Love Against the Law

by Justine Klavon

  It was nice outside that day, sunny but not very warm. Needing to clear her head, Sammi went on the back porch with a glass of wine and sat with her phone placed off to the side on silent. But only two minutes later, she couldn’t tolerate the quiet anymore and put her glass down to go back inside and get the editor’s contact information from the folder.

  While she was still in the kitchen, Sammi heard the doorbell ring and she dropped the folder back onto the counter to go see who was at the door. Half expecting it to be the editor again, she carelessly opened the front door and was instantly shoved backwards into the foyer. The masked intruder grabbed Sammi by the shoulders before she even knew what was going on and easily tossed her slender body into the wall, making sure her head hit first and hit hard enough to knock her out.

  Chapter Thirty

  Broken Windows

  Sammi woke up slowly, seeing double and not having any idea what was going on. She shook her head gingerly, trying to clear her vision up, and looked around her. There was nobody around and she was actually surprised to find that she was still in her home, sitting on the floor by the stairs to the loft and propped up against the wall of the staircase with her arms tied above her head to the bars of the railing. Letting out a dramatic groan as she tugged against her restraints and felt the pain of her broken arm being free from its sling, she discovered a strip of cloth had been placed in her mouth and tied off behind her head as a gag.

  It crossed Sammi’s mind that she should be scared, but she was more pissed off than anything. She couldn’t believe that someone had the nerve to come into her home, the home of one of New York’s finest police officers, and try to hold her against her will. Her only enemy was Shay and she was still behind bars so whoever had done this probably had no idea who they were dealing with. But they would learn.

  Allowing her anger to build, Sammi tugged at the zip-ties holding her wrists together a few more times before maneuvering herself so that her feet were under her and she was able to stand up. With this new leverage, Sammi dropped all her weight into the plastic ties, wearing them down slightly. The pain in her broken arm was immense but survivable. Climbing to her feet again, she intended to try throwing her weight into the restraints again, but someone appeared in front of her and she sighed in relief.

  “Sit!” Christopher growled at Sammi, brandishing a fairly sized knife as he took a step closer toward his hostage. There was no trace of Australian accent in his voice and Sammi remembered that his name wasn’t actually Christopher. But that’s who she knew him as.

  With a muffled snort, Sammi glared at him while she challenged him with her eyes. This punk didn’t scare Sammi and they still had some unfinished business to discuss regarding her three murdered friends. He ordered her to sit down again so she kicked the wall behind her as hard as she could in defiance. Moving swiftly, he closed in on her and punched her in the gut, knocking the wind out of her and bringing her to her knees.

  “That’s better,” Christopher clucked, backing away from her again. “Now where’s the rest of the money?”

  Sammi raised an eyebrow at Christopher, not sure what money he was talking about and certainly not sure how he expected her to answer him. The pretend Aussie must not have really wanted an answer because he just walked away. Sammi let out an angry scream against her gag and threw her body back against the wall to cause a scene, wanting Christopher to come back and fight her like a man. This man that killed her friends didn’t deserve to be alive, still walking and talking freely. She wanted him dead for what he had done.

  A few minutes passed and she could hear Christopher tearing apart her entire home, apparently searching for money that he wasn’t going to find. Once she was able to breathe properly again, she stood up and continued trying to break her wrists free. The wooden post of the railing that she was confined to was starting to weaken under her weight and she didn’t care if that broke before the plastic zip-ties did because she would still be free. But before anything could break, Christopher returned and wasn’t so gracious with his space this time.

  Attempting to get away from Christopher who was standing damn near on top of her, Sammi planted her butt on the floor and slid as far away from him as she could. But Christopher wrapped one hand around her neck, pushing his palm up into her chin and picking her up to a standing position. He kept his hand around her throat and used his free to hand to slide the gag out of her mouth, pressing his face to hers.

  “You were supposed to die too,” Christopher hissed against her cheek.

  “Yeah, well, maybe if you were a real criminal, you could’ve gotten the job done,” Sammi spat at him.

  Christopher smacked her across the face and Sammi laughed. But then he pressed his lips to hers and Sammi became furious. She pulled her head back, away from him, and then rammed it forward with as much force as she could muster into Christopher’s nose. That final force against Sammi’s restraints broke her free as Christopher stumbled backwards roaring in pain with blood flowing from his nostrils. Only the railing post had broken so Sammi’s wrists were still tied together but she was no longer tied to one spot.

  Thinking quickly, Sammi ran out to the back porch with her arms down in front of her to grab her cellphone. She had a difficult time using the touch screen with her hands tied together but she managed to get through two screens to get to a call button for Mack’s number. Christopher appeared in the back doorway as soon as she sent the call, so she pressed the button to turn on the speaker and tossed the phone onto a lawn chair, turning to face her intruder.

  “What do you want?” Sammi asked Christopher, hoping the call had connected by that point.

  “Well, first, a real criminal would eliminate all witnesses,” Christopher said mockingly, holding his knife out in front of him. “But if what I took from your hotel room in Cali was just your travel money, I can only assume that there’s more…a lot more.”

  “It wouldn’t be here,” Sammi scoffed, narrowing her eyes at him. “My husband’s a detective, you moron.”

  “Then where is it?” Christopher asked, opening his arms out wide in wonder.

  “In an offshore bank account,” Sammi sighed in disbelief, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Do you know anything about being a bad guy?”

  “I found you, didn’t I?” Christopher retorted.

  Then Christopher came at her with the knife raised and Sammi didn’t run. She put her wrists up in front of her and bowed her head just as he struck, catching the blade on the zip-ties and cutting her loose. Christopher couldn’t believe what just happened and paused in shock. Sammi kicked him in the shin as hard as she could and ripped the knife from his hand as he gasped in pain. Then she held the knife to his throat as she kicked the backs of his legs until he dropped to his knees. Holding the knife in place, she snatched up her phone to discover that the call to Mack had been disconnected. Uncertain of what happened, she dialed the local precinct and reported the intruder.

  While waiting for the local cops to show up, Christopher made a move for the knife but Sammi just pressed the blade against his Adam’s apple and he stopped.

  “You won’t do it,” Christopher seethed tauntingly, on his knees with his back to Sammi.

  “Try me,” Sammi hissed, allowing the blade to dig ever so lightly into the skin of his neck. “You killed my family.”

  “You think you’re so tough and a big, bad criminal. But you told me yourself that you were a cop. You can’t have it both ways,” Christopher challenged her.

  And he was right, her police training was still winning over in her mind, even though she craved to cause this man pain. She told herself that if he made a run for it that she could end him, but she knew she would do no such thing. She wasn’t a killer and that’s what kept her from being the true bad guy. That’s why Mack was able to love her.

  As soon as a swarm of vehicles could be heard in front of the house, Christopher hooked his arm behind him and around Sammi’s ankles before she even saw what was com
ing. He swept her feet out from under her and she landed hard on her back, dropping the knife as she fell. Christopher swung around and grabbed the knife off the ground, leaning over Sammi as she struggled to breathe after the hard fall.

  “Say hi to your friends,” Christopher said bluntly, raising the knife above his head before driving it toward the center of Sammi’s chest. Sammi had known he was aiming for her heart and was able to get her arm up just in time, catching the blade in her left bicep.

  Sammi hollered in pain, knife protruding from her upper arm, as Christopher was hoisted off of her by two cops. As soon as those cops left with the intruder in custody, two more cops appeared in their place, kneeling by Sammi’s side. They were trying to talk to her to keep her calm while waiting for paramedics, worried that she might go into shock.

  “I’m fine,” Sammi growled, even though tears of pain were streaming seamlessly out of the corners of her eyes and down the sides of her face into her hair. She was trying to sit up, but the cops kept putting their hands on her shoulders to keep her still as blood oozed out around the blade in her arm. The more movement occurring in her arm, the more it bled.

  “Seriously, guys, I’ve been through a lot worse,” Sammi told the cops, trying to laugh off the pain. She was finally able to pull herself up into a sitting position just as paramedics arrived on the scene.

  “She really has been through worse,” came a reassuringly familiar voice from behind the paramedics tending to her arm.

  Sammi made eye contact with Mazzeline as the knife was pulled from her bicep and the wound sterilized and bandaged on the scene in a hurry. The paramedics had made the judgement call to treat her there and hoped she’d be more cooperative once they got her to the hospital. But as soon as the bandage was secure, she leapt up to her feet and into Mazzeline’s arms, ignoring the two medics who were trying to help her.

  “What are you doing here?” Sammi asked her favorite detective that she wasn’t married to, surprised to see him.

  “Mack’s on his way,” Mazzeline told her. “He got your call and knew I was at physical therapy up this way so he asked me to come be with you until he could get home.

  Mazzeline brushed the leftover tears off Sammi’s face with the sides of his thumbs as the paramedics came to separate them. They were trying to get Sammi into an ambulance to get her over to the hospital, but she was insisting that she was fine. She mostly didn’t want the chance of running into Anthony, so Mazzeline reasoned with them, flashing his badge, until they agreed to let him transport Sammi himself.

  By the time Sammi and Mazzeline made their way around the house to the front, Mack’s squad car was speeding up the usually quiet suburban street and screeching to a stop behind Mazzeline’s pickup truck. Mack leapt out of the car, sprinted up the front lawn, and nearly tackled Sammi with the force at which he embraced her. Sammi went to put her arms around her husband and discovered she couldn’t lift her left arm but a few inches from her side, so she hugged him with her right arm, fighting the pain that was almost numb compared to the new stab wound, and didn’t speak while Mack held her to him.

  “I’m transferring precincts,” Mack announced matter-of-factly, pulling away from Sammi so he could talk, but keeping his hands around her waist.

  “You will do no such thing,” Sammi cut him off before he could explain. “You would be bored out of your mind working outside of the city.”

  “I’m too far away from you when I’m working and I can’t handle it anymore,” Mack replied and kissed Sammi’s forehead.

  “Mack, I will move back to the city before you transfer jobs,” Sammi told him. “I just lost my family. You’re not losing Hobbs, and Mazzeline, and Palma.”

  Moving to Sammi’s side, Mack put his arm around her shoulders and steered her toward his squad car. Mazzeline didn’t need to wait for an invitation to tag along to the hospital to have Sammi’s arm looked at. Sammi’s last statement made it permanent that he was a part of their lives and a part of their family.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I Did It for You

  Mack ended up taking the rest of that week off from work to be with Sammi. Her right arm had been put back into a sling and now her left arm was bandaged tightly to restrict mobility. She was upset about how useless she felt with the limited use of her arms, so Mack set her up in the living room with her favorite movies while he cleaned the house from Christopher’s ransacking. He had invited Mazzeline over to hang out, but Mazzeline had returned to work earlier than expected to make up for Mack’s absence from the unit.

  Fortunately, Sammi’s stab wound wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and she regained the full use of her left arm by the following Monday. Mack wasn’t thrilled about returning to work that Monday and being an hour away from Sammi all day, but his wife insisted that she would look for places to live in the city. His name was still on the lease for his old apartment in the city, but he knew even the mention of it would make Sammi sad because of its connection to Kodi.

  Upon his return to work, Mack was called into the Captain’s office to talk about what had happened with Sammi the previous week, the rumor that he was transferring precincts, and the publishing offer from his sister-in-law. Mack was open and honest with Hobbs about everything, explaining how Sammi held her own against the man who killed her friends, how he didn’t like being so far away from Sammi during the day in case she needed him like she had that day, and how Sammi felt like his sister-in-law didn’t really get the story she had written and was nervous about the revision requests.

  “I’ll pass that on to Stephanie,” Hobbs told Mack. Then he added with a shrug, “I guess we liked it so much because we’re so close to it.”

  “I guess we’re lucky like that,” Mack snapped back at him, sounding offended and protective over the story. “I just hope Sammi doesn’t give up on it.”

  “Like you gave up on wanting to be Captain?” Hobbs shot at him unexpectedly.

  “I didn’t give up on anything,” Mack retorted coolly. “I realized there’s more to life than the job and I don’t want the responsibility. Being the husband of a thief is more than enough responsibility.”

  “I’d say so. But it doesn’t really sound like Sammi needed you all that much last week,” Hobbs challenged his favorite Lieutenant.

  Mack smirked and patted Hobbs on the shoulder belittlingly as he stood up from his desk chair. Hobbs rolled his eyes and shook his head, trying to come across as if he disapproved of Sammi’s fearlessness, even though he’d somehow enabled her entire behavior. The police Captain would never publicly admit it, but he loved Sammi as if she were his daughter and he never lost a night of sleep over letting her run free of consequences for her poor life choices.

  Getting back to work, Mack was in a great mood, feeling good about himself and feeling a strange new pride in his wife’s attitude and criminal history. It wasn’t that he suddenly approved of her illegal career choice, but more that he could finally admire everything she had done. He couldn’t imagine ever pulling off any one of her heists or living through any of her injuries and he had to respect her for that. His wife was strong and could take care of herself, so they didn’t need to move in order for him to stay at his job. He could freely admit that maybe she didn’t need him as much as he’d thought, and he was not ashamed of her or any of her decisions anymore. And that gave him an idea.

  When he got home that night, Mack found out right away that Hobbs had already called his sister-in-law, who had already stopped by again to apologize to Sammi for her misreading of the story. Sammi and Stephanie had gone over the original manuscript together that afternoon to discuss which revisions Sammi was willing to go along with and those that were too drastic and wouldn’t do any justice to her friends’ memories. Stephanie had left still struggling with accepting Eli’s violence in the story and the girls had agreed to sleep on it and chat again the next day.

  “You’re not going to give in, are you?” Mack asked, getting oddly protective again o
f the story that wasn’t even his.

  “Oh, no way,” Sammi assured him. “What Eli did was real. And what Eli did also brought you into my life.”

  Sammi moved in and sat on Mack’s lap at the kitchen table, kissing him with meaning. She had been grateful for the distraction of Stephanie’s visit that day because she had gotten lonely in the house and slightly spooked by almost inaudible noises while her husband was at work. Mack kissed her back, entangling his hands in her long hair as she hooked her left arm around his neck. She wanted to lead him into the bedroom, but he wasn’t finished talking and held her in place on his lap.

  “Write our story,” Mack said, softly but sincerely.

  “What?” Sammi asked, more surprised than confused.

  “I want you to write our story, in words that only you could put together,” Mack explained. “Write about the night we met at the mall and ended up shooting each other. Write about working together and how you were the better detective but an even better thief. And tell the world how this foolish cop fell in love with the most breathtaking and goodhearted, creative criminal in the world.”

  *

  Sammi distracted herself for the next month or so with writing whenever Mack was out of the house. She didn’t like being alone with nobody to talk to and she didn’t like thinking about that day Christopher showed up, so she focused on perfecting the book about her friends, with the help of her new editor friend, and starting to write the book that Mack had requested. The distraction of writing was nice, and she certainly enjoyed the creative outlet, but she could always breathe a sigh of relief when her husband came home, grateful for the companionship.

  One morning, Mack gently shook Sammi awake on his way out the door for work. Sammi opened one eye to glare at her husband for disturbing her, but he just smiled at her and kissed her nose. She knew he wasn’t going to leave until he was sure she was up, so she pulled herself into a sitting position, finally having the use of both of her arms again.