.E.A.R. “Load up.”
His team moved as one, filing into the armored truck. They might not have practiced for this mission, but they were a well-oiled machine. He quickly related what he’d seen in the trailer to his men, listening with one ear to his radio for updates. O’Neil’s voice chirped over once to tell him the suspect was still engaged with Teda.
All situations were different, the judgment calls they made reflecting not only on them as officers, but on their department. It was an honor and duty he took seriously. As they rounded the corner, he sucked in several deep breaths. His body tingled with the urge to move, to act, to take the sorry bastard down.
“Ready, team,” he spoke quietly into his headset as they came abreast of the house.
“Ready, sir,” came the quiet replies.
He pressed his radio button. “We are entering the house.”
O’Neil’s voice came through loud and clear. “Copy that.”
The truck rolled to a stop and they sprang from the double doors located in the back of the truck. There was a straight shot to the front door ready for them through the barricade. The street was full of cop cars, support vehicles and officers ready to back them up.
Cole sprinted for the front door, shield thrust out in front of him, choosing a silent approach this time around. He grabbed the doorknob, but it resisted.
“Locked,” he said over his shoulder.
Aaron shouldered past him and hit it with the twenty-pound door ram, putting his full force behind it.
The door shook. Fucking reinforced doors.
“Suspect is headed toward your position,” O’Neil radioed.
The door gave and Aaron kicked it in, knocking it out of the way. Cole stepped into the space, shield in front of him.
“Police, hands in the air,” Cole shouted.
The suspect bolted in from the hall, ducking and diving for something that shone black. The way a barrel of a pistol would.
“Gun down, put your hands in the air,” Cole yelled.
Instead of giving up, the suspect took aim.
A gun discharged to his right and the suspect went down. Cole rushed in and took possession of the firearm while Aaron and another officer covered the hostage. The others descended on the suspect.
The immediate danger was over in seconds.
“Fuck.” Cole grabbed his radio and shined his flashlight on a folding table set up at the back of the room. There were plastic bags of pipes, wires and other raw materials. “O’Neil, send the bomb team in here.”
There were enough supplies on hand that Cole’s skin was crawling.
A nightmare had come to Metro City, and it wasn’t over yet.
* * * * *
Tanya clutched a decorative pillow to her chest and watched the unfolding news coverage. She’d seen all the footage at least three times so far, and the current replay was not helping her fear.
This was the worst part about being married to SWAT. Seeing it on TV before Cole had a chance to explain how it wasn’t that bad. And to him it was always “not that bad” because there was a logical worst-case scenario. Somehow that was supposed to make her feel better.
Everyone needs their delusions, she guessed.
The fact that he was safely tucked away in bed, sawing logs, didn’t comfort her. From what the news said, this was the tip of the iceberg on a much bigger situation. She took a deep breath.
Don’t panic.
Nothing to worry about.
Everything is fine.
Cole is safe.
The bad guy is in prison.
The hostage is with her family.
She recited all the positive things, a trick she’d developed in the beginning to help her keep calm. It worked better sometimes more than others.
Today was not one of those better times.
The Olympics were forging ahead as planned, with some small alterations to the more public events that restricted the attendees. A few events, like the distance runners and cyclists who didn’t have a stadium per se, were postponed until next week.
The sound of the refrigerator opening and closing startled Tanya from the trance she’d fallen into with the TV. She sprang to her feet and rushed to the bar separating the den from the kitchen. Cole stood with one hand on the fridge door, drinking deeply from the milk carton.
“You’re awake,” she said.
Cole’s shoulders hunched and his eyes bulged. He coughed and hurriedly put the carton down.
“Sorry.” She edged around the bar, ignoring his transgression with the milk, itching to hug and comfort herself in the very physical feel of her husband’s living person.
He sucked in a deep breath. “I didn’t think you would still be here.”
“I saw the news and couldn’t leave.”
“Aw shit.” He pulled her against his chest. “It wasn’t that bad. No one was hurt.”
She didn’t believe him, but hearing the words from Cole made her feel better, which was ridiculous. He was lying through his teeth, but she’d let him believe she couldn’t tell. There were some truths she didn’t want to know. Some realities of his job she couldn’t handle, and she had to trust him that he told her the essentials. Which was that no one she loved or cared for was hurt, and the civilians had been rescued.
“What are they saying?” he asked, and she didn’t miss the tense note in his voice.
“Let me get you something to eat.” She pushed him toward the stool and reached in
to the refrigerator for the crepes she’d started making earlier in an effort to give herself something to do. A little whipped cream on the thin pastry, toss on some sliced fruit and she pushed the food across to Cole. “Start with that. I’ll get some bacon and eggs going for you.”
“You don’t have to do this.” Cole dug into the crepes with gusto.
“It makes me feel better. They’re reporting on the other bust you were talking about.”
“Yeah, I was wondering why it wasn’t on the news. I guess they were trying to play it close to the vest.”
Tanya shrugged and busied herself at the stove with the rest of his meal. “They’re saying it’s connected. I guess one of the meth cooks identified the suspect from last night and now they’re going public. There are supposedly three other people they can’t identify. Cole, this is scary. It’s one thing to see it happening on the TV somewhere else, but this is here. And you’re involved. And it scares me.”
Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her against Cole’s chest. She hadn’t even seen him move, but there he was.
“Shh, babe, don’t cry.”
Cole flipped the burners off and pulled them away from the stove.
Tanya buried her face in his shoulder and squeezed. “Just tell me you’ll be careful, please? I wouldn’t dream of asking you to not go, but I can ask you to stay as safe as possible, can’t I?”
“Yes. I am careful.” He tipped her chin up so she had to look at his face lined with worry. For her. For being worried about him. “Do you want me to tell you how careful we are? Would that help?”
She nodded.
Cole lifted her onto the kitchen counter, which brought them face to face. It also made it easier to wrap her arms and legs around him, as if she could squish their bodies together to form one person. His hands coasted up and down her back in soothing motions.
“You’ve seen the kind of gear I wear. It’s about as safe as I can get without wearing a full bomb suit.”
“Would they let you?”
He snorted. “Wear one of those things? I’d rather not. Anyways, we had at least thirty SWAT on-site last night with more serving as backup and crowd control. There were lookouts in the armored trucks keeping an eye out for us. And before we ever went into the house, they deployed gas and sent in one of our robots so we knew exactly what we were getting into. The robot actually distracted the bad guy so we could get in and rescue the hostage. Without anyone getting hurt.”
It sounded dangerous and she hated thinking of Cole in those situations. But she couldn’t deny she had put him through much of the same reversed role with her previous work. There were moments in disaster areas they’d been caught in rubble, there were always chances of being taken hostage and a few times she hadn’t been able to communicate back home and Cole had been one step away from flying to come get her himself.
For several long minutes they held each other. The TV was a quiet drone in the background, and in the distance a lawn mower buzzed, signs that life was pressing on.
Tanya sucked in a deep breath and released Cole, wiping her face and mentally assembling her confidence.
Cole was okay.
They couldn’t control the future.
And neither could they allow fear to govern their lives.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I know better than to watch the news, but it’s scary.”
“I know. Have you eaten?” Cole moved back to the stove and turned the burners on.
“Earlier.”
“How about I make us some bacon-and-egg burritos?”
She nodded and watched Cole fry up the bacon. He glanced at her every few moments, checking on her. The tenseness around his eyes, the constant darting looks said she wasn’t the only one worried.
Cole cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
Tanya shrugged and picked at a dish towel. “It’s part of your job, and I know better.”
“You’ve never asked me to leave SWAT.” It seemed like a straightforward statement, but the tone of his voice said otherwise. He wasn’t asking a question, but his body language was screaming, Why?
“You never asked me to leave One World.”
“The other guys, well, Aaron just had this conversation with his fiancée so it got us all to talking about it. Everyone’s wife or girlfriend has asked them to quit at one point or another. You never have.” He finally lifted his gaze to her face and studied her. “Why not?”
Tanya shrugged. “It’s who we are. We’re both people who want to give back to others, and we do it in our own way. If you’d taken away my work with One World I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself. If I asked you to give up being a cop, you wouldn’t be happy. I want you happy, even if that means putting you in danger, because that’s the kind of people we are. Remember Deborah from high school?”
“Yeah, Deborah Smith.”
She smiled. “Yeah, Deborah Smith. You know I was talking to Mom about her the other day and she actually had to pause before asking me, ‘Oh, that Down Syndrome girl?’ I think I fell in love with you the first time when I started that petition for her to go on that big junior trip with us. They weren’t going to let her and it wasn’t fair. The principal wouldn’t listen to me because I was just the brainiac girl, but you were Mr. All-American Football Star. You stood behind me and said she had the right to go.”
Cole’s face creased in memory, going from deep lines of anger around his mouth to the almost dimples in his cheeks when he smiled.
“We’re people who stand for things, and if I asked you to walk away from being a cop or SWAT, I’d be asking you to be less of a person, and I can’t do that. I love this Cole too much for him to be anything else.”
Cole blinked at her several times. “That’s…sweet.”
“Well, I’m full of that today.”
Chapter Eight
Cole moved the skillet off the burner and stepped between her knees. The need to touch her, to ground himself in the tangible evidence of the here and now was immediate. He smoothed her hair back and cupped her cheeks. Tanya wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent, but compared to the crooks and criminals he was exposed to on a daily basis, she was a fucking angel.
He stared at her, committing this face to memory again. Her chest stopped moving and this moment froze in time.
Tanya moved first. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and kissed him, drawing him down into the warm embrace of her body. He pulled back, grasped the neck of her t-shirt and ripped it straight down the front. Tanya gaped at him, her gaze bouncing from her suddenly bare breasts to his face.
As a rule, Cole never got physical with Tanya to the point of violence, but he was raw. He needed her life, her vigor to rub off on him in the most carnal way possible.
Tanya gasped and suddenly the heat on the stove had nothing on the blaze growing between them. Instead of calling him an animal, she stared up at him through her lashes, color high on her cheeks.
She clawed at his shirt until he leaned back long enough to yank it off over his head. They clashed again in a frenzy of hands, questing mouths and grappling flesh.
He yanked her off the counter and her yoga pants and panties wound up on the floor. She pushed his sweats down, but he twisted her around and bent her over the counter, her ass presented for his perusal.
Fantasies come to life.
Tanya grunted. Her hands slapped on the counter. She stared over her shoulder at him and thrust her hips back. He didn’t give her nice words, he didn’t even speak. There was no place for gentle touches, stroking or petting right now.
Cole kicked her legs out wider and found her pussy with his fingers. Her folds were slick with arousal. He grabbed his dick and positioned himself at her entrance. The warning that this was going to be a frenzied, rough coupling was on his lips but his mouth wouldn’t move.
How could he treat his wife this way?
Tanya thrust back, impaling herself on his cock and taking the choice fr
om him. He pushed deeper, feeling her slick channel constrict around him, hugging him and pulling him deeper. She moaned and her knuckles turned white where she gripped the kitchen counter. He withdrew, then slammed into her with enough force that Tanya yelped, which turned into a giggle then hitched into a moan.
“You like that?” he growled out as if he were some cheesy porno star.
“Oh yeah,” she panted back without hesitation.
It hit him then. His prim and proper wife, the one with the hidden tattoo her parents could never know about and the roller derby habit, she had a bad streak a mile wide. It shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was.
He thrust deep again and her hands splayed over the counter. She moaned and panted, driving him crazy because he’d imagined this. A million fantasies fucking her over and over again in the middle of their kitchen, across the table and on the sofa slapped him in the face.
They could have been doing this all along.
The skin at the base of his spine prickled and a wave rolled up from his toes. He grunted and shoved deep, rocking up on his toes as orgasm burned his balls.
The sound of their combined panting filled the house.
“Ohmygod.”
Cole pulled out, spun her around and dropped to his knees.
There was no fucking way he was going to come and she wasn’t.
Tanya clung to the counter while he shoved her leg over his shoulder. He rolled her clit between his fingers. She ground her pelvis against his hand, setting a rhythm all her own. She came apart at the seams, a flush of moisture coating his fingers and her cries echoing around them.
He surged up and squeezed her. Tanya laughed and laid her head against his shoulder.
“How’s that for something different?” he asked.
Tanya sputtered and they broke out in uncontrollable laughter.
* * * * *
Cole balanced a cardboard tray of drinks and snacks that had cost a small fortune and scooted his way through the crowd. Tanya clutched his arm, muttering sarcastic expletives.
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