“Gabe,” tall, dark and dangerous said, offering me his hand.
I took his as well, and stepped out of the doorway, allowing them in.
“Well,” I didn’t really know what to say. “Do you need me for anything?”
“Only access to the house. Which you’ve already done. Later, we’ll need more guidance on the code. So be thinking of something easy you want to use. A six-digit number is best. Nothing consecutive,” Max told me.
I nodded and swept my arm in an arc.
But I stopped them before they could get more than two feet.
“Do either of you have Foster’s number?” I asked hopefully.
They smiled.
“No, pretty lady. We don’t.”
With that comment, they left.
Stubborn men.
I damn well knew that they had his number.
They had to.
Foster had asked them not to give it to me, though.
I knew it just as well as I knew that the police department wasn’t the one paying for it, he was.
A smile kicked up the corner of my lip, and I closed my eyes.
What was the feeling in my chest?
After an hour of watching The Price is Right, I decided I knew what it was.
Excitement. I was actually looking forward to something for the first time in a very long time.
And it was a fight.
Hopefully a fight that would lead to something…more.
***
I was painting my toes when what sounded like a movie started to play at full blast.
It played out just like an action movie. The part where a hail of gunfire starts peppering the surroundings, and the people all hide behind the car and miraculously don’t get hit.
My head peaked up from its hunched position over my toes and surveyed the area.
I hadn’t even heard them move.
It was like they were trained in the art of ninja or something.
One second they were nowhere to be seen, and the next I was being hauled backward.
I spilled my nail polish in the process, and all I could focus on, while a tattooed, muscled forearm belonging to Max, hauled me back, was the fact that the spilled polish resembled a pool of blood.
“What the fuck?” Max barked in frustration when he saw my side room.
They hadn’t had a chance to get to that room, obviously.
It was filled to the brim with books.
The entire four walls were packed three feet high and three paperbacks thick.
Nonetheless, Max dropped us down to the floor and covered me with his body.
This wasn’t anywhere near as erotic as I’d imagined it being
Firstly, in my books, the heroine was always in love with the one protecting her.
Secondly, the man at my back was married, and I couldn’t feel that way about someone that was married.
He’d been talking about his wife, Peyton, for a good hour and a half now, and frankly, I was a little jealous.
I wanted what she had.
But I was also happy for her. It was nice that someone had the devotion of a man like Max.
Someone who would protect her like the way he was doing to me, with his life.
Sure, he’d do it for a stranger, too, which he was exhibiting now. But it wouldn’t be that blind devotion that he’d give to his wife.
The shooting, which had continued this entire time, suddenly stopped.
My ears rang in the silence, and I finally took my first breath in three minutes.
Well, I’d probably taken others, but I wasn’t counting those. Those were panic breaths.
Max’s heavy body didn’t move, and I laid there, wondering when he would.
“Are you going to get off of me?” I asked after a while longer.
“Shh,” he hissed.
That’s when I noticed that the other man, Gabe, wasn’t with us.
What if that man died?
He had a wife.
And kids.
Oh, my God. It’d be all my fault!
The sound of Gabe’s voice from somewhere beyond had me breathing a sigh of relief.
Max finally got off of me and hauled me effortlessly to my feet.
Then he proceeded to drag me into the living room, giving me the first good look at my house. And I realized just how close I came.
“Well,” I said breathlessly. “I don’t think there’s any point in installing that alarm.”
I’d said that, though, because my living room wall resembled Swiss cheese.
“Jesus,” I breathed.
Then I turned my head to watch as Gabe entered the room, blood streaming down his arm.
“You’ve been shot!” I wailed in despair.
***
“Gabe!” a woman’s frantic voice wailed from the doorway.
I turned to see a beautiful blonde dart across the room and throw herself into Gabe’s arms.
I got up quietly, exiting the room as the couple embraced.
We’d gotten to the hospital less than twenty minutes ago, and I’d sat with Gabe while a doctor looked at the bullet hole on his arm. Something he called a ‘graze.’
I called it a fucking bullet hole, but who the heck was I to say any differently?
“Blake!” my ex-husband’s voice called loudly from the entrance.
I looked up at him and glared.
Why was he here?
“Are you okay?” David asked, hurrying up to me.
I nodded.
“What’s going on?” David wondered, taking a step forward as if to pull me into his arms.
I shrank away from him, flinching back out of his reach.
He didn’t get the privilege to touch me. Not anymore.
“Blake!” a deep, frantic voice said before a hard body snatched me up.
My eyes started to water, and I wrapped my arms firmly around Foster’s muscled chest.
His heart was beating frantically against my ribs, and the tears that I’d been keeping at bay by sheer force of will finally broke free.
I cried into his shirt. Hard.
I wasn’t a very attractive crier.
My eyes got puffy and red, my nose ran, and my face scrunched up into a mass of quivering goo.
Foster didn’t care what I looked like, though.
He still held me firmly to his chest, rocking me back and forth.
His fingers threaded into the knot I had at the top of my head, working the mass of my hair loose.
He threaded his fingers through it and held my head in the palm of his hand.
“Are you okay?” he asked after a while.
I nodded. “I’m okay.”
“Your ex-husband looks like he wants to geld me,” he rumbled.
“My ex-husband is a douche canoe,” I told him honestly.
He snorted. “Possibly.”
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked, leaning my head back so I could see his face.
He raised his eyebrow as if to ask, ‘really?’
I smiled.
Clarifying, I said, “What I meant, was that I thought you were out of town today. That’s what your note said.”
He winked. “I know what you meant. I wasn’t far out of town, though. Just at some continuing education. They were more than willing to let me go when they realized that my girl had her house shot up like a tin can at target practice.”
My mouth gaped open.
“Your girl?” I gasped.
He raised that annoying eyebrow again.
“I decided,” he confirmed.
“You decided?” I asked, outrage starting to leak into my voice.
I, of course, wasn’t that upset about his high handedness.
I was surprised, though.
He hadn’t even given me the first inkling other than that kiss last night that he was even interested.
Then all of a s
udden I was his girl?
“If I gave you the choice you’d have to think about it. And I didn’t want that mind of yours to start thinking, so I just made it myself,” he said bluntly.
I just shook my head, not knowing what to say.
I was excited, though.
Butterflies were roiling in my belly as I said, “We’ll see.”
He shook his head. “No, we won’t.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Won’t.”
“Will!”
He raised that stupid brow again and pulled me close before placing a soft kiss on my cheek. “Won’t.”
“Blake?” my father’s worried voice called from behind me.
I turned in Foster’s arms, arms that he dropped, allowing me to move away from him slightly to see my father’s worried face.
“Daddy,” I said, walking toward him.
He gathered me into his arms, dropping his chin onto the top of my head as he said, “You scared the shit out of me, girl.”
I squeezed him tightly, noticing the familiar feeling of his Kevlar vest digging into my cheek as I did. “I’m okay.”
His body shook as he started to cry and I felt horrible.
My daddy was a big man. A bad ass man.
But I was also his little girl. His only child. His pride and joy.
It probably tore him apart to hear that my house had been the location of a drive-by shooting. With me inside.
“Who’s the man?” he asked.
I turned to see Foster across the room, talking quietly with my uncle, Gabe, and Max.
My uncle had been the first to arrive.
I’d gotten the same reception from him.
“That’s…” Foster? That didn’t sound like enough for him. Hero. The man I’m falling for. The sexiest man in Kilgore, Texas. Those sounded better, yet I knew my dad probably wouldn’t find the same humor I did in it. “That’s Foster.”
“That the man your mother and you got in a fight about?” he asked, rubbing his stubble across the top of my head.
I smiled. “He was what started it, yes.”
“Hmm,” he hummed. “He coming over for dinner tonight?”
I glanced up at Foster, seeing his eyes on me, and smiled. “Why don’t you ask him?”
I actually got a little giddy inside when he did just that, walking right up to Foster, and offering him his hand.
“You the one who had men at her house today?” Dad asked bluntly.
Foster nodded. “This is Max.” He gestured with his hand. Then said, “And this is Gabe. They’re with Free.”
My dad shook both man’s proffered hands, and said, “Come to dinner. It’s at one. Both of you, too. Bring the family.”
With that, he gave my uncle a look and started to walk away.
Uncle Darren followed, shooting me an exasperated look.
Daddy was older than Uncle Darren by five years.
He was a certified bad ass, and everybody who was anybody knew my dad. Uncle Darren was, and always would be, Shank’s brother.
Daddy’s real name was Louis, but when he first started out, he was pulling double shifts. One as a trooper, and another as a prison guard at Huntsville State Penitentiary.
When he was on duty at Huntsville, an inmate made a shank out of a toothbrush, sharpening the end into a lethal point.
Then made an arrow out of it, wrapping wet newspaper and who knew what else into it, honing it into a lethal weapon.
Then, as my father passed by one night, the prisoner had used the elastic from his shorts, tied it to the bars, and then launched the arrow at my father.
It hit my father in the throat, barely missing his carotid artery by scant millimeters.
Daddy had gotten that taken care of at the infirmary and then finished his shift.
Only when he was done at work did he go to see his doctor, who told him he was a very lucky man, and that as long as he kept the wound clean, he could return to work.
Although painful, it was nothing but a minor wound that could’ve been deadly.
So he went about working, never letting that phase him.
The nickname stuck, and Uncle Darren was forever going to be remembered as Shank’s little brother, no matter what his accolades were.
“Was that Shank Rhodes?” Gabe whispered loudly. “You’re related to Shank Rhodes?”
I blinked, turning to look at Gabe. “Yeah, why?”
“Oh, fuck,” Max and Foster said at the same time.
I really started to get confused then.
“What?” I asked, voice rising.
Which caught the attention of Gabe’s wife, Ember, who’d been speaking with an ER nurse. She walked up and wrapped her arms around Gabe from behind, peeking her eyes out to see around his large arm.
Gabe wrapped his good arm around Ember’s back, holding her close as he said, “Somebody just shot up Shank’s kid’s house. Oh, my fucking God.”
Foster’s eyes widened, and he wrapped his arm around me.
“Motherfucker,” he breathed.
Ember, who’d stayed silent since she’d arrived, stared at me, taking in Foster’s arm placement, and then held out her hand to me.
“My name’s Ember, it’s nice to meet you,” Ember said pleasantly.
I took her hand and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, too. My name’s Blake Rhodes.”
“You’re Officer Shank’s kid?” she asked, eyes widening slightly.
I threw my hands up in annoyance. “What’s the big fucking deal with that?”
They all started talking at once, as if they were all little kids scared of the big bad schoolyard bully.
“He’s a badass.”
“You do not mess with The Shank.”
“The Shank is a fucking legend.”
“I heard about him while I was in Las Vegas.”
I just shook my head. “So should I ask him about this, or are you all going to give me the details that I need to make an informed decision?”
They stayed silent.
Obviously they’d rather stay silent.
Perfect.
Chapter 12
9 out of 10 children get their awesomeness from their father.
-Proven fact
Foster
“Look at her fucking house,” Luke said, shaking his head in flabbergasted silence.
It was bad.
Really bad.
The entire house was ruined.
The front wall of the house, where the brick had once been, was nothing more than a mess of rubble.
In some places, you could see through the walls in a three feet wide mass.
“Dude, you’re dating Shank’s daughter?” Downy yelled, announcing his arrival with that big mouth of his.
I turned, catching my good foot on a stray brick, and tripped.
“Fuck,” I said, catching myself.
“Hey, that was pretty cool,” Downy said, looking down at my ‘blade.’
I found that I liked it.
It didn’t look remotely like a foot, like the other one did, but it was more functional… at least for me.
Everyone knew I was an amputee, anyway, so what was the point of hiding that fact?
“Yeah,” I said, bouncing lightly on the blade. “It’s pretty cool. As for doing anything with The Shank’s daughter, I won’t be speaking to you, or anyone, about that.”
“Good,” a dark, menacing voice said from behind me.
I turned to see Officer Shank, himself, inspecting the lot of us.
Gabe and Max were still with us, and they’d been joined by the rest of the SWAT team: Downy, Luke, Nico, Bennett, Michael, Miller, John, and James.
When something happened to one, something happened to all. And, although I hadn’t started anything ‘official’ with Blake, they knew she was mine.
Just as much as Shank knew it, too. That’d been why he invited me to dinner.<
br />
Downy, who’d been the one to make the comment about Blake, blushed.
Fucking blushed.
Downy was a talker. He never knew when to shut up, but anyone with any sense at all knew better than to talk shit about The Shank. Even Downy.
“Sir,” I said, offering my hand.
He shook it, then surprised me by pulling me into a hug.
“I know you weren’t here, but you put into motion having them here. If you ever, and I mean ever, need anything, call me. I’ll be there. You saved my girl’s life,” he said lowly, just loud enough for me, and me only, to hear. “Oh, and call me Lou. That Shank shit is getting old.”
I swallowed and slapped him on the back before he let me go.
I was actually a little choked up.
Getting a favor owed to The Shank, Lou, was big. Fucking monumental.
“You can all come to dinner,” Lou said before he nodded at us, and then walked down the street.
“Holy fucking shit,” Downy breathed.
I raised my brow at them. “I’m man-crushing.”
They all snorted. Every last one of them.
“And you’re dating his daughter. If you ever fuck up, you’re dead,” Miller announced.
That wasn’t something that hadn’t crossed my mind. More than once, in fact.
It was bad enough that she was the chief of police’s niece. Now she had to be The Shank’s daughter, too.
Knowing Blake’s father was The Shank wouldn’t change my mind about Blake though.
“Do you know that he has the record for the most drug-related arrests in the state?” Luke asked the group as a whole.
“He also has the most weapon draws,” I countered.
“The most officer involved shootings,” Max rumbled.
I winced.
“The most…”
I ignored the rest of the comments, going off to walk around the rest of the house.
Once I got my fill of the outside, I walked inside, taking in the destruction.
The bullets had torn through the first two walls.
There were even some in the kitchen.
My mind stuck on the spilled red nail polish on the coffee table.
Bullets riddled the floor, couch, and area surrounding the couch.
Red nail polish was spilled carelessly all over the floor, the bright red sight making bile rise in my throat.
That very well could’ve been her blood.
She could’ve died.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 89