Choked Up

by Janey Mack

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Tears coursed down his cheeks. “You destroy me.”

  There would be no mercy. Stannislav “The Bull” Renko had none.

  I took a deep breath.

  Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

  The nose of a gun came around the corner of the doorway. “Put the gun down, Stannis,” Hank said.

  It couldn’t be Hank. But it was.

  He strode into the room, encased in black bulletproof armor. “Put the gun down.”

  “Chyornyj Yastreb,” Stannis said. “It is over.”

  What?

  Hank is Black Hawk?

  WTF?

  Stannislav’s hand trembled with anger. “She betrayed me. Betrayed us all.”

  “No.” Hank shook his head. “Not her.”

  “Do not tell me is Veteratti. His men are here.”

  “Coles,” Hank said. “Coles had your place tapped to the gills. He scrambled the SWAT raid.”

  Stannis lowered his arm. “You come to know this how?”

  “He confessed to one of my men. About twenty minutes ago.”

  “But FBI ask where is redhead.”

  “She took his finger.” Hank gave a bark of laughter. “He may want to tear you down, but he’s gunning for her.”

  The blood drained from Stannislav’s face.

  Hank had known I was with Stannis all along. All the way back from the day Jeff Mant attacked me . . . Telling Stannis I should live with him. . . .

  The gears in my mind were spinning so hard I felt dizzy.

  Sirens blared in the distance.

  Stannis lowered the gun. “Vatra Anđeo?” He took two staggering steps toward me, hand outstretched. “Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me.”

  And because I knew with absolute certainty he would have killed me, I said the single thing that would wound him the most. “I know you’d never hurt me, moj đavo.”

  He flinched as if struck.

  Garbled yelling from outside was broken up by the letters, “FBI!”

  Hank was thirty feet away from me, but it might have been thirty miles. He received a message on his headset. “Let’s go.”

  “Is no use.” Stannis made an open-palm fist. “We are in the talons.”

  “Why do you think they call me Chyornyj Yastreb?” Hank glanced at the oversized watch on his wrist. “A Sikorsky UH-60 is going to land in two minutes and forty-two seconds. We’re going to be on it.”

  “She comes with us.”

  Oh no.

  Please, no.

  “Like hell.” Hank’s face turned to granite. “She’s not a puppy, for chrissakes. Her family has power and money, Stannis. It’ll never be over.”

  Stannis spun, pointing the gun at Hank’s chest. “You work for me. She comes.”

  Hank raised his palms in surrender, lowered his head in acquiescence.

  Stannis reached behind his back and put his gun in the holster.

  Hank took a single quick step toward me. His right hand whipped forward in an underhand blur.

  An icy cold punch hit me in the thigh. I wobbled where I stood and looked down. A thick black handle stuck out of my thigh. I stared at Hank in dumb shock.

  You threw a knife at me.

  And it hit me.

  “No!” Stannis shouted.

  “She can’t come now,” Hank said.

  My leg began to throb, my flesh pulsing against the blade. I stumbled backward into the wall. My head felt floaty and light. I slid down to the floor. My fingers twitched and moved toward the handle.

  Don’t touch it don’t touch it don’t touch it.

  It was the short blade. The one Hank wore on his belt.

  You threw a knife at me.

  Stannis glared back over his shoulder. “You work for me!”

  “No,” Hank said. “I work for Goran Slajic. I protect you.”

  Stannis looked at the knife. He reached into his pocket and pressed a sidewinder key into my palm. “You have trouble? You find Christo.” He cupped my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. “You know nothing. No cartel, no Constantino, no Slajic.”

  The knife in my leg had somehow turned from ice to molten steel. I heard a strange keening sort of whimper.

  Oh God. That’s me.

  “It’ll take her a week to remember her own name.” Hank held up a thin silver packet. “Combination of atracurium and ataraxics developed by Mossad.”

  “Good.” Stannis took the key from my hand and slipped it into my jacket pocket. He tapped my temple with his finger. “Fast to think, Anđeo. You will solve key.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” the room rumbled with a deep voice. “We got full SWAT and Feds out there and those mutherfuckers want to engage, for fuck’s sake!” A six-foot-seven Viking in camo paint and full black battle rattle came around the corner. Ragnar. “Are we getting the fuck out of here or what? What’s the goddamn holdup?”

  Hank jerked his head at Stannis. “Take him.”

  “Let’s move!” Ragnar came over and jerked Stannis to his feet. He spun him toward the door and winked at me, before laying a heavy hand on Stannis’s back and hustling him out of the room.

  Hank strode over and squatted down on his haunches. “First rule when taking damage?”

  “Level head.” I tried to smile. “Act quick.”

  “Clean hit. Fast recovery.” He held up the foil packet. “You’ll remember everything. Pretend you don’t.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I know, baby. I’m gonna make you feel better.”

  I gave him a tight smile. “You’re cute.”

  “You’re cute, too.” He kissed me.

  “The blade.” He raised my chin to look at him. His gray eyes had gone as pale as sun-bleached bone. “Remember? Don’t touch it.”

  I remember everything. “Hank, I—”

  “Don’t get all choked up, Firebrand.” He flashed me a wicked grin. “You know I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”

  He peeled off the wrapper and raised the foil packet to my nose and mouth. It didn’t smell like anything.

  Everything was dim and blurry and smelled of noxious smoke. The room spun and I closed my eyes. I’m not sure for how long.

  My throat and mouth felt like sandpaper. It hurt to breathe.

  My leg was on fire, the muscle searing from the inside out. Of course, I can pull it out. It’s already cauterized itself. My numb fingers twitched against the handle. I gasped.

  Don’t touch don’t touch don’t touch.

  “Medic!” A loud voice rang in my ears. “One down in here! Knife wound, maybe more.”

  “Maisie.” Gloved hands grasped my chin, turned my face from side to side, patting it none too gently. “Maisie, it’s Lee. Lee Sharpe. Can you hear me?”

  I forced my eyes to open to slits and tried to point at the foil pouch on the floor. Instead my arm jerked and hung limp. “Drug,” I croaked.

  “I know. I got you.”

  “Don’t . . . blade.”

  “No. We’ll leave it in. Let the ER docs handle that,” Lee said. “You’re gonna be fine.”

  The stink of antiseptic and diesel stung my nose. I lay on my back, slightly elevated on the stretcher’s thin mattress. A blond paramedic who looked like he hadn’t graduated from junior high yet strapped a non-rebreather oxygen mask to my face.

  It resembled the ones that drop from the ceiling of airplanes when you’re about to crash so you can suck in a pure oxygen high and enjoy the ride.

  “IV of D5w, KVO,” Kid Paramedic said into the radio mic on his left lapel, “Patient is alert and oriented.” He jabbed the IV needle into my arm and started the glucose drip, then moved on to my leg.

  He had me panting and whimpering just from cutting my pants leg up to my hip.

  Jaysus Criminey.

  “I’m going to pack and stabilize the knife, okay? The ER docs will take it out,” Kid Paramedic said. “You may feel a little dis
comfort.”

  He packed trauma dressings around the knife. Each bandage press was like another mini-stab.

  Oh God.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “Maisie? Maisie!” Cash shouted from outside the ambulance.

  “Stand down, McGrane.” Lee stepped in front of him. “She’s going to be okay.”

  “She’s my goddamned sister and I’m going with her.”

  “Stand. Down.”

  Cash shuffled in front of Lee, craning over his shoulder to see me. He looked like I felt. I moved my fingers in a slight wave.

  Lee climbed into the ambulance.

  “Take her to Rush University Hospital,” Cash said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, Maisie!”

  Lee jerked the doors shut behind him, slamming the metal locks home. “Rush Hospital.”

  Kid Paramedic nodded. He hit his radio mic and relayed Lee’s command to the driver. Lee took a seat on the squad bench. He put his hand on my arm. “You’re gonna be fine.”

  I know.

  My leg burned like the devil had laid his tail on it and my arm was refrigerating from the inside out from the IV.

  “Is she stabilized?” Lee said.

  Kid Paramedic looked at him warily. “Sir?”

  “Her vitals. The IV, oxygen. Is her wound packed and stabilized?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Under any life-threatening emergency?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then get up front. I’ll let you know if there’s trouble.”

  Kid Paramedic and the armed and battle-armored Lee were on the same team, but Kid was scared gutless. “Sir, I can’t do that—”

  “You can and you will.” Lee jerked his head toward the door. “Front of the bus. Now.”

  A thin sheen of sweat broke out on Kid’s upper lip. “Miss?”

  I nodded weakly at him and slurred, thick-tongued from behind the mask, “Iths aww gud.”

  “I’m her goddamn partner.” Lee raised his hands, fast, open-palmed.

  To Kid, they were as threatening as fists. He went through into the cab of the ambulance, leaving the door ajar.

  Lee got off the squad bench, smacked the door shut, and planted himself in the jump seat, right behind my head. He dialed his phone and hit speaker. It rang twice. “Sawyer? Sharpe here. Mission failure.”

  “Score?”

  “All cars recovered. Sixteen arrests. Renko, Kontrolyor, and four others slipped the net.”

  Of course they did. Because: Hank.

  “How?” Walt asked.

  “They set off a mess of smoke grenades and flashbangs and lit out in a goddamned Sikorsky U-60.”

  Walt Sawyer gave a bark of laughter and went silent. “Field Agent McGrane?” he asked. “Location? Cover intact?”

  “With me.” Lee glanced at my leg. “Cover more so than she is.”

  “Condition?” Sawyer snapped.

  “Stable. Stab wound to the leg. Drugged with unknown substance but lucid. We’re en route to hospital, alone in the ambulance.”

  I sucked in a breath. The driver seemed to think it was his mission in life to hit each and every pothole.

  Lee put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I want to speak with her,” Walt said.

  “Go ahead,” said Lee, holding the phone closer to my ear.

  “Well done, Agent McGrane. Well done,” Walt said.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, through the oxygen mask.

  “While losing Renko was unfortunate, Operation Steal-Tow has achieved its intended purpose. The Slajic car theft ring has been virtually eliminated, thanks in no small part to you. We’ve obtained evidence and insight on Constantino’s enterprise, as well as on the Veterattis. And you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself with a lieutenant of the Grieco Cartel.”

  When you put it like that, I pretty much kick-ass rock!

  “An exemplary effort from our youngest and newest field agent, wouldn’t you say, Agent Sharpe?”

  “Yes sir,” Lee said but he frowned at me.

  Walt continued, speaking to me once more. “I’m assuming you haven’t established cover with your family?”

  “No, sir,” I said at the same time Lee said, “She hasn’t.”

  “As of now you are a journalist. Freelancing for Paul Renick at the Chicago Sentinel. Credentials will arrive at the hospital within an hour. You’ll be debriefed within the next forty-eight.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “A valiant effort, Maisie. If your family was privy to your heroics, they would be very proud.” Sawyer disconnected.

  Hank.

  My family.

  What they don’t know won’t hurt me.

  Maisie McGrane will return in

  SHOOT ’EM UP

  A Kensington trade paperback and e-book on sale July 2016.

  Photo by Jeph DeLorme

  JANEY MACK grew up always wanting to be a cop, but her dad wouldn’t let her, so she did the next best thing and created Maisie McGrane, who gets to do everything she can’t. She lives with her husband and children in Scottsdale, Arizona, within driving distance of her brothers.

  Please visit her at janeymack.com.

  TIME’S UP

  The police academy gave her the boot—and she knows how to use it.

  All her life, Maisie McGrane dreamed of following in her father and older brothers’ footsteps and joining the force. But when she’s expelled from the police academy, she’s reduced to taking a job as a meter maid. Now, instead of chasing down perps, she’s booting people’s cars and taking abuse from every lowlife who can’t scrape together enough change to feed the meter.

  McGranes weren’t put on this earth to quit, however. When Maisie stumbles across the body of a City Hall staffer with two bullets in his chest, her badge-wielding brothers try to warn her off the case. But with the help of her secret crush, shadowy ex–Army Ranger Hank Bannon, Maisie’s determined to follow the trail of conspiracy no matter where it leads. And that could put her in the crosshairs of a killer—and all she’s packing is a ticket gun.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Janey Mack

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-6177-3692-6

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: January 2016

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-692-6

  ISBN-10: 1-61773-692-9