Alex had heard about enough. She lifted her voice in an outraged shout. “Ted wasn’t—”
“That’s enough.” His tone was icy enough to freeze steam.
Obeying out of sheer startled subbie instinct, Alex shut her mouth.
More evenly, Frank continued, “I know Ted was a good man. So’s your brother. I didn’t much like some of the things he said to me either, but as I told your dad, a man has a right to be protective of those he loves.”
Alex deflated. He was right, as much as it pissed her off. Letting her head fall back on the headrest, she closed her eyes. “Annnnnd, we have to work a shift tonight. God, I feel like somebody beat me with a shovel. No matter how tough any given situation is, you can trust my family to find a way to make it worse.”
“You really have no idea how lucky you are. When I was a kid, I’d have given my left nut to have somebody love me that much. You’ve got five somebodies.”
Startled, Alex lifted her head and stared at him. “Say what?”
“Your family loves you. Your daddy is proud of you. All he could talk about while we were out on the deck was how smart you are, and how much ass you kick. Your brothers love you, too—including Andy.”
“Yeah, I could tell when he accused me of introducing Chester the Molester to his four-year-old.”
“Yeah, okay, he’s overprotective and willfully blind, but he’s also worried about you. He’s afraid I beat you the way Ted beat Cal in that video. You know how BDSM looks to vanilla types. They do not understand. He’s afraid I’ve somehow brainwashed you into thinking abuse is sex.”
“You haven’t brainwashed me into a damned thing.”
“Again, you know that and I know that, but if your brothers knew . . .” He shook his head. “They’d kick my ass if they had to get the Coach’s entire defensive line to help them do the job.”
“Let’s hope that asshole sniper doesn’t figure out a way to tell them,” Alex muttered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It started out as a quiet night. Alex should have known that wasn’t going to last.
She was at the other end of 21 trying to settle a dispute between a drunk and his exasperated neighbors when the call came in. A woman had walked into the Gas-N-Go and threatened the clerk with a gun.
“Dispatch, Twenty-Three responding,” Frank said, his radio voice utterly calm. “I’m about two minutes away.”
“Dispatch, Twenty-One en route. I’m at the other end of my area. ETA in”—she did a quick estimation— “five minutes.”
Alex shot a look at the drunk, who stood swaying on his neighbor’s front porch. She knew George Sharpe well from previous encounters. He was harmless, despite an affection for running off at the mouth whenever he got too much Bud onboard. Not unlike a certain dumbass brother. “You’ve got two options, Mr. Sharpe. Go home or go to jail when I get back. Your choice.”
Clearing the porch steps in one bound, Alex sprinted across the neatly trimmed yard.
Three minutes. Frank was going to be dealing with the armed woman for three minutes before she could reasonably get there to back him up. A lot of very nasty shit could happen in three minutes. Suddenly she understood why he’d been so pissed she hadn’t waited for backup.
She also knew he wouldn’t wait for her either.
Alex slid into her still-running patrol car, flicked on her blue lights and siren, and peeled out of the Larkins’ driveway headed for the Gas-N-Go. The patrol car’s rotating blue and white lights lit up houses and trees on either side of the road as the siren’s cycling wail scraped at Alex’s nerves.
Adrenaline streaked through her, urging her to go even faster, but the car was already flying; much faster and she’d outrun her headlights and risk a crash. The words of her academy driving instructor echoed in her head: You can’t save anyone if you get killed on the way.
But Frank’s there alone. He might need me. Alex fought down the panic that thought inspired, forcing herself to do the combat breathing Ted had taught her. The slow, deep breathing would decrease the rabbiting heartbeat that might otherwise make her hands shake too badly to do Frank a damned bit of good.
Fear was a cop’s worst enemy. It could turn the best sharpshooter into a hapless schmo who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Alex was damned well not going to be that schmo. Not when Frank’s life might be at stake.
Alex roared into the Gas-N-Go’s parking lot and bolted from the car as if her seat were full of tacks. And where the hell’s Bruce? She hadn’t heard him respond. Fuck it, she didn’t have the time to wait for his late ass. She started to charge the door, then pulled up short.
No, a mental voice said. It sounded a lot like Ted. You can’t bull in there like an idiot. You could scare the bitch into opening fire on everybody in the shop. Drawing in another deep breath—which was doing less to calm her down than it should have—she stared through the store’s plate glass window.
Oh, shit. Her heart sped up again.
Frank was faced off with a white woman dressed in a rumpled pink track suit and Day-Glo green running shoes. Her dark hair stood around her head in disordered tufts, as if she’d been clawing her hands through it. She had a gun in her hand.
He did not have his weapon drawn.
What the hell? Alex thought furiously. I don’t care how fast you are, you’re not going to get that gun out of its holster and aimed before she can shoot you.
Chew him out later, dammit. Save his ass now.
Forcing herself to move slowly, quietly, she drew her weapon, crouched, and slipped into the store behind the armed woman, who was ranting something at Frank. Ghosting to the candy display aisle, Alex paused, weapon aimed at subject while she tried to figure out what the hell was going on, and what to do about it.
The woman didn’t even appear to notice Alex was there, being completely focused on Frank.
“. . . don’t know what it’s like. The snake . . . the snake never goes away.” Though Alex could see nothing more than her profile, the glint of tears rolling down the woman’s pale, drawn face was obvious. “It’s eating me alive. Every day, a little bit more of me is gone, down the snake’s throat, disappearing, swallowed, dying a tiny bit at a time . . . Help me, please, please, I can’t let it eat any more of me, please . . .”
Alex’s mouth tightened as she understood why Frank hadn’t drawn his gun. The idiot’s chivalric streak wouldn’t let him shoot a woman begging for help. Not even one who was obviously batshit crazy and armed with a deadly.
The woman swiped at the tears on her face. Alex tensed, considering firing, but Frank caught her eye and gave his head a hard shake, then jerked his chin toward the door. Telling her to get out.
Fuck that, Frank. Alex shook her head in return.
His gaze went steely in what she recognized as his Alpha Dom glare.
Alex glared right back. I’m not leaving you to get shot, dumbass.
The woman frowned and started to turn toward Alex, but Frank spoke in that hypnotic croon he did so well. “I can help, Charlotte. I can handle this.”
That last bit sounded as if it was intended for Alex’s benefit. She tuned him out, mind working furiously as she tried to see a way out of this.
This looked like a situation that was about to go catastrophically off the rails. Charlotte—who was either mentally ill or had smoked some seriously bad meth—could easily decide to shoot everyone in the store.
Wait, where’s Betty Mason? Alex dragged her eyes away from Frank and his psycho damsel in distress for a quick scan of the Gas-N-Go. At first she didn’t see the third-shift clerk, and started to relax fractionally, thinking Betty had fled the scene.
Then she spotted a pink cell phone in a woman’s hand, sticking out just above the store checkout counter. Oh, for God’s sake. She’s shooting a damned video.
Well, at least Betty had taken cover. As long as she didn’t go in for a close-up, she should be safe.
Charlotte was begging again, rocking back and forth from fo
ot to foot as words spilled out of her in a torrent. “The doctors, the meds, they’re not helping. You’re the only one who can save me. I can’t . . . I can’t take this anymore. You can do it . . .”
“Wait, darlin’, just listen,” Frank told her, pouring on the seductive Dom, whether the poor bitch realized that was what he was doing or not. “I want to help you, but not that way. If the meds aren’t working, there are others that can blunt the pain until you—”
“No, no!” She waved the gun, her voice spiraling higher, taking on an even more frantic note. “Don’t you understand, I can’t take any more. No more snake . . . Shoot me, goddammit!” She rocked forward on the balls of her feet, her free hand curling into a fist as if she wanted to hit him.
Shit. Alex’s Glock felt slick and clammy in her sweating palms. We are so fucked. Frank’s not going to shoot her.
I’m going to have to do it.
The woman glared at him so murderously Alex instinctively ducked lower. Frank didn’t even flinch. “Do it, you fucking bastard!” she shrieked. “You can! Cops shoot people all the time!”
And pay for it for the rest of their lives, Alex thought.
“I’m not going to shoot you, Charlotte,” Frank said in a low, calm voice. Alex wanted to hit him. “Think of your little boy. Do you want him to grow up without you? A mother’s love is something nobody else can ever give him, because nobody else is his mother. Just you. Only you. Don’t deprive him of that. Hang on for him.”
The frantic way Charlotte was rocking back and forth would make her hard to hit.
Alex wanted to throw up. She’d never killed anyone, had never even fired at another human. Most cops never did.
Maybe a nonlethal weapon? Not the pepper spray—if Charlotte was under the influence of something, she might be too high to feel the effect.
The Taser, too, was out of the question, since Charlotte was armed. Both the barbs the device fired had to sink into flesh for the charge to work, just as both jumper cables have to be attached to jump-start a car. If one of the barbs missed or got caught in clothing, there’d be no circuit and Frank was as good as dead.
Alex could jump the woman, of course, but there was too good a chance she’d end up shot herself, in which case Frank might well be next. Any way you sliced it, she didn’t like the odds.
And the damned video Betty was shooting was guaranteed to end up online. Even if Frank, Alex, and Betty survived, the media would go berserk with people saying she should have shot the poor mentally ill lady in the leg. Never mind that the bitch could then turn around and put a bullet in Alex’s brain. The only thing that wouldn’t result in dead cops was shooting Charlotte center mass, bleeding her out so fast she wouldn’t have time to kill anybody.
Yeah, I’m fucked.
* * *
Frank saw Alex settle herself, her gaze going flat. Preparing to fire.
Time seemed to lengthen, heartbeats stretching into slow thuds. Charlotte’s too-wide brown eyes were wild with the agonized need for something, anyone, to take the pain away.
Even a bullet.
But he was damned if Alex would be the one to fire it. She’d carry the weight of Charlotte’s ghost the rest of her life. Frank couldn’t let that happen.
Dammit, if you’d given me one more lousy minute, I could have convinced her to give up the gun.
Fuck it, we’ll do it the hard way.
He caught Charlotte’s gaze with his in that You will do what I demand because I will make it better stare he’d learned before he could shave. Her dark, mad eyes grew uncertain, as if wondering if he really could take away the delusions and voices that tormented her. Holding her stare, he eased forward, gathering himself even as he purred low-voiced reassuring bullshit. From the corner of one eye, he saw Alex ease off her shooting stance as she realized he was making his move.
Charlotte noticed what he was doing. Alarm stirred belatedly in her pain-glazed eyes, and she started to bring the gun to bear. He pounced, his left hand thrusting her weapon to the side so any bullet would hit the beer display case instead of one of them. Seizing the gun barrel in the same motion, he used it as a lever and twisted it out of her grip. She started to grab for it, but he raised it over her head, well out of reach as he seized her wrist with his free hand.
Alex came boiling out from behind the candy shelf and grabbed the other flailing arm, simultaneously whipping out her handcuffs as she hit Charlotte from behind. Overbalanced, all three of them went right over, Charlotte on the bottom of the pile. She cried out as the two cops landed on her, a howl of frenzy.
Wincing, Frank tucked Charlotte’s weapon in the back of his pants.
“Nooooo!” Charlotte howled. Then he had his hands full, because the woman went wild, screaming and bucking as she realized she wasn’t getting the death-by-cop she’d sought.
“Charlotte, you’re under arrest!” Frank bellowed, but she didn’t seem to hear, too busy clawing, kicking, and biting in a psychotic frenzy.
Even with his size advantage, a hell of a lot of U.S. government training, and Alex’s help, it was all Frank could do to get the woman handcuffed. He counted himself lucky he managed it at all. As it was, she sank her teeth into his right arm. He had to stick a thumb into the hinge of her jaw to force her to let go. The bite stung like a bastard, but he didn’t let it stop him. Ignoring the pain from a woman’s teeth, nails, and fists was a skill he’d mastered when his idea of great TV was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Getting her out of the store and safely into the back of his patrol car proved to be a fight of epic proportions. For such a little thing, she was impossibly strong. Frank couldn’t even get a hand free for his shoulder mic to call for backup.
Charlotte fought him and Alex every inch of the way until he was afraid she’d dislocate her own arms as she howled demands that they fucking shoot her!
At long last, they wrestled her into the car and buckled her in. She promptly threw herself down on the bench seat and began slamming kicks at the windows and the metal grate that protected the driver’s compartment from the back. Frank got in, cursing under his breath and hoping the glass would survive as he started the car. “Calm down, Charlotte!” he bellowed over her howls, but she only screeched louder.
The poor bitch was in desperate need of mental health care and some serious psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, she’d pointed a gun at the store clerk, so her next stop was the county jail. Frank had no choice except to charge her with assault with a deadly weapon. If he was lucky, she’d have concerned family he could contact who could work with the judge to get an emergency detention order to hospitalize her for observation. From there, they could hopefully get her into treatment.
Unfortunately, Frank knew even after he had Charlotte taken care of, he’d have another angry woman to deal with. Judging by Alex’s frozen expression when she’d yelled she’d meet him at the jail, she was just as pissed as Charlotte.
She might be his submissive, but this wasn’t the bedroom. No amount of Dom was going to save him from her wrath.
* * *
The Morgan County Jail was a two-story redbrick complex with what looked like a mile of glass fronting its lobby. Inside it was all-gray industrial carpeting and rows of chairs with thin, ratty upholstery. Beyond the front desk, the metal detector, and the locked steel doors lay clusters of jail cells built for two that now housed four. The place had been overcrowded the day it was opened in 1993. Things had not improved in the decades since.
It was not, in short, the kind of place Frank would have chosen to leave anyone who was suicidal. Unfortunately, state law, miserly funding, and a resulting lack of mental health facilities meant there was nowhere else.
It took the better part of an hour to get Charlotte booked and into a set of restraints that would hopefully keep her from battering herself against the cinder-block walls of her cell.
Frank then went to work trying to contact her next of kin. Charlotte had no purse or identification with her—no surpri
se—but fortunately she was no stranger to the county jail either. Three months before, she’d been briefly held on assault and battery charges for attacking a clerk at a Verizon store. Evidently she’d thought the company was using her cell phone to beam things into her head she didn’t want to hear.
Frank used the information on file to contact the woman’s long-suffering parents. Forty-five minutes later, he left Victor and Raeline Shepherd talking to the judge about their options, and escaped the jail with a sensation of vast relief.
Outside, the night air was cool, the tree-shrouded horizon beginning to brighten toward dawn. He leaned a hip against one of four bullet-shaped concrete car barriers that were supposed to deter would-be jail-breakers from ramming the building. Or truck-bombing it, depending on whether the driver wanted to free an inmate or kill the whole lot of them.
In the parking lot, Alex got out of her patrol car, where she’d been using the unit’s laptop to write the report on the incident. He supposed he owed her one for that. Since Frank was the first officer on-scene, the report was technically his job.
“Talked to Sergeant Henson and found out why we couldn’t get backup,” she told him, her voice a little too professionally courteous. Yeah, she was still pissed. “Apparently our friend the sniper took a shot at Bruce right after I walked into the store. While we were fighting Big Ball O’Crazy, every other cop in the county was out hunting the sniper.”
Frank stiffened. “Did Bruce get hit?”
“No, thank the good Lord.” Wearily, she ran a hand over her French braid, looking tired and defeated. “Apparently Bruce suddenly stopped to look at a scratch where somebody had keyed his patrol car, and the shooter missed. Bruce took off after him. Must have almost got him, too, because this time the fucker left his rifle behind.”
“Let me guess, it was unregistered.”
“In this state? You bet your big Dom dick. Had no papers at all, in fact, not even for the original purchaser.” By South Carolina law, weapons were usually registered only if they were sold through federally licensed gun dealers like pawn shops. More often, people bought and traded firearms privately, without leaving a paper trail.
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