No More Mr. Nice Guy

by Carl Weber

That’s the only problem with working with the same people for a long time. They fucking know you.

  Loaded down with all my bags, I opened the door to my apartment, dumping the bags. I looked out the window and smiled. I never got tired of my penthouse view of the East River.

  “Finally!”

  I jumped out of my skin when I heard the voice of someone in my apartment. I reached automatically for the gun strapped to my inner thigh, but then I saw who the voice belonged to.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” I shouted at Niles, who was lounging comfortably on my Italian leather sofa, looking finer than I remembered.

  He rose and came toward me. “I’d say you trained me well.”

  “Well, you could have gotten yourself killed,” I barked at him, more to hide my excitement at how glad I was to see him.

  I took a good look at him. Frankly, close up he looked like shit.

  “I need a new assignment,” he said.

  “What’s going on? You just finished an assignment. Take a few days and relax.” I was concerned. Those bags under his eyes were a telltale sign.

  “I need a distraction,” he said, going back to the couch.

  “Why don’t you take that girlfriend of yours on a trip to the islands and blow off a little steam?”

  “No can do. We broke up,” he said. “Well, she broke up with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Niles. I didn’t know.” I stayed calm, but inside I wanted to jump for joy. How the hell did that woman fuck up such a good thing?

  I guess he felt the same way. “Fucking came out of nowhere,” he said.

  I went over to the bar, poured a couple of shots of bourbon, then handed one to him as I took a seat next to him.

  “Look, Niles, I’m sorry. I know how much you liked her, but it’s probably for the best. We already fucked, and in this job, you’re going to have to do that again. I’m not sure a girlfriend would fit with your job description.”

  He fixed me with an intensely suspicious stare. “Did you have something to do with Keisha breaking up with me? Do you have something to do with her ex being released?”

  All I could do was laugh.

  “Seriously? Wow. You give me way too much credit. I may be capable of a lot of things, but I can’t make a woman fall out of love with you.” I wasn’t about to admit that the idea of trying to make that happen had already crossed my mind.

  “Look me in the face and tell me you didn’t know about him being locked up.”

  I stared him right in the face. “I did, but what your girlfriend didn’t tell you was that he only had six months.”

  “What? That’s not possible. She told me he had twenty years.”

  I raised my eyebrows, not wanting to suggest out loud that his girlfriend was a fucking liar. “Guess she was mistaken,” I said.

  “We’re supposed to be partners,” he shot back. “Why didn’t you tell me he was released?”

  “It was none of my business. Why didn’t your girlfriend tell you?”

  He chose to ignore that question. “So I need some work. I have to stay busy.” He downed the shot and put the glass on the table. Then he got up and went to stare out the window. I got up and followed him.

  “I’m sorry this has you all upset, but there will be plenty of work to keep you busy.”

  “Good. The more the better.” He sighed, running his hands over his head in obvious frustration. It actually made me feel bad for him, no matter how hard I tried to block those feelings.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and was surprised by the jolt of electricity that went through me. There was some serious chemistry between us. I wondered if he felt it too, and decided to test the waters.

  “I know you’ve heard this before, but the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

  He didn’t answer for a few seconds, and I took my hand off his shoulder. I was almost expecting him to turn down my offer, and it was pissing me off. Then he took a step closer to me, and I could feel his intensity.

  “Is that an offer?” he asked.

  My work phone started ring before I could answer him.

  “Hold that thought,” I said as I went to answer the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Bridget, this is Jonathan. I’m texting you an address. I need you to come to right away.” Before I could tell him to, ‘kiss my ass,’ he said, “This is a code Alpha-Omega,” then hung up without waiting for a response.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, trying to get my head together.

  “Everything all right?” Niles asked.

  “I hope so, but I have to go,” I said, hating to have to say it. I could feel his heat from across the room, and all I wanted to do at that moment was rip his clothes off and get busy. But duty called. “Lock the place when you leave, okay?”

  Niles

  52

  During the entire ride home from the city my mind was only on Bridget. There was no doubt that if she hadn’t received that phone call, we would have ended up in bed. Damn, if that woman didn’t have me feeling like I could lift a whole lot of weights or do something superhuman. The question was, how did I feel about that, especially with us being partners and her ice-cold demeanor most of the time? I was glad I was pulling in the driveway so I could talk to Willie about it. He would already know once he saw my face that something had gone down. I never was good at hiding things from my uncle.

  “Hey, Niles, your mother is taking a nap.” Tanya jumped up as soon as I came into the living room, because sitting right there between her and Willie was Keisha. This girl didn’t even have the decency to face me though.

  Willie got up and took Tanya’s hand. “We gonna give you two a minute.” Ignoring my raised eyebrows and funky attitude, the two of them hustled out of there quick. Keisha still hadn’t looked up at me, which was making me even madder than just seeing her in my house.

  “What are you doing here?” I snapped, pissed that I had to have one moment of my day interrupted by her. When she finally turned her head toward me, I took a step back and just stared at her. Somebody had beaten the shit out of her, leaving her eyes puffy, with black and blue marks and scars all over her face. I quickly reminded myself that Keisha and her face were no longer my problem.

  She bowed her head as she came over to me. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Then talk so you can get the hell out of my house—then do me a favor and don’t come back.”

  “Please don’t be mad at me,” she said breathlessly. “It wasn’t my fault. I swear.”

  This bitch must have confused me with someone who still cared. “Really? So . . . you coming to answer your door while you got your baby daddy laid up, or you fixing him a nice plate then telling me to leave and slamming the door in my face. What part of that is not your fault?” I seethed, overwhelmed by the memory and suddenly feeling like it had just happened today.

  She tugged at my sleeve, pleading with me. “Niles, please listen.” I snatched my arm away from her. She looked really pitiful, but I was beyond caring. This woman had broken my heart and treated me like shit, and now she wanted me to act like it was some kind of mistake? Naw, I was the one who had made a mistake by ever trusting this unfaithful bitch. If she had bruises all over her face, it was her own fault for going back to that asshole in the first place. Still, I felt something deep inside of me, something like pity and concern for her well-being, and I wanted her to leave before it escaped and she thought it meant I forgave her.

  “Keisha, I swear you need to leave!” I took her arm and led her down the hall and out the front door, but she was relentless.

  “Niles, don’t do this. I need to talk to you. It’s life or death, and that’s not a joke.” She had big crocodile tears rolling down her face, like that was going to soften me up.

  “Please. You look like somebody already tried to smash your face in, so you a whole lot closer to death than me,” I retorted in full asshole mode.

  “You think I want this? You
think I want to be with this monster? To have him touch me?” she screamed at me.

  “It don’t matter what I think. You are with him,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to be!” she pleaded, grabbing onto my arms again.

  “Then answer me one thing: What was he doing there?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know he was getting out of jail,” she said, steady lying again.

  “Bullshit. So he happened to get out of jail, and he happened to be in your house that day? What you think, I’m a fool and I’m gonna buy this? What is your angle here?”

  “But I didn’t know he was getting out of jail. I had already broken up with him. I told him about you. I told him that I was in love with you,” she said, begging me to believe her—except I didn’t. I couldn’t, because the evidence didn’t back her up.

  “You fucking think I’m crazy enough to believe this?” I fumed at Keisha for wasting my time with this bullshit and dredging up old wounds. I don’t know if it was the job that had made me so cold, but even looking at Keisha’s damaged face, I couldn’t let down my guard and show her any sympathy.

  “Niles, I’m sorry. I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. I am. You need to hear me when I say be careful. Majestic is crazy. He is insane and dangerous.”

  “I’m not worried about your baby daddy.” I laughed in her face. She didn’t seem to understand that her worry and her man were her problems.

  “You should be,” she said, shaking like a leaf. “Do you think if I had any choice I would have stayed with him? He threatened to kill me and then to give my baby a new mother, and he would have done it, and nobody would have ever found my body.”

  “Then you should have trusted me. You think I sweat bullets over some bully who’s such a pussy he has to put his hands on a woman? You let your fear of him keep you from telling me the truth. See, what you don’t seem to understand is that your fear of losing me should have motivated you,” I told her.

  “I know,” she whimpered like a puppy that had just been kicked. “Just please be careful. He thinks you had something to do with his brother’s death, and he may come after you, Niles.”

  “That would not be in his best interest to come looking for me right now,” I warned her and then turned and went back into my house. My handlers at Dynamic Defense would have been proud. Somehow during my training, Bridget must have removed my heart and filled my veins with ice water, because this Niles was not the same man I used to be. The question was, did I miss the old one?

  Bridget

  53

  I knew I should have been concentrating on the fact that less than an hour ago Jonathan had uttered the words no operative in our organization wanted to hear—code Alpha-Omega—but I could not stop myself from thinking about Niles and the fact that I was one kiss away from him fucking me just the way I needed it. My Agent Provocateur panties were sopping wet from desire for that man, but I had to pull it together before I reached my destination, because code Alpha-Omega was no joke.

  A block away from the address Jonathan had given me, I ran right smack into the middle of a full-scale police investigation.

  “Hello.” I waved over an officer. “Can you tell me what’s going on here?” There had to have been at least fifty people, including suits, standing around the yellow tape with long faces. I noticed the coroner’s truck parked in the driveway.

  “Uh, ma’am, this is an active investigation,” he said, his eyes way too interested in my cleavage.

  I flashed him the FBI credentials I carried around for just this occasion, because I needed to get in there and see Jonathan, who could tell me exactly what went down and why he felt I needed to be there.

  “You’re going to have to speak with Captain Meyer. He’s the officer in charge.” Once he saw my badge, the cop wouldn’t stop talking until I rolled up the window.

  “No problem,” I said as I waved him off and parked. Checking out the faces as I sauntered past, I could see that people were shook. This certainly wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where they were used to a full-scale police presence.

  As I headed into the backyard where all the action seemed to be happening, another officer tried to cut me off. I retrieved my badge, gave it a quick wave, and kept stepping. I spotted Jonathan, who was talking to a white-shirt captain and a rather dapper detective. He nodded at both men then headed my way.

  “We’ve got problems,” Jonathan began without even looking up at me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Have you seen the crime scene yet? Have you seen it?”

  “No, and who’s the Alpha-Omega on?”

  He gestured for me to follow him.

  “If you haven’t guessed yet . . .” He sighed, stepping over the yellow crime scene tape and pointing. “It’s on you, Bridget.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, following his finger until two dead bodies came into view across the yard next to the pool. When I got closer, I saw that it was a man and a woman, and each had taken one to the head. What I saw next made me take a step back.

  “Fuck!” I stared at the bodies, sprawled out on the patio, where my name had been spray-painted in large red letters. “Who the fuck are these people?”

  “The woman’s name is Bonnie,” Jonathan said. I could feel his stare. “The man, as you can see, no longer has a face. His name was Fuller. You may remember him as Detective Fuller.”

  “What the fuck is this all about?” I asked, suppressing the panic I felt rising in my chest. “How’d my name get down there?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know, but this isn’t good. You’ve been compromised.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. I just don’t know how this happened. I covered my tracks. I know I did.” The one thing I could never be accused of was being sloppy on the job.

  “Then you need to try and fix this. You do not want the folks upstairs getting wind of this.”

  There was really no reason for his warning, because my ass was already worried.

  This was a top level threat, and I knew to treat it as one. My bosses were a secondary concern, because the first had to be my fear of someone coming after me. If they were willing to kill for the information I had, then they weren’t about to give up with just two dead bodies.

  “I need to find out who talked and who they talked to. This was not supposed to happen. It was quick and dirty.” My explanation sounded flat even to me.

  Jonathan looked me sternly in the eyes. “Yeah, well, somebody sang like a goddamn canary, and there is no telling what Fuller said to the killer or killers before he died.”

  “Other than my name, I don’t think he knew that much.” My mind was already racing as I tried to remember exactly how it went down the last time I saw Fuller at the station.

  “Well, one thing is certain: If our superiors find out about this, they will take Monroe from you, and they may put you on a desk—or worse.”

  I swear I saw a faint smile on his face, like he’d be happy for that shit to happen. I took a deep breath, my mind bouncing from this situation to Niles. No way would I want to lose him, and for more reasons than Jonathan knew, but I was smart enough not to say anything about our “coworkers with benefits” situation.

  “So you need to figure this shit out, Bridget, and quick,” he pressed.

  I started thinking about Niles and how he figured into this and, well, it really got me worrying. “I need to go,” I told Jonathan as I took one more look at Fuller and his wife lying dead on the ground.

  “And you better hope like hell that you’re not the next one on their list,” he quipped, but I knew for certain that there was someone else they’d be looking for. I only hoped they didn’t have his name.

  Bruce

  54

  Majestic and I were greeted with smiles and brotherly love as we stepped into B. Smith’s restaurant on the pier in Sag Harbor for lunch. The brothers we were supposed to meet were already seated in the back of the restaurant, so we sat down across from
them, even though both Majestic and I hated having our backs to the door.

  “Hey, man, good to see you back out on the streets,” said Vegas, the darker, more muscular of the Duncan brothers. He stood up and gave Majestic a quick hug as we approached him and his younger, more studious-looking brother, Orlando.

  We’d been summoned out to the East End of Long Island to meet with our suppliers, and since it was off-season, the place was nearly empty. Coming out here was one of the only ways to stay off the radar, since the Duncans didn’t like to be seen with criminals. These guys were part of the biggest and best-run drug distributors on the East Coast, and after dealing with the janky-ass third string dealers, we’d graduated a few years ago and moved up to their level. Our business had boomed ever since, and them being brothers and having a family-run company only served to strengthen our alliance. They liked that we’d been lifelong friends who now worked together.

  “Vegas Duncan, what’s happening, baby?” Majestic sounded excited like a little kid.

  “Just trying to make it happen, my brother,” Vegas replied as we all took our seats.

  “This place is known for their seafood, so go for it.”

  Majestic turned to the waitress, a cute bottled blonde with big tits and an aggressive smile who probably dreamed of one day landing herself a yacht owner with a penthouse in the city.

  “Give us two seafood platters.” Majestic ordered for both of us because he knew I’d never met a shrimp or a lobster I didn’t love.

  I handed her the menu. “And I’ll take a Coke.”

  “Two,” Majestic shot out then dismissed her, ready to get to down to business.

  Vegas Duncan was a real no-bullshit guy who didn’t mince words or play by anybody else’s rules. For the most part, we’d always landed on the same side, but I was sensing he wasn’t happy today. I glanced over at Majestic to see if he was worried, but he was so cool I couldn’t get a read.

  “My brother tells me you guys have increased your business twenty percent in the last year,” Vegas said.

  “Yeah, things have been good. My man Bruce here—” Majestic wrapped his arm around my shoulder—“really held things down while I was away.”