by Mazzy King
“I’ve given you names of all the guys,” I protest.
“But not who’s in charge. And I want to know who’s in charge.” Captain Leary shrugs. “We’ll certainly keep you in the Program. But no deal until you complete an assignment.”
I stare down at the table.
“Aidan,” Gunner begins.
I shake my head slowly. “I—I was probably overreacting because seeing him in the last place I thought I’d see him freaked me out.”
“And you were followed,” Gunner says with a frown.
“I shook ’em,” I reply, looking at the captain. “I don’t know that was them for sure, but if it was, maybe they were just checking up on me. It’s not like we’re selling Girl Scout cookies, after all.”
“So?” Captain Leary spreads his palms. “Are you in, or are you out?”
I clench my jaw, meeting his stare. “I’m in.”
I stride into the warehouse the crew is using as operations, head held high. There’s no way I’m going to let them think I’m shaken from what happened last night.
Eric smirks at me from a table where he’s counting money and smoking a cigarette. “Hey, college boy. So, how’d your date go last night?”
“None of your business, thanks. Moving on.” I look to Oliver, who stands behind Eric, watching me with an unreadable expression. “What do we got?”
“Aw, come on,” Eric wheedles, rising. “Don’t be like that. I didn’t cock-block you or anything, did I?” He glances at Oliver, then a few of the other guys. “Should’ve seen the chick he was with. Sexy, nice rack, and her ass was…” He does a chef’s kiss, then sneers at me. “You saying you didn’t hit that at least half a dozen times last night? Maybe you should give her my number, so she sees what a real man’s like.”
I don’t know why he’s doing it, but Eric is clearly trying to get a rise out of me. Inside, I’m raging and longing to beat his smug face in. Outwardly, I’m as stoic as Oliver.
“You finished?” I drawl. “Anyway. Can we get to work?”
“That depends,” a voice behind me says.
I whirl around. A tall man in his mid-forties with slicked-back dark hair wearing a charcoal suit walks towards me. I’ve never met him before, but I know who he is.
The boss. Gray.
He smiles at me. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Joe. You’ve made some good runs for me. Everything goes smoothly when you’re involved. I thought it was time I introduced myself.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gray,” I say cautiously.
“I hope it’s nice to meet you,” he replies. “But my boys here who’ve been around a lot longer than you tell me they have some concerns about you. Think you might be an undercover cop.”
I scoff, shaking my head. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m afraid it’s not a joke.”
“You do know I’m an ex-con, right?”
Gray shrugs. “I understand. But, to be fair, that could be part of your cover.”
I stare at the ceiling. “I don’t have a cover. I’m not a fucking cop.” And since I’m not, that part’s not a lie, so it’s easy for me to deliver that with conviction.
“So what were you doing at police headquarters this afternoon?” Gray asks smoothly.
Fuck. Well, it’s good to know my paranoia is accurate. I shrug, hoping I still look impassive. “Had to pay a speeding ticket.”
“Really?” He tilts his head. “See, I’d believe that, except Eric tells me he saw you meeting with someone on campus last night. Someone who looked just like a cop we saw at HQ earlier.”
I scrunch up my face in annoyed incredulity. “You think I pal around with cops?” I demand. “What part of ‘I’m an ex-con’ was I not clear about? I don’t have shit to say to them, and they don’t have shit to say to me.”
“Eric also tells me you seemed quite jumpy when he saw you out last night,” Gray goes on. “He expected a friendlier greeting than what he got.”
I shrugged. “I happened to be on a date with someone who doesn’t know what I do for a living. Jesus Christ, what is this?”
Gray exchanges a long look with Oliver, who nods and heads out the back door. “You’re right. I’m sure this is offensive to you. But we have to make sure we’re involving the right people in our organization here if we want it to be successful. So when I hear concerns such as those that were expressed to me, I have to take them seriously. You understand.”
I open my mouth to reply just as Oliver returns, the door banging open. All the words I was about to say die in my mouth when I see who Oliver’s yanking along by an arm.
Stella.
7
Stella
I blink, looking around in terror. I’m in some kind of warehouse, but I don’t know where I am. I was blindfolded the entire ride here—after a few men broke into my house half an hour after Aidan left me. They were watching the house all night and waited for him to leave.
Which meant they were planning to take me all along.
I didn’t scream or cry when I fought them and lost, and they slipped a black hood over my head and bound my wrists behind me. Not because I was being brave, but because I was simply in shock. How was this happening to me?
The fear didn’t truly set in until the door of the vehicle I was in was yanked open. Rough hands pulled me out and led me, stumbling, God only knew where. Then the hood was torn off my head.
My gaze settles on Aidan, standing too far from me, his face as shocked as I feel.
“Aidan?” I murmur without thinking.
“Aidan!” The tall man in the gray suit lifts his eyebrows and turns toward Aidan. “What happened to Joe?”
“I knew he was a fucking snitch,” one of the men in the room, the guy from the bar last night, snarls.
Oh, no. Why did I have to open my big mouth?
“I’m not,” Aidan says through bared teeth, “a fucking snitch.”
He’s doing his best to hold onto the last bit of his cover. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost buy it.
“Well, you get to prove it,” the tall man says cheerfully. He turns his back toward me for a moment then pushes Aidan forward toward me as the men who dragged me in shove me at Aidan.
We meet in the middle, me stumbling and trying not to fall.
My eyes are wide, chest heaving, as I look at Aidan and then tall man as he walks up behind him.
“If you want us to believe you’re one of us, and subsequently save your own life,” the man says, “then you’ll need to kill her. Otherwise, we’ll assume you’re lying, and we’ll kill you. And then her.” He gives me a sickly-sweet smile as the blood drains from my face. “Nothing personal, dear. Just business. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time when you met this guy.”
Oh my god. No.
Speechless, I shift my gaze back to Aidan. And now, I see what he’s holding.
A black handgun.
“Aidan,” I whisper.
He lowers his eyes down and to the side, toward the man. He hefts the gun, like he’s checking its weight. Then he pulls on the slide and it makes a horrible metallic clicking noise.
“I’m sorry,” he says woodenly.
I close my eyes.
The boom of the gun is deafening, so loud it rattles my brain. For an instant I lose all sense of the world and my place in it. Am I sitting? Am I standing? Am I alive?
Am I dead?
Then my world shifts—literally.
A burst of nausea roils through me as I’m lifted off my feet and turned over. I force my eyes open and find myself staring at the ground. Then I realize I’m slung over someone’s shoulder.
And there’s more gunfire and shouting.
Before I fully comprehend what’s happening, the body carrying me hits the ground and flips me around.
“What,” I gasp.
Aidan stares down at me, a deep furrow in his brow as he breathes harshly. “Are you all right?” He cups my head. “Stella—focus on my voice. Focus on my face
. Are you all right?”
I must look totally out of it, because even though I think I’m looking at him, I’m not seeing him until I force myself to. “Y-yeah,” I say faintly.
We’re propped against a few large, hard plastic crates in a corner of the warehouse. Ahead of us is a door.
“What happened?” I ask, my head still swimming. “Did you—did you shoot me?”
“I would never,” he says, and spares a second to kiss me, briefly but tenderly. “I shot the ceiling to distract everyone. Then I elbowed Gray in the nose and took off running. But the cavalry’s here.”
“The what?”
He pulls down the collar of his T-shirt, stretching it so I can just make out a black wire taped between his pecs. “Gunner and his crew are here—they heard my signal and moved in, just in time.” He flicks a utility knife out of his pocket and saws through my bindings, plastic zip ties.
“You still have the gun?” I say, flexing my wrists when they’re free.
He picks it up. “Yeah. Listen—we need to move.”
The sound of gunfire and shouting is still raging. “But they’ll kill us!”
“They’ll try,” he says, “but we need to try too.” He points to the door, which is about twenty or so feet from our position. “On my signal, you’re going to run for that door. When you go through it, keep running no matter what. Don’t look back. Don’t wait for me. Just keep running until I tell you to stop. And if you don’t hear me…just keep running.”
“Why wouldn’t I hear you?” I ask, but it’s a rhetorical question, and he knows it by the tears that gather in my eyes.
“Deep breath,” he says soothingly. “On three. Ready?”
I don’t have a choice. I nod.
“Three.”
I push up into a runner’s crouch, my heart racing wildly.
“Two.”
All my muscles tense, and my vision tunnels on the door. I’ve never been particularly athletic, but adrenaline courses through me now and lends strength and energy to my body. This is literally life or death, and I’m scared shitless.
“One.”
I launch myself forward from our hiding position and sprint for the door vaguely aware of Aidan moving behind me. The heavy bam-bam-bam of his gun terrifies me, but I do exactly as he said—I just keep running.
I hit the door brutally hard but shoulder through it. The overcast day is as bright as a sun-drenched beach compared to the darkness of the warehouse, and my sensitive eyes screw closed reflexively.
“Hey!” a voice yells.
Keep running. Keep running.
“Hey!”
Keep running.
“Get down!”
Was that for me? I have no idea. I focus on the one task I was given—keep running.
“Stella, down!”
Before I can react to hearing my name, a heavy body slams into me and we both go down.
Overhead, bullets fly.
“We need to move.” Aidan’s harsh voice pierces my single-minded fog. He peers down at me, running a hand over my head. “Stella. You with me?”
I blink and suck in air. We’re on the concrete behind a car. I feel like I just ran a mile, but when I peek around the car, I see I only covered maybe fifty yards. Squad cars are everywhere, and though the gunfire is still blasting, it’s much less than it was a little while ago.
“They got it under control,” Aidan tells me with a little smile. “There’s an ambulance and a few more cops around the corner.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“All part of the plan.”
Crouching, he helps me up, looking around. We stay low as we head to the end of the block and turn left, where, just as he said, an ambulance is parked as well as a police SUV and a couple of cruisers.
One of the cops is a younger guy wearing street clothes with a bulletproof vest strapped over his hoodie. He waves us over, then, to my surprise, clasps hands with Aidan and pulls him into a big one-armed hug.
“I’m proud of you, Aidan,” he says earnestly.
Aidan’s face flushes a little. “Thanks.” He glances at me. “Gunner, this is my—this is Stella. Stella, this is Gunner Hansen. He’s with the undercover patrol unit.”
“Hi,” I manage.
Gunner gives me an understanding smile and nod. “Nice to meet you, Stella, though I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.” Then his brow creases as he glances between us. “Either of you hurt?”
“No, I’m good. Stella?” Aidan wraps an arm around my waist.
“I’m—I’m…” Mentally fucked? Going to have nightmares for a minimum of fifteen years? “I’m not hurt. Not really.”
“Let’s get you checked out quick anyway,” Gunner says, then glances at Aidan. “Then we’ll head to HQ so you can debrief with the captain, and Stella can give a statement.”
The medics check me out, noting the scrapes and bruises from the kidnapping and hitting the ground just now. I don’t have any wounds serious enough to warrant more than a Band-Aid. Then we’re packed into an unmarked car driven by Gunner and taken to headquarters.
I’ve driven past the RCPD building many times but always take for granted the fact that it has an inside. The lobby is actually pretty grand, with a marble tiled floor and columns. The elevators take us up to almost the top of the building. I’m almost disappointed when it looks like a regular office, with cubicles and desks spread around.
“Come with me,” Gunner says to Aidan. “Stella, you’ll go with Officer Jacobsen.” He points to a uniformed woman a few feet away. She wears a kind smile and beckons to me.
“See you in a little bit,” Aidan says, squeezing my hand.
“See you,” I echo.
Officer Jacobsen leads me to a small conference room and offers me a small bottle of water, which I take gratefully and drain in a single swallow. She gives me another, then we get down to business. I tell her everything that happened from the time the three men broke into my house to this very moment. She tells me what will happen next—that they’re suspects in a much larger federal case and I’ll be called to testify against them. The idea of that is frightening, but if it means they go away forever—hell yes, I’m game.
The officer lets me stay in the conference room once our interview is over. I have no idea how long I’m in there, because I spend the time staring at the wall across from me, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time.
After a while, there’s a gentle knock on the door, and Aidan pokes his head in. He smiles at me. “Hey.”
I lurch out of my chair and rush into his arms. He folds me in tightly and for a long time, we say nothing, just holding each other and rocking gently.
“You okay?” he murmurs after a while.
“I’m…not sure,” I admit.
He pulls back to gaze into my eyes, then lowers his mouth to mine for a long, exquisite moment. “How about now?”
“Hmm.” I smile. “Yes. Definitely better.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
We pick up a pizza on the way back to his apartment. My house is, apparently, considered a crime scene for the time being, but an officer will escort me there tomorrow to retrieve some personal things like clothes, toiletries, and my laptop while they’re processing the house.
Aidan’s apartment is a single-bedroom unit. It’s definitely old, but he takes good care of it. It’s clean and the furniture is in great shape, if not new. It’s the apartment someone living on a tight budget has—tidy, small, nothing fancy, but practical and cozy.
His living room has a couple of indulgences—a flat-screen TV on the wall, a Blu-ray player, and a gaming console.
“TV’s used, but it’s in good condition and the guy I bought it from cut me a great deal. I even have Netflix,” he jokes.
“I think your place is perfect,” I tell him, and sink onto the couch.
“It’s definitely more perfect with you in it.” He kisses me and hands me a paper plate with a piping
hot slice on it. “Anything you need, just let me know.”
I snuggle into him. “Just you.”
“Oh, well, you’ve already got that.” He kisses my head.
“Today was scary,” I murmur.
“It was. But you were so brave.”
“You were.” I sit up and look at him. “You should…you should be a cop. I mean, not that I want you doing something that puts you in danger every day, but you’re good at it. I mean, you got all those guys locked up. So many people will be safe now—because of you.”
He smiles a little. “Funny, the captain said the same thing during my debrief.”
“Did he clear your record?”
Aidan nods. “And he offered me a slot in the next academy class that starts in the fall.”
My jaw drops. “That’s amazing! What’d you say?”
He takes my hand. “I said I’d think about it.” He traces my fingertips with his. “You went through a lot today. And it’s going to take some work to move past. I don’t want my job to traumatize you…because I want you in my life. And if it’s too much, I can find another job.”
I’m stunned. He has a fresh start and discovered a new passion and talent—but will only move forward with it if I’m comfortable with it.
“You have to take it if that’s what you want to do.” I cup his face in my hands. “Aidan, I’m not going anywhere.”
He smiles wider. “You’re not?”
“No. We almost died together, so you’re stuck with me now.”
Aidan sets our plates on the coffee table and pulls me into his arms. “I know it’s sudden, but I have to tell you something, Stella.”
I hold my breath, my heart suddenly racing. “Yes?”
He gazes into my eyes. “You’ve had dirt all over your face since I pushed you to the ground.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Uh, really?”
“Yes. Oh, and one more thing…” He kisses me softly. “I’m in love with you.”
I bite my lip, tears of joy pricking my eyes. “What a coincidence. Because I happen to be in love with you.”