by Aiden Bates
“You did this at Bicroft’s order,” I added softly. “You can show them your proof. They’ll be held accountable.”
“That’s the problem,” Randy said, sniffing. “I don’t have proof. The instructions were all verbal. Nothing to show them definitively that I was just following orders.”
“Can think of some other people who’ve used that line before,” Kaleb said darkly. “But there’s proof of the payouts you received. You’ve got the bank data on that, surely. Checks, transfers—unless they paid you in unmarked bills or something.”
“No…it was all direct deposited into my account. The retirement paperwork is there too, I guess.”
“And a retirement at your age will look suspicious to an agent along with your story. Add to that all the info we have about everyone else tied up in this—”
“That’s who I’m worried about.” Randy’s Adam’s apple bobbed uncomfortably. “I fucking knew this went beyond Bicroft. If I confess, I’m dead. They’ll make sure of that. ”
“Unless you confess, Randy…I’m a man on the run. Wanted for the very thing that you did—the thing that we’re trying to prevent from happening again.” I moved my hand over my belly, glancing down at it then closing my eyes. We hadn’t even told Harper and Nick yet, but… “I need my name cleared for more than just my benefit now, too.”
Randy’s eyes widened. “You’re pregnant? Who—”
“I’m pregnant,” I confirmed. “And I don’t want my baby to be born in prison, Randy. If you talk, you’ll have protection, maybe even immunity, for your cooperation. The FBI rewards informants on things like this. Bicroft and their cohorts are trying to make a play—something big. Something that goes beyond just making a quick buck. Please—help us make this right. It would mean the world to me. Would probably mean something to Alan too, if he knew.”
“Alan…” Randy sighed. “He always knew I was a coward, deep down. When he found out…I don’t know that he could ever forgive me now. But if there’s a chance…” His voice broke again as he shook his head. “But I can’t. When people cross Bicroft, bad things happen. Remember when we tried to unionize?”
A cold, metallic feeling settled in my gut as I met Kaleb’s eyes. “The people who tried to make that happen disappeared,” I explained.
“They can’t fire people for unionizing,” Kaleb pointed out. “I don’t buy it.”
“Not fired,” Randy spat. “They were gone. Within a day of the news breaking that they were talking to representation. No one’s heard from them since.” Randy gulped. “And those were people that had people, Derek. Me…I don’t have anyone. I don’t like the idea of your baby being born in a prison either, but…if Bicroft erases me, no one’s even going to look.”
“Your boyfriend was right,” Kaleb snapped. “You are a coward, you yellow-bellied—”
I held up a hand to stop him. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. We’d put all of our cards out on the table. If Randy hadn’t bitten yet, there was nothing more that we could do but wait and hope maybe he’d nut up and reconsider.
Then again…if Kaleb had taught me anything, it was that a little added pressure never hurt.
“It’s okay,” I told Randy. “That’s your choice. Just remember—you did have a choice.” I looked up to Kaleb. “Let him go. We’ll have to find another way. If we tell the FBI that we know who’s responsible, they can investigate, correlate the botched pills to the right people…”
It didn’t feel great, making the threat. There was a good reason that Kaleb was usually the one who played the bad cop. But from the look on Randy’s face—like he’d just put an entire dollop of wasabi onto his tongue—it had worked.
“Wait—please, leave me out of this, I didn’t mean—”
Kaleb uncuffed Randy’s wrists and slipped the cuffs back into his pocket. “Come on. We should get going.”
“No—wait. Just, wait.” Randy’s chest heaved as he took in a deep breath, then released it. “If you can promise me protection…if there’s no other way…I’ll talk. But not until I see badges. FBI—no one else. And not until you’ve gotten me somewhere safe.”
Kaleb shrugged behind Randy, raising his eyebrows and giving me a thoroughly impressed look. But as he opened his mouth to tell Randy that we could do that, there was a knock on the door.
Kaleb froze immediately—which could only mean one thing.
Three firm, hard raps.
A cop knock.
“Go hide,” Kaleb hissed at me, pointing down the hall. “Randy—time to dry your eyes, cupcake. You’re gonna go answer the door—and you’re not gonna mention that we’re here.”
But before Randy had even gotten to his feet, the door burst open. Wood splintered from the frame, showering the foyer as the door bounced against the stop.
Before it could swing closed again, a man in a black suit shouldered his way in.
The last thing I saw as Kaleb pushed me into the hall and out of sight was the gun in the man’s hands—pointed directly at Kaleb’s chest.
28
Kaleb
It was one of the first things my father taught me, words of wisdom that hadn’t failed me yet.
If someone points a gun at you, react like they’re going to shoot.
I had the scars to prove it—and as much as I enjoyed spending long nights in the ER while an overworked, underpaid hospital staff picked lead out of my body, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to bleeding all over Randy’s exquisitely tiled foyer. But in the half second that I had to move out of the way, it wasn’t my own skin I was looking to save.
I turned my shoulder, pushing Derek down the hall as the man’s silencer muted the sound of his shot. The bullet took me in the meat of my upper arm, knocking me back a staggering half-step. Felt like being stung by a bee the size of my fist and being hit by a baseball bat all at once. My vision went white as a red-hot heat cut through me—but there was no time to cry and moan over it. As soon as I found my feet, I pushed my body forward, rushing the gunman and knocking him against the doorframe.
For the second time that day, I was glad that I’d played football in high school. The gunman let out a dull huff of air as the impact crushed it from his lungs—but if I’d spent my summers doing two-a-days, the gunman had spent his practicing karate. He pistol-whipped me upside the ear for my troubles, hard enough that this time, I saw black instead of white. But as he wheeled his arm back to smack me again, I saw my opening.
High school sports were all fine and well, but nothing had prepared me for taking something dangerous away from someone who shouldn’t have had it quite like growing up with three younger brothers had.
I grabbed his arm mid-swing, twisting it until he let out a sharp hiss of pain. Crushing the man’s fingers against the doorframe earned me a yelp from his sneering lips. Another shot sounded just before I was able to wrestle the gun from his grip, showering us both in plaster from the ceiling.
“Kaleb!” Derek’s voice called out from down the hall, causing me to turn my head.
For that moment of distraction, I got a fist to the nose. I heard the bone crunch beneath the man’s knuckles before I felt it, all white-pain and dark warmth flowing down my upper lip.
On any other occasion, that might’ve slowed me down. But there’d been urgency in Derek’s voice, which meant I didn’t have a moment to spare. I spat the blood in the man’s face, then clocked him upside the head with the pistol twice until his eyes rolled back and he slumped to the floor.
With that matter taken care of, I turned back toward the hall just in time to see Randy rushing out the back door.
Fuck. It was bad news for Derek and me if Randy got away. His story was the only evidence we had that it was Bicroft who had done wrong, not Derek. But then I heard Derek’s voice call out again, fear pushing it high and desperate.
“Kaleb! Please!”
I let Randy go. There was no point in clearing Derek’s name if he was injured—or worse, dead.
Bursting th
rough the only open door in the hallway, I found Derek in Randy’s bedroom—with another man, no less. But if there was a time for me to crack a joke about my own jealous instincts, this wasn’t it. The curtains fluttered as the night breeze flowed in through the partially open window, the pane thumping gently as it swung closed then bounced back off the frame. In front of it, another black-suited man had Derek in a sleeper hold—one that he only relaxed when he laid eyes on me.
The man pushed Derek aside, sending him stumbling to his knees next to the bed. “So you’re the brawler of the operation, huh?” he sneered, cracking his knuckles then his neck. “All right, princess. Let’s dance.”
If it had been an action movie, I would have had a clever quip to give him. You’re no prince charming—and this princess has two left feet, maybe. But who was I kidding? I was no Jason Statham.
I just ran at the fucker, tackling him as hard as I could. If he’d wanted to trade one-liners, he would’ve been better off squaring off against Derek. The realization that he’d made the wrong move by challenging me hit the man’s face about half a second before his body hit the window, his head smashing against the glass—then clear through it.
The momentum sent us both shattering through the window panes, tumbling through an explosion of little jagged shards out into the night.
Derek’s assailant hit the ground first. I felt the wind knock out of him as he cushioned my fall, like the last sputtering spurt of a bottle of cologne. His eyes were wide with surprise as I clutched one fist around the knot of his tie and drew the other one back. I didn’t blame him—I hardly realized I’d hit him myself until the third or fourth time my fist came down, blinded by protectiveness over Derek and sheer, unbridled rage. It was only when his eyes rolled back and his body slumped beneath mine that something finally clicked and I stopped.
Fuck. I could have beaten him to death and not batted a single goddamn eye over it. They wanted to shoot me? Fine. Break my nose? Sure. Pistol-whip me, throw me out a window—I didn’t give a damn. But as I wiped my bloody knuckles on the second man’s crisp white shirt, I knew now exactly what it took to break me. The one thing that could make me lose all control entirely.
“Don’t you ever touch my Omega again,” I spat down at the man—not that he could hear me.
It didn’t matter.
The point stood.
Chest heaving, I picked myself up off the deck that we’d landed on. It was only when I found my feet that I realized exactly how dependent on adrenaline I’d been since the gunman came in. Multicolored spots clouded my vision as I pressed up off my knees and forced myself upright. As soon as I did, I nearly felt my legs go out from under me.
Glancing down, I had a good idea as to why. Gunshot wound to the upper arm, broken nose—and now, there was a shard of glass the size of my hand sticking out of my thigh in a way that could’ve damn near castrated me if it had sliced through a few more inches inward.
I shook my head, vision focusing to a pinpoint as I limped back inside. The pain had reached such an intensity, I almost didn’t feel it at all. My ears rang like a fire door left propped open. My feet felt like they’d been sunk into twin buckets of quick-setting cement.
It didn’t matter. None of it did. As I staggered back into Randy Argent’s bedroom, there was only one thing on my mind. Not the pain. Not the injuries. Not the man I’d put to sleep in the foyer or the man I’d beaten senseless out on the deck.
It was him. Only him.
I dropped to my knees beside Derek just in time to see his lashes flutter open softly. His assailant’s arm had left a red band of pressure burning all the way across his neck, but the blood vessels in his eyes weren’t broken. His breathing was shallow, but steady.
Dazed, but not injured. Still whole. Still unharmed.
I reached out to brush my fingers against his cheek. I could see the concern in his eyes, which told me he could hardly say the same for me.
“You need an ambulance, Kaleb,” Derek rasped, shuffling to his knees so he could take me into his arms.
I appreciated that. It meant when I slumped forward, unable to hold my own weight up anymore, I could lean on him instead of cracking my skull against the wall.
“No,” I grunted, resting my body against his shoulder. “Call an ambulance and the police will come.” I growled, cocking my head to the side to try and shake out the ringing in my ears. “Two shots fired—they’re probably on their way already.”
“We were just attacked, Kaleb. The police probably need to come.”
I shook my head. Derek’s concern for me was sweet and all—but he was forgetting the stakes here. “Police show up, they’ll arrest you. I’ll be…fine. Ernesto has contacts here. Get me to a street doc and…”
I felt a strange warmth dripping down my thigh. Glancing down, I was half-relieved to realize it was just blood. It had soaked the left leg of my jeans clear through, turning the denim a wine-dark red. My head was spinning—but at least it didn’t hurt. Took me a couple seconds to realize that was a bad thing.
I was losing feeling in my leg.
“Can I…do I pull it out?” Derek asked, his hands shaking as he reached down to feel the wound for deepness.
I shook my head. My years on the force had taught me better than that. “Think it must’ve hit an artery. Pull it out, I’ll probably just bleed to death.”
I tried to form the words to give Derek the next set of instructions, but my head was muddy and my vision was going like the ending credits of a movie just before the lights came up. I was losing consciousness, slowly at first…then all at once.
The last thing I saw was the tears in Derek’s eyes as he reached into my pocket for my phone. The last thing I heard, a word on his lips, choked out on the front end of a sob.
“Sorry,” he told me.
After that, it was just darkness. Soft and cool as a late October night.
29
Derek
My first call was to 911. Police, warrants, and my impending arrest be damned. My second was to the first number in Kaleb’s phone—Harper. I half expected Kaleb to stop me, but when I looked down, I realized his was unconscious against my shoulder.
Fuck.
“Kaleb?” Harper answered on the first ring. “Been waiting on a call from you, man. What’s the update? Is everything al—”
“It’s Derek,” I cut him off, pressing the phone to my ear and turning Kaleb over. Not exactly an easy task—he was bigger than me, easily two hundred pounds of muscle or more. Heavier, it felt like, now that he was dead weight.
…No. Not dead. Never dead. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder, cradling him as I pressed my back to the wall.
Immediately, a cool fear set into Harper’s voice. “What’s happened? Is Kaleb—”
“He’s been shot. Some other stuff, too. He’s hurt, Harper. Hurt really bad, I think.” I gulped. “Call Ernesto, will you? I’ve already called an ambulance, but if Ernesto has a contact out here…”
“I’ll call. But Derek…fuck, if you’ve got an ambulance on the way, the police will follow. You should get out of there. Quick, too. Kaleb…he’ll be okay. He won’t begrudge you for it.”
“No.” I pressed my fingers to Kaleb’s pulse, feeling the heartbeat there. Faint, but steady. “I’m not leaving him. Call Ernesto, Harper. Please.”
“Okay. Yeah. Of course.” There was a short, heavy pause then, “Stay safe, Derek. Take care of our favorite idiot for us.”
“Yeah. I will. Of course.” But as I hung up the phone, I had to admit that it was easier said than done. I’d taken anatomy as an elective during my undergrad, but knowledge of the human body didn’t make me certified to give first aid. All I really knew was what I’d gleaned from action movies, thriller novels, the occasional police drama on the television.
Pressure on any open wounds. Tourniquets if the bleeding was too bad. And something about keeping the victim awake.
I pressed my fingers to the bullet hole in Kaleb’s upper
arm, creating a seal around it and holding it as tight as I could. Kaleb’s blood gushed up against my fingertips, but I didn’t care about that. Better to get my hands dirty than to watch Kaleb bleed out. In our current position, a tourniquet didn’t really seem possible. I’d have to jostle him around if I wanted to get either of our belts off, risking the shard of glass in Kaleb’s thigh cutting even deeper and making things even worse. Which meant I’d have to settle for keeping him awake.
It was easier said than done. I clapped my hand against his cheek, softly at first then a little harder until Kaleb’s dark eyelashes flickered open once more.
“Kaleb. Come on—stay with me now. Don’t go falling asleep on me just yet.”
“Derek.” Kaleb smiled up at me, loopy and dazed. “Hey.”
“Hey, big guy. I’ve got you. How’re you…” A lump rose in my throat. I had to force it back down just to speak. “How’re you feeling, hon?”
Kaleb sighed contentedly. “Love you, Derek. Wanna…wanna take you on a proper date, I think. Never got to do that. Stupid of me, not taking a guy like you out to dinner. The movies. Somethin’ like that.”
I laughed just to cover up the sob that was pressing against my breastbone. “Yeah, of course. Of course you can, sweetheart. Whatever you want.”
“Yeah? You’ll go with me?” Kaleb closed his eyes, nodding. “Can go to the park after. Make out like teenagers. It’d be nice, right?”
“It would be,” I agreed, running my thumb across his cheek to clear away some of the blood. “But you’ve gotta keep your eyes open, honey. You can’t go passing out on me again.”
“I’ve got my Omega dad’s ring, you know.” Kaleb’s hazels stared up at me, soft and bright. But I could see the heaviness in his eyelids, too. Every time he blinked, it looked like he was struggling to open them up again. “Not on me, but…back home, yeah. Shoulda brought it. Could’ve…y’know. Pulled it out of my pocket. ‘I love you, marry me, asshole.’ That kinda thing.”
