by Arianna Hart
“Yeah, Tom explained it to me. I get it.” And, Lord above, how it hurt.
“All right then, I’ll just go get Tom,” he whispered, leaning closer.
“Okay,” she whispered back, anticipation churning low in her belly.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I know, I’m still mad at you.”
“Uh huh.” His lips brushed against hers, softly at first, then more insistently.
Desire spread like wild fire through her body. Caitlyn’s limbs got looser and her breasts grew full and heavy. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. It felt like forever since she’d touched him, kissed him.
The overhead light came on with a snap. “’Bout time you got here. Coffee’s on in the kitchen.” Tom turned around and padded down the hallway without waiting for a response.
“Go. I’ll be there in a minute,” Caitlyn said, blinking blindly from the light. She needed some time to gather her out of control thoughts before she faced her brothers and Mac.
“Caitlyn, this doesn’t change anything.” He brushed a finger down her cheek.
Her rapidly beating heart hitched at his words. “I know. So much for having feelings for me.”
“I do have feelings for you but that doesn’t change who, or what, I am. I’m no good for you, just ask Tom.”
“Don’t give me that ‘you’re too good for me’ bullshit. You either want me or you don’t, the rest is semantics.” She yanked the sheet up to her chest. The anger felt better than the hollow empty feeling his words gave her.
“Caitlyn—”
“Go, they’re waiting for you.” Crossing her arms over her chest she turned her head away from him. This was what she got for giving into her baser urges. Stupid, insufferable man.
The soft snick of the door closing sounded like a gunshot to her straining ears. Damn it, she wasn’t sure if she was madder at him for kissing her or for stopping. No matter how angry she was at him for his lack of trust, there was no denying her body’s reaction to Mac.
“Well, it’ll just have to get over it.” Caitlyn threw off the sheet and slipped on a pair of shorts. She’d pull herself together then head to the kitchen. There was no way she was going to miss the summit meeting the men were having.
The smell of coffee teased her as she made her way down the hall. Not that she needed much more stimulation, but the caffeine couldn’t hurt. All conversation died as Caitlyn stepped into the room.
“Am I interrupting?” Caitlyn shot a challenging look at her brothers and Mac. If they thought she was going to bow out of this gracefully, they had another think coming.
“No, not at all. Mac was just catching us up on how he ended up in your bed—ah, apartment.” Tom helped himself to more coffee and neither Liam nor Jim would look her in the eye.
“I think we can move on from there, don’t you?” She did not need the three of them playing big brother on her and threatening Mac with bodily harm. If he was going to get pummeled for sleeping with her under false pretenses, she’d be the one doing the pummeling.
“Sure, sure.” Liam tipped back in his chair and tossed a crumpled napkin on the table.
“Here, have a seat. I was getting ready to fill your brothers in on what I know.” Mac stood and pulled a worn kitchen chair out for her.
“Really? That’s a switch. You mean we don’t have to pry the information out of you with bamboo shoots under your fingernails?” A shiver of awareness chased down her spine as she sat in the chair he held out for her. Caitlyn hunched over a bit to keep her hardened nipples from showing through her shirt. She wished she’d thought to put a bra on before she came out.
“Cut him some slack, Cat. He’s just doing his job.” Tom handed her a mug of coffee and some creamer.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Who made the coffee?”
“I did,” Liam said, letting his chair drop back on all four legs.
Caitlyn added a generous dollop of cream. Liam made police station coffee. It was strong enough to peel the paint off the walls.
Mac cleared his throat and moved to the counter. “Here’s what I have so far. I was brought into the city to go deep into the gang politics.
“What was your cover?” Tom asked.
“Drug dealer. I started out as a new supplier after we busted one of their old ones and made an opening. After a few months I started working my way into the ranks of Satan’s Children. I was living in an apartment with them and going through the initiation rites.”
Liam let out a low whistle. “I’ve heard about those. The Children are tough to get into. We haven’t been able to get a single guy in. They’ve all ended up beaten up or dead.”
“I know. That’s why I was sent in. A record number of high grade weapons had made their way into Hartford, yet nothing was being done by local authorities.”
Liam stood and faced Mac. “Hold it just a minute there, buddy. We’re busting our asses on the streets every day trying to take these guys down. We don’t need some stinking fed to come in and tell us we’re not doing our job.”
“Did you know about the weapons?” Mac asked calmly.
Caitlyn watched Liam’s face closely. She knew the minute the realization hit that this was bigger than he could ever imagine.
“There’s someone on the inside.” Liam clenched his jaw and turned away. “That’s why you’re here. Someone in the P.D. is dirty. Shit. Someone ran Caitlyn’s plates. That’s how they knew where she lived.” His face paled. “One of the guys in my department is involved with the guy who grabbed my sister.”
“More than one, I think,” Mac said softly. “I watched one of the Children’s lieutenants get into an unmarked car today. The entire time I was with them, no one spent more than one night in jail for routine drug busts. And the ones that did get caught never went to trial.”
“Let me guess, they were released on a technicality?” Liam snorted.
“That, or the paperwork went missing. Very few Children have gone away since I started my investigation. Not only that but a cease fire was called early in the summer.”
“A cease fire?” Jim asked.
“Yup. Word came down from Carlos that we were to hold our fire on other gangs. And none of them took pot shots at us either, so it was city wide.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The gangs never work together. They’re always fighting for territory.” Liam ran his hand over his closely cropped hair. “Who’s strong enough to unite the gangs and make it stick?”
“That’s what I mean to find out.”
Mac watched Caitlyn out of the corner of his eye. He was trying to pay attention to Liam’s facial expressions, to try to read him, but he kept getting distracted by Caitlyn’s presence. She’d remained quiet once she stared down her brothers but he could tell she was focusing on every word.
“So, what did you find out?” Tom rested his hand on Liam’s shoulder, but the younger man shrugged it off.
“Not a hell of a lot before my cover was blown. I know enough to put most of the Children away on drug trafficking charges but I don’t know squat about the weapons.”
“Could Carlos be the one uniting the gangs?” Jim asked.
Mac shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’s not smart enough. Someone is directing him but I haven’t been able to find out who it is.”
Caitlyn stood and crossed to the refrigerator. Going on tiptoes, she grabbed a yellow legal pad off the top. Mac’s pulse bumped up a few notches as the muscles in her legs were displayed to perfection. Getting a boner in front of her brothers probably wouldn’t go over very well.
“What’re you doing?” Tom asked.
“Taking notes. I think better when I see things on paper.” She dug through a pile of papers on the counter until she came up with a pen. “So far we know that the Children are getting guns from somewhere, the local police either don’t know about it or are looking the other way—”
“Hey!” Liam looked at her sharply.
“Present company excluded. Liam, we have to face facts. I know it hurts, but you can’t stick your head in the sand.” Caitlyn’s face softened as she looked at her brother.
“All we have is his word for it. A couple hours ago, you were ready to string him up by his nuts and now you think he knows everything? He must be pretty good in the sack for you to give up your family like that.”
“That’s enough.” Tom slapped his hand down on the counter. “I know you’re pissed, I’m pissed too. You don’t have to believe, Mac, just look at the facts and draw your own conclusions. How many drug busts have you heard about? How many gang fights have come through? How many Children have slipped through the cracks?”
“How the hell should I know? I work traffic.” Liam’s jaw was set in a stubborn line and a muscle ticked in the side of it.
“We’ve had a lot of overdoses but not many gunshot wounds in the ER,” Caitlyn said softly.
Mac could see the hurt on her face. She really loved her brothers, and Liam’s words must have hit her hard. He ached for causing such a rift but he pushed that aside. His emotions had got her in the middle in the first place. She didn’t need him butting in now.
“There’s been an eerie quiet in the streets. Even Friday nights have been relatively dull.” Jim ran a hand over Caitlyn’s hair.
This was the touchiest family Mac had ever seen. Earlier Tom had tried to console Liam, and now Jim was trying to comfort Caitlyn. Their unity was something Mac had never experienced before. His heart ached to be part of such a close group of people.
“Isn’t it better to assume the worst and work out a plan, than to blindly defend something and hope you’re right?” Caitlyn tried again.
Liam looked at the faces around the room. Even Mac could read the concern on them. “All right, for the sake of argument, I’ll go along with this. For now. I refuse to believe my whole department is dirty.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Okay. Hypothetically then, we have the city’s gangs no longer fighting amongst themselves, guns coming into the city at a rapid rate, and questionable circumstances keeping the Children out of jail. Are members of the other gangs getting out of jail too?”
“I don’t know. I’m working solo on this. I don’t have any local contacts at all,” Mac said.
“I can find out. I know enough of the names to look at the logs discreetly,” Liam offered.
Mac focused on him. “Very discreetly. I don’t want anything to tip them off.”
“You do your job, I’ll do mine,” Liam shot back.
“Tame the testosterone and let’s get back to the facts. Is there anything else you can add to what we already have, Mac?” Caitlyn asked him.
“Yeah, one more thing. Right before I was shot, Carlos got rid of his prostitutes and shut down his loan sharking operation. The only thing the Children were doing was running drugs.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jim said.
“That depends. Who’s picking up those areas?” Tom looked at Mac.
“While I was scoping things out today, I saw one of the 525’s pull in and make a trade. Drugs for…ah…” he shot a glance at Caitlyn. “Services. Not a shot was fired.”
“A 525 pulled into Children territory and wasn’t riddled with bullets?” Liam asked, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“Yup.”
“So if the 525s needed to get drugs from the Children and traded sex for it, does that mean they’re specializing now?” Caitlyn tapped the pen on the pad and bit her lower lip. “If they each had their own area, they wouldn’t be fighting each other. So why the guns?”
“Why would any of them give up any area? It doesn’t make sense for the 525s to just give up their drug trade. That’s a lot of money we’re talking about.” Jim got up and grabbed a half empty bag of chips. “And why would the Children give up their prostitutes? There’s not as much money there, but the convenience factor alone would be worth keeping them around.”
“And we have no idea what’s going on with the Black Hands. They’re at the other end of the city, so we don’t get as many of them in the ER.” Caitlyn helped herself to a handful of chips.
“If we continue with what we know, we can hazard a guess that they’re specializing now too. So, theoretically, we have the city’s gang population amassing guns and working together.” Tom looked sick at the thought.
“Shit.”
“And,” Mac looked at Liam. “There’s someone on the inside who knows what is going on and is keeping the gangs on the streets.”
“But why?” Caitlyn’s brown eyes were filled with anxiety as she turned them on him.
Oh how he wished he could replace that worry with the laughter that normally shone out of those whiskey colored depths.
Tom broke the connection between them. “Money? Power? Who knows? This is all a guessing game. We need to get more facts before we can find out who’s behind all this and figure out their reasoning.”
“Easier said than done. My cover is shot, literally. I can do surveillance work but I can’t get back into Carlos’ stronghold. He has every eye on the street looking for me.”
“And Caitlyn,” Jim added.
Four sets of eyes turned to her.
“What? Don’t look at me like that.” She stood and crossed her arms over her chest.
“We just want you safe, kiddo.” Tom said.
“I’m not your ‘kiddo’. I’m an adult and I won’t be shuffled off to East Bumfuck just to ease all your minds. I’ve been part of this from the start, and I’ll see it through to the end.”
“Hasn’t being cut and shot at taught you anything? These guys mean business!” Liam shouted.
“So do I. I can get information through the hospital records that none of you can. You need me.”
“I can get that if we need it so badly. You can go visit Uncle Jamie in New Hampshire.”
“No. I’m staying right here. Get used to it.”
Mac stepped in to prevent another O’Toole family feud. “She stays. We can take turns keeping an eye on her. She’s probably safer with us watching out for her than if she was packed up somewhere we couldn’t see what she was doing.”
“We? She’s our sister, we’ll watch over her.” Liam’s tone begged for a fight.
Mac grunted, but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to get into a pissing contest with Liam now. As long as Caitlyn was safe, that’s all that mattered to him.
“So what’s the POA?” Tom asked.
“POA?” Caitlyn looked at him.
“Plan of Action. We need to decide what we’re going to do, and figure out how we’re going to accomplish that with little information and no backup.”
Tom looked at Mac.
“I think the biggest thing is that we need to discover who is behind the gang’s cooperative bent. Then we need to figure out how deep the corruption is. And lastly, we need to find out what their objective is and stop it before the city goes up in flames.” Mac leaned against the counter.
“Hell, is that all?” Jim asked.
“And we need to stay alive,” Caitlyn said quietly.
Chapter Fourteen
Jim’s apartment had become Command Headquarters. Caitlyn felt like all she did was make sandwiches and coffee, then clean up after meals. It irritated her that she couldn’t help out more, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do in her area of expertise.
At least she hoped not. If she had to use her medical skills it would be because one of the men she cared for was hurt, and that was not a scenario she wanted to consider.
That Mac was lumped in with that group of men wasn’t something she wanted to think too much about either.
They’d declared an unspoken truce and hadn’t discussed much more than whether he wanted mustard or mayo on his ham sandwich. The tension between them tied her up in knots, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. It wasn’t like her brothers gave her a minute alone with Mac anyway.
There always seemed
to be someone around whenever Mac came in the door. Not that she minded. She wasn’t going to sleep with Mac again, even though he’d smartened up and took her brothers off his suspect list. Nope, she wasn’t an idiot, she knew better than to court heartache in a six-foot-three package.
Even if that package was so sexy it made her teeth itch.
She’d done a lot of thinking since their one night together. There was plenty of time for introspection when she was stuck in Jim’s apartment with nothing to do until she went back to work. Sleeping with Mac had been a mind-bending experience, but just because it was awesome didn’t mean it was good for her.
It was a narrow miss, but she’d escaped with her heart intact. When Mac got on his horse and rode off into the sunset, she’d be able to wave goodbye without a tear.
Okay, maybe just one.
There was something about him that called to a part deep inside her. She knew where he was in the apartment without even looking. It was like a current ran between them and she drew energy from his presence. At times, she could feel his gaze on her and knew he felt it too.
But he never acted on it.
That was a good thing, right?
Caitlyn snorted at herself and finished washing the latest set of lunch dishes. Who was she kidding? If Mac crooked his finger at her, she’d jump him on the spot. It was only his control that kept her from making a fool of herself. She wanted Mac and the need grew every day.
It wasn’t just his looks—though those were enough to take her breath away. With his hair cut short and his jaw free of whiskers, the strong lines of his face stood out clearly. His sky blue eyes drew her attention time and time again. During their daily meetings, she’d catch him staring at her and a surge of pure lust would shoot through her. All it took was one look from those blazing orbs of his and she was toast.
God, what was wrong with her? Mac and her brothers were scouring the city looking for clues to what was going on and she was lusting after a man who made it clear she’d only been a temporary convenience.
A notch on his belt. If it wasn’t so painful, it would be funny. She’d told Tom she didn’t care if she was just another woman in a long line of Mac’s conquests, but the truth was she did care. A lot. Was it naïve to want to be someone special?