“You’re not hurting my brother again,” Shay hissed as she backed Sammi into a corner with the gun pointed at her face.
Eli looked terrified of his sister as he very slowly approached her from the side. He made a soft grab for the gun, but Shay wasn’t giving it up. Sammi looked back and forth between the two siblings, confused and unsure of who to trust.
“Shay, you’re not going to shoot her,” Eli said, trying to sound calm. “Put the gun down.”
“No! Everything was perfect until she came into our lives!” Shay yelled. “But it’s okay, I’m going to fix everything.”
Before anyone could ask Shay to elaborate, Frank Nardino had entered the vault flanked on either side by two of his men. With this distraction, Shay walked to Sammi and kicked the backs of her knees until she was sitting in the corner with her butt on the floor and her legs out in front of her. Shay then knelt beside her and wrapped a zip-tie around her elegantly thin wrists, pulling it tight. Once she was sure Sammi was secure, she got back on her feet and stood over Sammi with the gun pointed at her head again.
Meanwhile, Mack had struggled but managed to get back up on his knees. He was facing away from Nardino, but Nardino would have recognized the pain-in-the-ass detective anywhere.
“Oh, look, it’s my favorite cop,” Nardino spat as he kicked Mack in the side of the head, knocking him over again.
“I thought I arrested you,” Mack muttered, laughing as he inched away from the wannabe supervillain.
Nardino drew his gun and cocked the hammer back in the blink of an eye. There was pure hatred on his face as he put the barrel to the back of Mack’s head.
“Leave him alone!” Sammi screamed, leaping forward just to be caught and held back by Shay.
Nardino relaxed and squatted down next to Mack, bringing the gun down to under Mack’s chin. He looked between Mack and Sammi, seeing the desperation in Sammi’s eyes.
“That gorgeous thief over there seems to care an awful lot about you. But she can’t possibly be your girlfriend,” Nardino tested Mack.
“Not anymore,” Mack grumbled.
Nardino turned his cold grey eyes back to Sammi. Keeping his gun aimed at Mack, he stood up and walked over to the object of his lust that was being held in place by Shay’s arm around her stomach. He softly brushed his thumb across Sammi’s cheek, and she spit directly in his face. Enraged, Nardino slapped her with the back of his hand. She would have lost her balance had Shay not had ahold of her but her long yellow hair fell over her eyes with the force of the hit.
“Don’t fucking touch her!” Mack growled, picking himself up off the floor as the broken zip-tie and Sammi’s knife dropped to the floor behind him.
Mack threw himself at Nardino, but Nardino fired his gun and Mack went down. Sammi screamed and desperately tried to free herself from Shay’s hold. Throwing her head back as hard as she could, Sammi connected with Shay’s skull and Shay finally let go of her, momentarily blinded. Before Sammi could go to Mack, Nardino put his gun directly between Sammi’s eyes and she froze.
“I’m not done with you yet,” Nardino whispered, wrapping a hand entirely around Sammi’s slender neck.
“Mack is going to kill you,” Sammi said with certainty.
Ignoring her, Nardino shoved her back into Shay’s waiting arms and motioned for Shay to follow him as he started to leave the vault. Howard and Nardino’s men followed suit, but Eli hadn’t moved nor spoken since Nardino had appeared.
“The cop is all yours, Eli,” Nardino said, stopping in the opening of the vault. He waited for Eli to acknowledge him and then continued on his way out of the bank.
*
Kodi hadn’t heard anything over the earbuds in almost twenty minutes and had begun to worry. She had been ready with her duffel bags of cash and waiting just inside the front door of her bank for a sight of Howard and the van. When her third call over earbuds was met with complete silence, not even static, she grabbed the largest of her bags and headed outside.
Across the street, Kodi could see the van parked at the bank that Eli had gone into. Kodi waited a minute to see if the van would make it her way next, but instead saw three unfamiliar men followed by Sammi, Shay, and Howard. Shay seemed unusually close to Sammi and Kodi knew something had to be wrong because her best friend did not trust that sociopath enough to let her anywhere near her.
As Howard got behind the wheel of the van while everyone else piled into the back, Kodi knew she had no way of following it. But Kodi was smart and not about to give up. So, she watched the van for as long as she could until it disappeared, noticing that Howard didn’t hesitate. He had to be familiar with where he was going, but they wouldn’t be going to his nor Eli’s apartment where cops would be waiting for them. She had to be hopeful that they were going somewhere close so, taking a chance, Kodi decided the hotel suite they’d been staying in was a good place to start.
Hoping cops would be on their way for the bank robberies, Kodi ran across the street to Eli’s bank with her duffel bag. She typed the hotel address and room number into her cellphone and, leaving the screen open, put her phone inside the duffel bag. Then she ran a few blocks deeper into the city to grab a taxi that took her to the hotel.
When she got to the hotel, Kodi headed casually up to the suite. She remained quiet and super aware of her surroundings, not knowing what to expect. Putting her ear to the hotel room door, she could hear voices in close proximity and knew she wasn’t going to be able to sneak into the room unnoticed. So, she stayed where she was, listening and watching, waiting for a reason to leap into action.
*
Back at the hotel suite, Shay made Sammi sit in a chair in the center of the living room while Nardino helped himself to a look around the spacious suite. Nardino’s men stood guard by the door and Howard stayed uncomfortably out of the way. His girlfriend had always been a little irrational, but he was officially scared of her and for her.
“Did you ever stop to think that Eli and I were never going to work out because he has a fucking psychopath for a sister?” Sammi spat at Shay.
“Shut up!” Shay screamed and smacked Sammi across the face. But Sammi just laughed because Shay was proving her point.
When Sammi didn’t stop laughing, Shay drew a knife seemingly from nowhere and put it to Sammi’s throat. Sammi finally stopped as she could feel the sharpness of the blade kissing the fair skin of her neck. She leaned back in the chair, away from the pointed weapon, but Shay followed and kept it on her throat.
“If we’re talking openly, I never would’ve guessed that my brother was hurting you, but everyone knew that you were hurting yourself,” Shay whispered with her face right up against Sammi’s right cheek.
Shay had lowered the knife as she leaned over Sammi, bending her knees to get eye-level with her hostage. Keeping her eyes on Sammi’s face, she took ahold of her restrained hands and lifted them out of Sammi’s lap. When Shay finally looked down it was to gaze upon the self-harm scars that littered Sammi’s exquisitely slim wrists. She smiled to herself as she laid her blade along one of the scars and applied pressure as she slid the knife along the provided line.
It took a second, deeper cut to draw blood from Sammi’s arm and tears from her eyes. On impulse, Sammi threw her body forward and headbutted Shay as hard as she could to get her off of her. Shay stumbled backwards, dazed, and Sammi made her run for it only to be met with Nardino’s hand around her throat four feet from her exit.
Fed up with Sammi’s fighting spirit, Nardino brought his other hand up to her neck and began to squeeze.
*
Left alone with Mack in the bank vault, Eli panicked. He paced back and forth in front of Mack’s shot and unconscious body, desperate to come up with a way to fix everything. The only outcome he had desired from this robbery was a chance to get Sammi back and his sister had ruined that by involving Nardino.
As he played back everything that had happened and every possible outcome in his head, he stopped pacing and look
ed down at his only option. Mack was the answer if the question were how Eli could still win. The goal was still Sammi and he couldn’t win her if she was dead or he was in jail. So, he needed Mack to play hero just one more time while he saved his own ass.
Eli squatted down next to Mack’s head and shoved him hard in his shoulder. Mack lay on his stomach and Eli could not see the gunshot wound, but he could see that Mack was still breathing. It took a few more even harder shoves before Mack finally started to come around.
Mack coughed as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. He had taken the shot in the chest and the force of the blow to his pectoral muscle had left it difficult for him to breathe. Eli moved directly in front of him and put his hand on Mack’s shoulder to help steady him.
“Come on, man, you can still win,” Eli said, supporting Mack’s weight as he helped him stand up.
“Where’s Sammi?” Mack asked and then shook his head, trying to clear up the fuzziness.
Eli told Mack the hotel name and room number, not totally trusting that Mack was aware enough to memorize it. Then he handed him his service revolver that had been confiscated from him upon his capture and sent him on his way.
Once Mack was on his way to save the day, Eli grabbed his own handgun and a duffel bag of cash and ran out of the bank into uncertainty. He had nowhere to go and no one to call, but he had to start with getting out of the city.
*
Mack Johnson dragged himself down the fancy hotel hallway that was carpeted in red and bathed in fluorescent light. He was on his feet, but he was holding onto his chest where he had been shot. His face was drenched in sweat and his clothing splattered in blood. As he approached the correct room, he found a familiar face listening outside the door.
“Mack! What—how did you get here?” Kodi whispered excitedly out of relief.
“Is she in there?” Mack asked with serious pain in his voice.
Kodi was looking at Mack in disbelief as she nodded, wondering what the hell had happened to him.
“Stand back,” Mack said as he drew his gun from his waist. “And get out of here.”
Mack held his gun in both hands as he threw his back into the door, throwing it open. Nardino’s two men immediately went for their own guns but Mack took them out, each with a bullet to the head. Nardino released Sammi who collapsed on the floor desperately trying to catch her breath. Mack shot Nardino before he even had a chance to turn around and his body dropped to the floor right in front of Sammi.
Shay emerged from the living room, pistol raised. Surprised by the sight before her, she hesitated but so did Mack. He knew the files of this entire team by heart and knew that Shay was not a murderer. Unable to take her life, he shot her hand to make her drop the gun. She would live, but she would suffer.
Mack snatched up all the weapons as he quickly cleared the rest of the hotel room. He had expected to come across Howard but discovered an open window in one of the bedrooms and knew the gunshots must have spooked him. He could already hear police sirens in the distance as he let the breeze from the window cool his face for a second.
When Mack returned to the room full of bodies, Shay was writhing in pain on the floor and crying hysterically. Sammi had gotten up and was in the kitchen where Mack found her going through the drawers. Her wrists were still bound so Mack helped her find a knife and cut her loose.
As Mack held Sammi’s wrists in his hand, he saw that her skin had been freshly cut and was still bleeding. He led her to the sink and ran the wound under warm water. Sammi was watching his every move but he would not look her in the face.
“I’m sorry,” Sammi said quietly, just loud enough for Mack to hear as he shut off the water. He ignored her and grabbed a hand towel to wrap around her wet arm.
Without a word, Mack took the hand of Sammi’s good arm and led her toward the door just as cops and EMTs rushed into the room. They were hurried down to the street and separated into different ambulances where they received initial treatment. A medic was examining Sammi’s arm when two cops approached the back of the ambulance.
“Samantha Reilly, you are under arrest,” the first cop said while the other grabbed her arm and pulled her into the street.
The second cop brought Sammi’s hands together behind her back while his partner handed him a set of handcuffs. Mack suddenly appeared and smacked the handcuffs out of their hands.
“She’s with me,” Mack growled, wincing at the strain he had just put on his muscles.
“Lieutenant, we have to,” the first cop argued.
“I said she’s with me, rookie!” Mack yelled. “Did I stutter?”
The two cops looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. They finally walked away, and Mack returned to his ambulance without even a glance in Sammi’s direction.
*
Sammi was taken to the hospital per protocol but was released as soon as her slit wrist was cleaned and bandaged. Mack had been taken into surgery to have the bullet removed from his chest so Sammi decided to sit in the waiting room until she received word that he would be okay. She had nowhere to go and nobody to call, but she could at least make sure that the man who saved her life was going to live.
When the surgeon came to tell Sammi that Mack had made it through surgery just fine, he added that she could go see him, even though he might be a little groggy. Sammi just thanked him and sat back down in the plastic chair, knowing she had no right to go see Mack. She sat there, staring at the floor for an hour before getting up and walking aimlessly around the hospital.
Sammi wandered around for no more than twenty minutes before she found herself outside of Mack’s hospital room. Without knocking, she slid into the room and stood right by the door. She took a quick look around the room and noticed right away that the hospital bed was empty. Confused, Sammi started to leave the room but was shoved against the wall and held there with her back against it.
Mack held Sammi against the wall by her arms and glared into her fearful eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but Mack pressed his lips to hers to stop her. His hands moved to her golden hair, gently holding the back of her head as she weakly kissed him back.
“I’m sorry,” Sammi mumbled against Mack’s lips as tears trickled out of her crystal eyes.
Mack sighed and released her. He walked over to the hospital bed and sat on the edge of it. Sammi remained where she was with her back against the wall.
“Just…stop apologizing,” Mack finally growled from across the room.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Sammi asked, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand.
“It’s too late for that. You were supposed to not leave me, especially for Eli. You were supposed to not be the reason I got shot in the chest.”
“I know! And I understand why you hate me.”
“Come here, Sammi.”
Mack patted a spot next to him on the bed but Sammi hesitated. After a few seconds, she slowly walked over and sat next to him. He casually wrapped his arm around her waist from behind and pulled her closer to him.
“I can’t hate you, Sammi. Trust me, I’ve been trying. But look at me. I took this beating for you and I’d do it again,” Mack said calmly.
“I don’t know what to say without apologizing again,” Sammi replied quietly, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I never stopped loving you.”
Mack leaned forward and tilted his head up, bringing his lips softly to Sammi’s. As they kissed, Mack took Sammi’s engagement ring from a chain around his neck and slid it onto Sammi’s left ring finger.
“This time leave it where it belongs,” Mack said softly as he pulled away to allow Sammi to gaze upon her diamond once again.
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Time Marches On
Sammi sat at an unorganized desk in a room crammed with over a dozen other cluttered desks and threw her head down onto it in exhaustion. There were phones ringing from every direction and people shouting acr
oss the room at each other, making it so much harder to focus on anything. Theft had been so much…quieter…
“Sam! Boss is looking for you!” a male voice called from somewhere nearby.
Picking her head up, Sammi waved an arm in acknowledgement. As she stood up, she paused to look at the single framed photo on her desk and smiled at her handsome husband dressed in full formal police uniform gazing adoringly at a particularly dolled-up Sammi in an elegant white dress on their wedding day. It had been two years since they had tied the knot and the rumor around the office was that their marriage was as stale as Lieutenant Johnson’s fifteen minutes of Die-Hard-style fame.
*
Two floors up, Mack hurriedly grabbed a stack of files off his desk and accidentally knocked over one of the picture frames at the top. He was late for a witness interview, but he stopped and took the time to pick up the frame and put it in its proper place. He smiled at the picture of his young wife from the day she graduated from the police academy a little over a year prior. It was still hard for him to believe that she had gone from breaking the law to being the law.
After a daunting interview, which led to nothing more than another dead end, Mack returned to his desk and took his cellphone out of his jacket pocket. He had two missed calls and a voicemail, all from Sammi. She only ever called him during work hours if she was about to do something dangerous. Afraid of what it could be this time, he nervously listened to her message.
“Hey, babe, Vice is sending me undercover…again. I swear this precinct only hired me because I can pass as a minor and I look good in a short skirt. Anyway, they should’ve given the details to Hobbs, you know, for when you start to worry. I love you, Mack Johnson, and I’ll see you soon.”
Mack grumbled under his breath as he put his phone back in his pocket. He had to get Sammi out of that department before they got her killed by a pissed-off pimp in the streets. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the Vice squad; it was more about Sammi being too attractive for her own damn good sometimes.
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