by Brynne Asher
Quietly, she responds, “Thanks, Gabby. I know you’re here for me.”
“Okay, then. Where is Preston, by the way?”
She sighs big and looks out the window again. “He flew out first thing this morning for a conference all week.”
“All right. Stay for dinner. My pop called after church this morning, informing me that he is coming over tonight and further informing me that I’m making spinach manicotti with marinara—his favorite. Then he informed me that my new boyfriend had better be here. You being here will a good distraction for me, because I’m personally not looking forward to it.”
“Girl. You know I would love to witness that show, but I’m not sure my stomach can handle manicotti right now.” She sighs. “Plus, you know Preston will call and be unhappy if I’m not at home.” She shrugs as an apology.
“That’s okay, but next time I’m making you stay.” I mock threaten her.
“I can’t wait to meet him, Gabby.”
“You will soon,” I promise.
She gives me a big hug and walks out the front door. I think to myself how different she is now and how I freaking hate Preston Briggs. Closing and locking the door behind her, I yell down the stairs, “Tone, you’re staying for dinner!”
“Depends on what you’re making,” he yells back.
“Spinach manicotti.”
There’s a pause. “Is Pop coming?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
“Will Jude be here?” he asks further.
Seriously?
“Yes.” He’s on to me and knows I just want someone here to play interference. Although, now that I’m thinking this through, I am kicking myself because having Tony here could make it worse. Way worse.
I hear him laughing from the basement. “Sure thing, Gabba. It should be a fun night. I wouldn’t miss it if you paid me.”
Damn. What was I thinking? I look to the ceiling to pray for patience then move to my kitchen to start dinner.
Chapter Twelve
You Will Not Enjoy It
The water is washing over me. I’m standing with my back to Jude, one of his arms is snaked around my front, his fingers working between my legs and the other is holding me up with his hand on my breast. My hands are braced against the shower wall as my orgasm shoots through me.
“Jude,” I breathe out.
His hands leave me and go to my hips, pulling me down onto his lap. Now sitting on the shower bench, he guides himself inside me. His mouth comes to my ear from behind and he demands through the water, “Move.”
His hands at my hips lead me and I spread my legs to straddle his, leaning forward to bracing myself on his knees for support. Jude is yanking me down onto him, not taking things slow this morning.
“Touch yourself, Gabby.”
Oh, wow.
I take a hand from his knee to touch myself as Jude is pulling me down on him, it starts building.
“That’s it baby, faster.”
It’s coming again and I feel like I’m not going to be able to move anymore. He must sense this because it’s all him now. I gasp, throwing my head back to his shoulder. He yanks me down on top of him one more time and plants his face in my neck groaning. I lean into him, placing my hand on the side of this face and we sit here letting the water run over us.
“There’s nothing better than listening to you breathe my name, Gabby. Nothing,” he whispers. Squeezing me one more time, he adds, “I can’t get enough of you, baby.”
This is true.
Jude’s alarm went off at oh-dark-thirty. He rolled into me, tucking his hand under my cami and started playing with my nipples. Then his mouth came to my neck and he said, “Come shower with me. Then you can come back to bed.”
How could I say no to that?
He lifts me, standing me up while turning me around and pushes me under the water. I feel his hands on my head as he works shampoo into my hair and it feels so good, I put my hands on his waist, leaning my forehead into his chest to lean on him. Pushing me back, he rinses it out, tips my head up to him and kisses me softly.
I blink through the water. “You have to condition or it will be a mess all day.”
Grinning down at me, he kisses me quick. “I’ll remember that.”
While he’s working conditioner through my hair, I grab a washcloth and start washing myself when he pushes me back under the water to rinse my hair again. Turning me again, his arm snakes around my front, pulling my back into his chest and he takes my washcloth away to wash between my legs. I’m still sensitive from earlier, I can’t help but close my eyes and lean my head back against his shoulder.
He kisses my temple and says, “Go back to bed, babe. Get some more sleep.”
I turn to him and put my arms around his waist and up his back fitting myself to him. Up on my tiptoes, I kiss him.
Getting out, I towel off, squeezing as much water out of my hair as I can. I go to my closet to grab one of Jude’s t-shirt’s off the top of his ever-exploding bag on the floor and head straight back to bed. Mia snuggles into me, wondering why I would get up so early to begin with and I barely hear the water turn off. Minutes later I feel Jude’s hand under the covers sliding up the side of my leg to land on my bare ass and he gives me a squeeze.
With his lips on my forehead and he murmurs, “I’m setting the alarm. Call me when you get up.”
“Have a good day,” I mumble and snuggle in deeper, my wet hair strewn all over the pillow.
“You too. Your Uncle Nic will be here in a few. I’ll wait for him before I leave.” He leans in to kiss me again.
“Mmm,” I mumble as my very relaxed body starts to find sleep again.
“It’s not a hunch anymore, man. This is Harper. We’ve got an ID on him from the airport attendant at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City. The plane was booked last night to fly into Fremont Municipal first thing this morning. Our Agents up there had all flights in the area tagged to anywhere in our vicinity—the red flag went up immediately,” Mac says into my ear as I’m driving into the office. “We knew last night there was a plane booked from the Lake Michigan area and thought it was a shot in the dark, but it looks like it’s turning out to be Harper making his way home.”
“Anyone with him?” I return.
“Yeah, his right-hand man. We still don’t know where they were staying, but we’ll find out soon enough. They took off in a private charter an hour ago. They should be landing at Fremont in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be to you in five, we should have plenty of time, but I want to be there when that motherfucker gets off the plane,” I bite. This moment has been in the back of my mind for the last two weeks.
“Calm down, Ortiz. I know you can’t think of anything besides smashing his face in, but we’ve got another situation to deal with first.”
“What?”
“Megan Harper. Her tail is reporting that she’s packing up her SUV. We’ve got a tracker on her car, so we’ll know where she is and the ping on her phone will show, too. An unmarked car is ready to follow and we’ll monitor her in the wire room, but man, it looks like she could be meeting up with her husband for the first time in three weeks.”
“What the fuck?” We have all of her phones tapped and a ping order to show the coordinate location. How did we miss their communication? Unless they had backup plans, which means Megan Harper would have been aware something like this could happen and was prepared for it. Which also means Megan Harper knows more than we thought.
“I know, man. That woman puts on a good front. But this cannot be a coincidence that she’s packing up when he’s heading south. I remember that woman from the raid. I’m gonna need another cup of coffee to deal with her.” He sighs, searching for patience.
The rage inside me just ignited. That bitch knew what she was doing calling Gabby, fed the information to her jackass husband knowing he would go after her with a physical and verbal warning. For the first time in my life, I’m feeling like I could beat the shit out
of a woman.
“I’m almost there. Be ready to go, I’m not in the mood to waste time this morning.”
“There’s more,” Mac goes on. “Her tail is almost one hundred percent sure she’s packing her kids up with her. We’re checking the flight plan at Fremont, but it looks like they could be getting ready to bolt. I’ll be out front waiting, we should be getting word any minute if that plane has plans to move.”
I get to the office, Mac swings in and we gun it west, alerting highway patrol who we are so they won’t stop us. We make the normally short thirty-minute drive in twenty, finding out on the way that Megan does have her kids with her, which throws a whole other dimension into our ops plan. Child Protective Services has been put on-call in case the children need to be taken into protective custody. We have four undercover surveillance units located inside the terminal waiting for Megan and her kids to arrive, with additional units placed in the parking lot and tarmac. The Omaha SWAT team is the closest unit to respond and have an armored vehicle ready to move onto the tarmac if Harper doesn’t cooperate by exiting the aircraft. Since Fremont is a small department, a mass of Omaha PD is providing backup, waiting a half-mile away when we start taking them into custody.
“From what we can tell on the tracker, Mrs. Harper has taken a wrong turn but has rerouted and is heading back this way. The flight plan is to refuel here and head straight west to the Outer Banks. The asshole seems to like water, I’m sure being landlocked in the Midwest was torture for him,” our Group Supervisor informs us.
We’re in the backroom of the terminal of the Fremont Municipal Airport, a tiny airstrip right on the edge of town. The Falcon 10, a small private lightweight jet that Harper chartered, should be here in fifteen minutes. The plan is to get Megan and her kids out of the way before Harper’s plane lands.
“As soon as the wife and kids enter the terminal we will quietly, for the kids’ sake, escort them into this room. The pilot should exit the plane since they’re refueling, but if he doesn’t, the tower will radio to him that there is an issue with the flight plan to get him out. If Harper continues to be the fuckwad he’s proven to be by not getting off to help his wife with the kids and bags, we’ll send in SWAT, demand over the speakers that they exit the aircraft. If that doesn’t work, we’ll be forced to smoke him out,” he goes on to lay out the operational plan.
Hopefully this will be over in thirty to forty-five minutes and we will have three more in custody, but more importantly, Gabby will be safe again. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, pull it out and see Gabrielle listed across the screen. Moving away from the group, slide my thumb across and answer. “Sugar.”
“Good morning … again,” she responds and I can hear her smile. “I just woke up.”
“That’s good, Gabby. I’m glad you got back to sleep.”
“What are you doing? You left earlier than normal, or what I’m guessing is normal for you, since you’ve been … well … here anyway,” she asks, stumbling over her words again.
“We have something going on this morning that I needed to get in for. Is Nic still there?”
“No, he had to get to a building site, Tia just got here. I feel so bad about putting everyone out all the time. I hope this ends soon.”
Sensing movement in the small room we’re congregated in, I look out the window and see Megan Harper’s black Mercedes SUV pull in.
“Yeah. I hope this ends soon, too. Are you good?”
“I’m good, Jude. Just wanted to say good morning,” she says softly. I think about how I left her—showered, sated, and back asleep with her dog in that big ass bed wearing nothing but my shirt.
“It was a good morning, baby,” I say quietly. “Hey someone needs me, I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll be here, not going anywhere. Anywhere at all,” she says with sarcasm.
“Goodbye, Gabrielle,” I say with a warning.
“Bye, Jude,” she responds with a little laugh and we disconnect.
I look back to the window to see Megan struggling with her young children, bags, and a stroller. Her movements are quick, agitated, even anxious. The kids have backpacks and the older one is trying to pull a suitcase while Megan has bags thrown over her shoulders, pushing a stroller with one hand while pulling another large suitcase with the other. It’s clear to see she’s packed as much as she could handle and is planning on being gone a while. She’ll throw attitude, but other than that, there shouldn’t be an issue taking her into custody. I hate it when kids are involved. We’ve got additional female officers here to help deal with them and hopefully we will be able to call family to take them, but it’s not going to be a fun couple of hours, that’s for sure.
Megan enters the small terminal with her kids and moments later I hear Megan start to scuffle, yelling at the agents. Kids are crying and the noise gets louder as I hear the agents directing them to our location. The doors open, the female officers go directly to the kids, moving them to the side while another female officer moves in to remove bags and frisk Megan.
“What are you doing?” Megan screams. “You can’t bring me in here! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
She’s agitated, you can visibly see her tremble and tears are starting to form and fall down her face. Signs of stress from the last three weeks are evident. She doesn’t look nearly as put together as she did that day at her house and she has dark circles under her eyes. Meanwhile, the two older kids are crying, calling out for their mom and the hysteria in the room is building.
The female officer attending to Megan tries to reason with her. “Ma’am, you need to calm down. You’re scaring your children. If you cooperate, we’ll get them out of here quicker, hopefully call family to come and get them. If you don’t have anyone who can make the trek to collect them, they will have to be placed with Child Protective Services. Now, no one here wants that, including you, so calm down and quit screaming.” The officer gives her a quick but forceful yank to get her point across.
“No! You can’t take them away!” Her panic reaches a new level. She’s looking around the room quickly, for what, I don’t know, until her eyes come to Mac and me. “You. You were both at my house that day.” The noise in the room continues to climb between Megan screaming and the baby is now crying with the older two.
I enter the fray. “Calm down, Mrs. Harper, if not for your children, then for yourself. It will only be in your best interest if you cooperate.”
“It’s you,” she barely breathes. “I talked to you on the phone. You’re with Gabby?”
Tensing, I do everything I can to control myself and my language in front of her children. “Don’t. Do not even think about uttering her name after what your husband did to her. Do you understand me? You set her up, informing your husband that I was with her. You’ve lost that right—you get me?”
Mac butts in. “Enough.” Looking to the female officer he instructs, “Mirandize her.” Looking back at Megan he bites, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I suggest you shut your mouth, woman. Look around—you’re in a room full of officers of the law and you’re just digging your own grave. Not to mention, you can save your voice for later when we’re the ones asking the questions.”
With that, the door opens and an ATF agent sticks his head in and gives the warning, “Plane’ll be landing any minute.”
Since Megan and her kids have been neutralized, I leave the room with Mac following. With our vests on and guns drawn, we walk to the wall beside the windows and see the plane circling. It’s a small jet, it can’t hold more than six to seven passengers. We watch them land and taxi to the small terminal.
The door swings open and a man dressed in black walks down the steps, straight to the building. This has to be the pilot, there were only three people on the plane from information recorded at Cherry Capital Airport and this isn’t Harper or his second in command. He enters the terminal, agents go directly to him identify themselves. Turning slightly to glance back at his plane he
starts to realize what’s going on and follows the agent into another room immediately. The rest of the terminal attendants and workers have been removed in case shit goes down.
Then we wait. A few minutes pass and nothing happens.
I hear Mac next to me mutter, “Fuck. We’re gonna have to flush them out. That bastard isn’t willing to get off the damn plane to find his wife and kids.”
I turn to look at our supervisor, give him a chin lift and he shakes his head in resignation putting his police radio to his mouth and calls for SWAT to come in. A minute later, a large black armored truck with OPD SWAT written across the side pulls up on the tarmac right next to the plane. It strategically parks so officers can exit on the opposite side and use the truck for cover. In full SWAT gear, the officers file out and one is talking into a speaker, demanding they exit the plane. Another minute passes, another verbal warning comes over the speaker.
Nothing.
Three SWAT move in wearing helmets, holding shields and have long guns aimed at the door of the plane. One reaches out, tosses a tear gas canister into the plane and the officers retreat to their original positions. Smoke starts to seep out the door and through the haze we see movement. Harper’s second in command stumbles out first, coughing and sputtering, looking for clean air. Two SWAT officers rush in, each grabbing an arm, wrenching his forearms up his back, move him to the front of the plane and out of the way for the remaining officers to get to Harper.
More movement at the door and Harper comes out, tripping down the stairs with a gun in his hand. The arm with the gun is down to his side, pointed to the ground and his other hand over his face trying, unsuccessfully shielding himself from the teargas. He doesn’t get a chance to train his gun on anyone as he loses his footing and falls down the stairs, the gun falling from his hand and landing on the ground a couple feet from where he drops. A SWAT officer steps up to kick the gun away.
Not waiting another moment, I burst out of the terminal door and remotely hear Mac on my heels yelling for me to stop. Taking my last long strides to get to the jackass who put his hands on what is mine, I bypass the SWAT officer and put my boot into Trevor’s gut and he rolls over making a muted “humph” sound.
