by Mia Taylor
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to ruin our buzz with something like that.”
Cara paused and glanced at her worriedly.
“You’re not planning on bringing them down, though, are you?” she asked seriously and Melissa scoffed.
“Care, I’m going to be a beat cop, rounding up drunks and dealing with kids spray-painting bridges. You’re watching too much Netflix.”
She didn’t add that she was a woman and destined to remain in uniform for an unjust amount of time before she was likely to see any action.
No more doom and gloom, she reminded herself. Tonight, I’m Fun Melissa for the last time.
Cara opened her mouth to respond but before she could, Melissa felt a hand encircle her waist and swing her around so that she was staring into the eyes of a familiar face.
“As I live and breathe,” Louis Wayland choked. “The two most beautiful women in Chicago are at my club! I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you on the camera!”
“I thought we needed to give the password, Lou,” Melissa told him dryly. “You’re killing the mystique of the speakeasy this way.”
“Ah, you can’t blame me for getting excited,” Louis purred, extending his arm to loop Cara toward him. “I haven’t seen you two in months. Where have you been hiding?”
Melissa cast Cara a warning look but she was too fixed on the club owner, stars already filling her eyes.
So much for Cara keeping it in her pants. She’s already preparing to make out with him in the office.
It was difficult to know what made the Wayland brothers appealing. Certainly, it wasn’t their looks nor their cheesy one-liners, which they used on every woman before them.
Meh, they’re club owners. I suppose that still holds water to some of us.
Melissa blushed as she thought about the couple times she had ended up in the office with Andrew Wayland herself.
Certainly no more of that.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn’t it?” Melissa teased as the trio turned toward the club.
“Not too much absence!” Louis protested. “Andrew is going to lose his mind when he sees you, Liss. He was just talking about you the other day, in fact.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
Melissa meant it too—she doubted that the Wayland brothers had ever used a creative line in their lives.
“Only the hot ones,” Louis replied, leering at her, and Melissa smirked.
God, he’s disgusting. One day, he really is going to go down for serving underage girls or drug dealing or something.
Melissa forced herself not to think about it, knowing that she was just as disgusting as him for indulging their debauchery.
That night, however, she was Melissa Stark, club-goer, silly millennial, and out to have fun. There was no place in her dark thoughts for all the usual notions which kept her up at night, the very same ones which Cara had so bluntly brought up earlier.
Tomorrow, she would be Officer Melissa Stark and she wouldn’t be caught dead in Portia unless it was to be taking out Louis and Andrew Wayland in handcuffs.
Which will never happen because, let’s face it, you’re never going to make detective.
“Come on,” Cara hissed in her ear. “Let’s make tonight count.”
Melissa nodded, idly wondering if Cara actually could read her mind sometimes. She linked her arm through her roommate’s and they entered the club.
“You’re damned right we will,” she promised Cara, who squealed happily.
The trio brushed past the bouncer, who held the door open for them to enter, and descended into the underground club which was smoky with incense and sultry jazz music.
Despite all Melissa knew about the undertones of what was happening inside Portia, there was something soothing about it. She almost felt like a normal twenty-something as they were escorted to the bar. For a fleeting moment, she forgot that she didn’t belong there, or anywhere else, for that matter.
The longing in her gut seemed to be swept away with the bass of the music.
“Gin martini?” Louis whispered in her ear and Melissa nodded at him, surprised that he remembered.
“Dry,” she conceded.
“I hope not,” he leered at her and she shuddered, the brief peace dissolving.
“Same for me,” Cara purred, sticking her face between them, and Louis gestured at the bartender to get their orders.
“Stay here,” he instructed. “I’m going to find Andrew.”
Melissa was relieved when his hand slid off her back and he disappeared through the throng of people toward his office, leaving the roommates alone by the bar with their beverages.
“He never changes, does he?” Cara giggled, staring after him with a bemused expression on her face.
“No,” Melissa replied meaningfully, casting her a wary look. “He really doesn’t. Don’t forget that. He’s going to be sixty years old, hitting on twenty-somethings and popping Viagra.”
“Leave me alone,” Cara muttered, putting the drink to her lips. “I’m allowed to misbehave once in a while.”
“As long as you know it’s only going to be for tonight.”
Cara said something under her breath which Melissa didn’t hear but the blonde’s eyes were trained on the center of the floor where two men were unusually close, the sparks of fury between them almost palpable.
A fight is about to break out, she realized, and even as she thought it, she saw the shiny butt of a gun sliding out from the waistband of the taller man’s pants.
“EVERYBODY GET DOWN!” Melissa screamed, diving for Cara and knocking the brunette to the ground in a splay of legs.
“What the—?” Cara choked. “What’s goin—”
The gunshot rang out and the club exploded into a chaos the likes of which Melissa had never seen, but she kept her body firmly over Cara’s, her head raised to take in every detail of the shooter that she could as her training kicked in.
Screams reverberated through the dimly lit basement and Melissa was nearly trampled guarding Cara’s quivering body, but her sooty eyes remained firmly on the suspect who had managed to slip away through the ruckus.
Cara sobbed hysterically.
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to go out like this!”
“You’re not going out like this,” Melissa assured her, slowly moving off the terrified woman. “He’s gone. It was just a spat between two assholes.”
“A-are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Melissa told her, jumping to her feet with surprising agility in four-inch heels. She extended a hand to Cara, who reached for it instantly, and together, they moved with the grain toward the exits.
“Oh my God!” Cara choked when they poured up the stairs and into the alleyway where police were already arriving. “Did you see anything?”
“No.” Melissa tugged on Cara’s hand when her friend remained in place. “We have to get out of here.”
“W-what? No, we need to talk to the cops and make sure that everyone’s okay.”
Melissa looked at her with a deadpan expression but Cara didn’t seem to understand her impatience to leave.
“Liss, we need to—”
“I can’t be caught up in the middle of this,” she muttered. “I am the cops, remember? Or at least I’m supposed to be. How do you think it’s going to look if I’m here the night before my first shift? I need to get out of here. Now.”
Comprehension passed over Cara’s face in a wave and she nodded, visibly swallowing.
“Are you sure we should go?” she muttered, looking around uncertainly. “I mean, what if someone got hurt? Or died?”
“You can stay if you want,” Melissa told her firmly. “But I was never here.”
She turned to flee the scene but Cara reached out for her to stop.
“Liss, what if this is a sign that you shouldn’t be starting tomorrow?” she asked urgently and Melissa gawked at her.
“Are you kidding me right now
?” she demanded, looking around worriedly.
“No,” Cara whispered. “I’m not.”
Melissa shook her arm off and scowled.
“It’s not a sign,” she snapped. “There are no such things as signs. Only bad timing.”
She didn’t wait for Cara to respond before sprinting down the alleyway and disappearing into the night. She wished that Cara’s words didn’t follow her hauntingly for the rest of the night.
Chapter Two
Not These Guys Again
The door to his bedroom flew open and Amber burst in like a furious whirlwind.
“August, I swear to God, if you don’t start bringing your phone into the bedroom with you when you go to sleep…” Amber trailed off and hurled his ringing phone at his head. Instinctively, his arm reached up and caught it before it could do any damage, even before he opened his eyes.
“You don’t believe in God,” August muttered sleepily, glancing at the still-chiming cell. He yawned and looked at the time before taking the call.
“Silas,” he mumbled, sitting up to rub his eyes. “Hope this means someone’s dead.”
Sergeant Walker snorted at his dry greeting. “Sorry. I know you’ve got an early day tomorrow but we need you at a club in Milwaukee. There’s been a shooting. One injury.”
“No deaths?” August yawned again.
“Silas…”
“Text me the address, Sarge.”
He disconnected the call and flopped back against the pillows, stretching against the coolness of the sheets leisurely.
For a minute, he felt his body sinking back into the comfort of his new mattress, but he stopped himself before falling asleep.
No rest for the wicked, he reminded himself, pulling himself out of the bed as his cell chimed again with the address he’d requested. It wasn’t like he was at his real house anyway. There was a reason he’d selected such a crappy apartment, after all. It was easier for him to drag himself out of bed.
“Oh, come on!” his sister yelled when August padded back out and flipped on all the lights in his wake. “You promised you were on days! What is this crap?”
“And you promised you would work things out with Sal and would get the hell off my couch, but here we are,” August replied easily, reaching for the coffee pot. “When are you going, by the way? Seriously, it’s been two weeks. I’m getting sick of seeing you every day. I had enough of that in childhood. And childhood was long… very long.”
The mere memory of sharing a room with Amber made him shudder.
Hell is teenaged girls, he decided many moons ago.
Amber groaned and pulled the pillow over her head to block him out.
“YOU PROMISED YOU WERE ON DAYS!” she shrieked through the muffle of the pillowcase. August grinned lazily and turned back to his coffee, enjoying the anguish he was causing his sister.
It was commonplace, after all. Amber would get into some ridiculous fight with her husband, “leave him” for a few days and inevitably go back. The couple thrived off drama, after all. At first, August had tried to be understanding but Amber was becoming a bigger pain in his ass than he wanted to admit.
And two weeks is overkill. I’m going to have to speak with Sal and get this resolved before I kill her.
“Want some coffee?” he yelled loudly, ensuring she didn’t fall back asleep. It didn’t seem fair that she should get comfortable when he was in pain.
The pillow fell off Amber’s face and she glared at him with defiant blue eyes, not unlike his.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning!” she griped. “Of course not!”
“Oh. Yeah,” August replied sweetly. “It is. Look at that.”
He continued to stomp about the kitchen, making more noise than necessary.
Detective August Silas had long since learned to roll with the punches of all-hours calls in the ever-bustling city of Chicago, so he wasn’t annoyed about being roused from sleep even though he really did have a daunting task at seven a.m.
I’d rather deal with a club shooting than what I have to do on tomorrow’s day shift.
Still, misery did love company, particularly when it was that of his siblings.
“I’m thinking about getting a dog,” August told her conversationally as if Amber was engaging with him. He watched her head pop up and her eyes grow huge with disgust.
“Like a Boxer or a Rotti. I love their little faces and I’ve been spending some time in the canine unit—”
“Okay, I get it!” she burst out as August glided back toward his bedroom to dress. “I’ll go home tomorrow!”
He paused and looked at her around the corner, blinking. “So soon?”
August knew the pillow was coming for his head before Amber knew to throw it.
He padded back into his room to dress in a pair of wrinkled pants and matching shirt as the linen hit the wall where he had been standing seconds before.
Laundry. I’ve got to do laundry, he reminded himself, yawning as he peered at himself in the mirror. Sometimes he wondered how he managed to do it all and still keep his sanity.
Through the bleak light of the table lamp, he studied his attractive reflection with half-interest, his mind already on the shooting at Portia, a speakeasy which had been the hotspot of activity in the past.
Damned club district. Who are these people who want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars in two hours to sweat with strangers?
Even in the wildest part of his youth, August couldn’t think of a worse way to spend a weekend than out clubbing.
But August Silas had never been like other men his age. The shadow in his cobalt-blue eyes still reflected the seriousness he had possessed in his youth and even though he had learned to take life with a grain of salt, there was still a weight in August he couldn’t escape.
And you never will.
He ran a hand through his short-cropped, black hair and located his badge, sliding it around his neck so that it hung against the buttons of his shirt. Even without checking the weather app on his phone, he knew the night was warm, despite the fact that it was late September.
We’re having an Indian summer. All the crazies are out with their guns and stupidity, drinking in clubs and waving their dicks around to show who’s tougher. Just another night in Chicago.
With a sigh, August turned to leave the apartment, noting that Amber had fallen back asleep on the couch.
He slammed the door loudly, the sound reverberating through the apartment.
After all, I may not get to torment her again this week, he thought, snickering.
~ ~ ~
Really? Don’t these kids have to work in the morning? It’s Sunday night, for Christ’s sake.
August shook his head and exited the driver’s side of the sedan to approach the police tape. He ducked under it and addressed the officer.
“Detective,” one of the officers guarding the scene said, nodding as he slipped by.
“Officer,” August replied, stifling a yawn. He definitely needed another coffee. He couldn’t stop yawning.
He made his way down the steps through the throng of panicked-looking party-goers almost indifferently. In his ten years on the force, he’d been to more of these shootings than he could count and the stricken looks meant little to him unless they belonged to those of the victims themselves.
That’ll learn you to go out and dance with strangers, he thought and instantly cringed.
And I sound like someone’s wartime grandpa. When did I become that guy?
“Ah. There you are.” His partner shook his greying head and grunted as he nodded toward the bloodstained floor near the forensics team.
“You have this under control,” August grunted. “What do you need me for?”
It was a joke but Harley wasn’t smiling.
“I hate this place,” the older detective muttered. “There’s always something going on around here.”
“Chicago or this particular club?” August chirped, trying to coax a smile fro
m Harley’s stoic expression.
“Both. But I was talking about the club,” he barked back, still unable to crack a grin. August shrugged his shoulders.
“If it’s not this one, it’s another half dozen on this block,” August reminded him. “You’re better off just hating the entire city.”
That comment finally warranted a smirk from Harley’s pressed lips.
“What’ve we got?” August asked, craning his neck around to survey the scene.
“Nothing really. My guess is a drug deal gone south but no one saw anything and the cameras didn’t get a good angle of the shooter’s face.”
“No one?” August pursed his own lips together and looked about. They weren’t in a place where the party-goers would be scared silent and it certainly wasn’t known for gang violence. It seemed odd that nobody had seen anything.
Of course, if it was done at close range and everyone around was high and drunk…
“How badly hurt was the victim?” August wanted to know. He hadn’t seen a live ambulance outside, indicating that he had already been taken to the hospital.
“Meh. He’ll live but he’s not talking either. Dumb-ass kids.”
August laughed and nodded in agreement.
“Lemme take a look at those cameras. What do you want to bet we know our perp?” August looked up and Harley pointed toward the office where a familiar face stood speaking with a uniformed officer.
“In these parts? It’s probably a college kid who got in over his head. I’ll take your bet.”
“Fifty?”
“Done.”
“Which one is that one? Andy or Louie?” August asked, looking at the oily-looking man in a pinstripe suit.
And then we have these millennial club owners, thinking they’re gangsters from the 30s, wasting their daddy’s money.
August loathed the man on sight.
“Louis. Andrew’s in the office, probably hiding all his smack.”
August nodded and made his way over to the club owner, steeling himself for being talked in circles.
“Louis,” August said cordially. “How are you?”
He waved the uniform away and watched the greasy Wayland brother shrivel slightly at his replacement.
