“Well, it’s the only plan I got and I only need one shot to make it count. You need to let me kick your ass some more, cuff you up and toss you in the truck. Your phone has to go since it can be used to track where you are. I’m supposed to toss mine too after he gives me the location. I’m telling you the guy thinks of all the angles. He even told me to disable the LoJack in your GTO so that it couldn’t be tracked.”
I swore, dropping every dirty, ugly word I could think of while trying to come up with some kind of a plan. Nothing was clicking. Booker was right, Roark was too good at this game. I shoved my hand through my hair. I had asked Reeve to offer herself as bait since the very beginning of this game. It was now my turn to hang myself out there like a worm on a hook. If she was strong enough to do it, brave enough to risk her neck time and time again, then I could be too. I could do it for her, to prove I was worthy of her strength and her bravery. “Fine. Let’s go get shot. But I need to call Reeve and tell her what’s going on. If we don’t make it back from this . . .” I trailed off. If I didn’t make it back she was going to wrap herself in vengeance and the need for blood. She was going to go back to where she had been before she came to me, and feel like it was her sworn duty to take Roark down to avenge me. I couldn’t let that happen. She’d just gotten her soul back where it belonged. I couldn’t be the reason she lost it again.
She answered on the first ring sounding breathless and scared. “Hey. It’s me.” I didn’t let her speak before launching into what I was doing and the role Booker played in it all. I could tell she was crying by the time I was done talking.
“That’s a terrible plan.” Her voice was husky with tears.
“I know, but what choice do I have?”
She was silent for a long moment. “You can give me to him instead.”
I barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. “No. I can’t.” She was crazy if she thought that was still an option after everything we had fought through to get to more.
“You have to be okay, Titus. I can’t be here, I can’t be someone good without you.” That made my heart feel like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Don’t be good, then. Just be you, Reeve. Don’t worry because you know what they say, you can’t keep a good man down.” She was crying in earnest now and I could almost taste every single tear through the phone. “It has to end, you know that.”
She sniffled a little. “I should be the one to finish it. I’m the one he really wants to hurt. I should be able to take care of you, Titus.”
“You already have, so much better than anyone else ever did.” I should tell her I loved her but it felt wrong, cheap. She needed to hear the words when there wasn’t a very strong chance that it was the only time I was going to be around to say them. “Trust me, and my initial order stands: if you don’t hear from me in an hour, call the marshals and tell them where I’m at.”
I hung up as she was sobbing my name. I took the battery out of my phone and handed it to Booker. He dropped the device to the ground and smashed it under the heel of his boot. I unclipped my gun from my belt and handed that over as well. He pointed to my ankle and stood there watching me while I bent down and released my backup weapon. I pulled my badge off my belt and tucked it into my pocket.
“Let me disable the antitheft device on the car and I’ll grab my cuffs from the glove box.”
I didn’t want anyone else to put their hands on my baby. I just hoped that whatever happened, someone got her back to Bax in one piece. She deserved better than being left abandoned in this wasteland. I scooted under the frame and tugged on the wires that would send out the location signal should I need to find her if the pretty machine ever went missing. I also fished my handcuffs out of the glove compartment and handed them over to the other man. He tossed them up and then caught them with his hand with a smirk.
“Never been on the other side of these bad boys before.” He lifted an eyebrow, which pulled at his scar. “Remember it has to look real.”
I was going to ask him what in the hell he was talking about when the first blow landed on my cheek. The metal from the cuffs made Booker’s fist feel like it was encased in steel. I shook my head to clear the ringing in my ears when another blow landed on the other cheek. I lifted my hands in automatic defense but he moved around them and landed an uppercut under my chin that had my teeth splitting my tongue open. I grunted at him and all it got me was another blow with the hand wrapped around the cuffs. I was having a hard time staying on my feet. I wobbled a little and was seeing spots as darkness started to swirl around my vision.
“Hey, cop.”
“What?” The word was gasped out from lungs that felt taxed and from lips that were broken and rapidly swelling.
“I’m really sorry about this.” I didn’t have a chance to ask what he was talking about because the next thing I knew his forehead connected with my own and everything shifted and I went down to my knees. I was barely conscious and sure to have a concussion after the force of that blow. Something itchy and coarse fell over my head, making it harder to breathe and impossible to see. I struggled out of pure instinct as Booker hefted me up and shuffled me harshly to the truck.
“Take this thing off of me.” I wanted to pull the hood off but my hands were yanked behind my back and secured with the chilly metal of my own cuffs.
“Can’t. That was part of the big bad’s orders. I think he might actually be a little afraid of you. The cuffs and hood were required.” I felt him put something in my back pocket. “That’s the key if by some miracle you make it out of this alive.”
I heard him take a deep breath and then all I got was his side of the conversation as he called Roark.
“I got the cop. Yes, he’s unarmed and secured . . . Yes, he’s still breathing, but the fucker broke my nose.” A forced laugh and then, “Where do you want him?”
A thump against the side of the truck. “Of course I’m coming alone. Bax can hardly move. Race wants to kill me and the cop is trussed up like a pig.”
A litany of swearwords. “Yeah, I’ll ditch my phone. I already told you I would. Look, I just want you to leave the girl alone. We already went over this. I don’t give a shit about the rest of them.”
I shifted around trying to determine if I could see anything through the fabric of the hood. It was no use. I was practically helpless and getting ready to ride right into the belly of the beast. It was the dumbest and bravest thing I had ever done. I wanted to kick my own ass for not having any other solution that didn’t seem so hopeless and so desperate.
It was Booker’s turn to snort. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Okay, I’ll be there shortly.”
“He’s in Novak’s warehouse, isn’t he?”
I sounded garbled and suffocated from behind the cloth covering my face.
Booker thumped the side of the truck again. “Yeah. He said it seems fitting that it’s the last stop for you since you spent so much time trying to take his father down. No one has been there since the feds seized it. It’s been government property, and since he used to be a marshal and worked the case, he knows that.”
I thumped my head back against the flatbed. “I fucking knew it.”
“Showtime, cop.” I heard the second phone crack and shatter on the asphalt and the plink of metal on metal, which I could only assume were my weapons as they landed in the truck bed next to me.
The truck fired to life and we were rumbling through the city. I was trying to keep panic and fear at bay. I was trying to remind myself that I had tangled with really bad men before and had always won. I gritted my teeth and reminded myself over and over that there was too much at stake for me to not come out on top.
It might have been ten minutes, but it felt like five seconds. There was only a sliver of time between theory and practice, and now I was about to come face-to-face with the man that had waged war on my city, hurt my brother, scared and harassed my woman, and personally challenged everything I stood for. There was no way the Titus that wore
the badge could do this and survive. It was time to meet Roark monster to monster and mine was long denied, long suppressed, and far hungrier than his would ever be.
The truck rumbled to a halt and I heard the door open. I heard Booker shuffle out and then, “You have a present for me?”
That lilting Irish brogue. I wanted to chew him up and spit him out.
“Yeah. You got some money for me?”
“Oh, Booker. You think I don’t know about that sweet Ruger you have tucked into your waistband? You think I don’t know you have a weak spot in the shape of a pretty teenage girl? Men that care about something that fragile are so predictable. Just like Detective King. I knew he would come with you no matter what the circumstances were, thought having him all wrapped up in a bow is a nice touch. Thank you.”
I heard a gunshot and then another. I heard someone grunt and then the sound of deadweight hitting the ground. The iron scent of blood filled my nostrils and the next thing I knew I was being hauled out of the truck by grabbing hands. I went to struggle but it was no use. There were too many of them, and with my hands bound and my head covered there was no way to fight. Hard hands locked under my armpits and dragged me across gravel and God only knew what else. My legs and feet flailed for purchase.
I knew we had entered the warehouse once my struggle started to echo against the cement and steel walls.
“Too bad for Mr. Booker that a man with training will always be faster on the trigger than a common street thug. He was close, surprisingly close. He knew he was going to die but he took the chance anyway. Who says criminals have no honor?”
My arms were jerked high above my head and I felt something hard slide against my wrists as my feet dangled, barely touching the ground. I was stretched out like a side of beef in a cooler and I knew this wasn’t good. Booker had been counting on getting a shot in, and now he was down and I was strung up like some kind of sacrifice. This was exactly where the plan fell apart. Just call me Butch Cassidy.
The hood was ripped off my head and I came face-to-face with the man that had turned my world upside down.
Conner Roark looked much like he had when he first came to collect Reeve for WITSEC. Tall, handsome, similar enough to Bax that it made hating him just a tiny bit hard. His ebony eyes glimmered with evil glee as he walked back and forth in front of me.
“Can I tell you a funny story, Detective?” That voice, so soothing, so deceptive about the evil it held captured between the melodic tones. I strained against the cuffs to no avail.
“You can go fuck yourself.”
He lifted an eyebrow at me. “How uncouth. Trust me, Detective, this is a story you will want to hear. You see it involves the woman that we both can’t seem to stay away from.”
I didn’t want to hear him say Reeve’s name. I heaved again, muscles flexing and straining, while he just watched me like I was an animal stuck in an exhibit at the zoo.
“When I saw her that day after she turned herself in, I knew I had to have her. Beautiful, soft, but with an edge. She was perfect for me. Revenge, the need to make others pay for the way they had wronged her. It was music to my ears. She was everything I had ever wanted and I thought she hated this place, the things it had done to her. I thought she would stand with me and watch it burn because she understood.”
“She thinks you’re a sociopath. She saw through you, Roark. She’s good like that. She has X-ray vision.”
I heard something dripping in the background and could hear Roark’s men shifting with anxiety to get their shots in. I was a life-size piñata and they couldn’t wait to tear into me. I told myself I had to wait an hour. I could survive an hour before the cavalry showed, that was if Reeve did what I told her to do and didn’t try something foolish like taking matters into her own hands. Realizing that struggling against the cuffs was getting me nowhere, I went lax and instead wrapped my fingers around them and just dangled there. Roark wandered a few steps closer to me.
“Maybe she did, but she never saw through the man that made me. You really believe Novak would be so selfless, or even slightly altruistic enough to take out a man that killed his hooker girlfriend? You think Novak cared about anyone else enough to get involved in their petty drama? The answer is no. He was a businessman and Reeve was a pretty girl. The boyfriend owed him money for a stash he blew by snorting it up his own nose. He wouldn’t pay up, so he got taken care of. It was just coincidence that Reeve showed up begging for retribution. The guy was a dead man before the girlfriend was even in the ground. Novak was a clever man. He knew Reeve might prove useful down the road, so he let her believe for years that she was the catalyst . . . that she had it in her to be a killer. He kept her on a string and it was beautiful. I thought she could be my doll too.”
He leaned closer and I saw my chance. I used the leverage my hands had on the cuffs and wrenched my entire lower body up from the waist. I kicked my legs out so that I could hook them around the Irishman’s smug neck and started to squeeze. He punched at me, struggled, but I just closed my thighs tighter and tighter. I was going to choke the life out of him and I didn’t care if I took a bullet in the back.
“People aren’t toys.” I huffed the words out and just as Roark was turning purple, and really looking like he was going to go down to his knees, something cracked across the back of my skull hard enough that it made me go immediately limp. My head fell forward and I felt blood start to run down the back of my neck in an untamed river.
Something dripped. Something landed with a splat. Something rattled. There was a clank and a whoosh. I faintly heard a thud and all I could do was silently swear and groan as my brain throbbed hot and heavy in my skull. The beating had begun in earnest.
“Fuck you. You’ll kill me before I break.”
“All of this over a girl. Really, Detective King, I thought you would prove to be much more of a challenge. She made you soft. She made you weak. All of the men in this city forgot there was a war going on when they got distracted by their dicks twitching. No girl is worth dying for.”
I coughed and spit up another mouthful of blood and let my head fall forward as I gasped out a wheezing laugh.
“You can kill me. You can burn this fucking city to the ground. You can do your worst to anyone and everyone that dares to call this place home, but even after you lay waste to the whole city, you still won’t have what you want . . . a girl that is worth dying for. She’ll kill you first.” I hoped it didn’t come to that but I knew she would if he pushed her to it.
“No matter what you do to me or to this place, it won’t change the fact she chose me and the Point over you. You’re just as twisted and messed up as your father and you sure as fuck weren’t ever good enough for my girl.”
“Your girl?” The accented voice was hard, furious, and I knew I had hit a raw nerve.
“Mine.”
“She chose wrong. I could have laid this city at her feet.” He sounded almost like a lovesick lad, a character he was trying to portray instead of the murderous asshole he really was.
“If she wanted the city at her feet she would have put it there herself. That’s why you never deserved her, you prick. You never understood she could run circles around you in the misplaced-rage and need-for-revenge department. Only she was smart enough to know that there had to be more to life than that. I’m her more. You were just a means to an end.” I should’ve just kept my mouth shut because my heated words were what had him shoving the gun in my mouth and the metal clicking warningly against my front teeth. He looked at me coolly, with victory and insanity shining out of his dark eyes, and I saw his finger twitch on the trigger. It was time to end things.
The world exploded . . .
BANG!
I saw Roark jerk violently as bullets started to fly all around the cavernous warehouse space. His eyes stayed locked on mine as he fell to his knees in front of me, the gun in his hand falling harmlessly to the side. Roark’s guys started to scatter as the room was suddenly swarming with guys in t
actical gear and other guys wearing black jackets embellished with US MARSHAL across the back. I ducked my head uselessly as a bullet pinged against the pipe above my head, and looked around at the chaos that was ensuing. A familiar face appeared as a man dressed in a polo shirt covered in Kevlar dashed into the fray and stopped at Conner’s body. He kicked a guy aside as he bent down to check Conner’s pulse and frowned. He looked up where I was dangling and then maneuvered around his men and the bodies of Roark’s crew where they lay.
“You got a key for those, King? You look like shit, by the way.”
“In my pocket.” He started patting me down as I continued to watch him. “That’s some good timing you got there, Packard.” Not that I wasn’t happy to see him, considering I was about to eat a bullet.
Roark’s old boss lifted his gray eyebrows at me as I collapsed in a heap at his feet once my hands were free. I wasn’t sure if it was broken, but my kneecap felt like it was made of Jell-O, so there was no way I was walking out of here on my own.
“I got a frantic call from Reeve Black. She said a man named Noah Booker abducted you and was taking you to Roark. She told us to hurry. She said you told her to wait an hour but that was too long. She called us the second you hung up the phone. I pulled my guys off of her and moved them to go after you. Gotta say the timing couldn’t have been any closer. The guy in the parking lot almost bled out but the paramedics seem to think he’ll make it if he gets into surgery quick and gets a blood transfusion. He was still conscious when we rolled onto the scene, so they took that as a good sign and the bullet missed anything major. Lucky bastard. Looks like you would’ve been in pretty bad shape if we had been even a minute later.”
I didn’t know if Booker would agree that he was lucky. This was the second time he took a round in the chest in less than six months. Even if he did have as many lives as a cat, they were starting to run out.
“I’m glad she ignored me and called you.” Hell, I was stunned she hadn’t tried to ride to the rescue all on her own.
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