by Jessie Cooke
“Law school? You want to be an attorney?”
She nodded. “I’m thinking about it.”
“A prosecutor?”
Angel had given that some thought too. She didn’t want to be a prosecutor. She wanted to be a defense attorney. Most cops wouldn’t understand that. She didn’t want to defend just anyone the way Dax’s attorney did, but she would like to be a part of the system that kept innocent people from going to jail and provided some checks and balances where law enforcement was concerned. Somehow, her thoughts and feelings had changed. She wasn’t thinking just as a cop any longer, the way she’d been taught to think her whole life. She was seeing the world from a different perspective and beginning to understand a little about why people made the choices they did…even if those choices were looked upon as “bad” by others. But she wasn’t going to explain all of that to the captain. Instead she just said:
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead. But Dad’s life insurance left me a little cushion and I would like to use it to explore my options.”
“Do your brothers and Detective Ivanov know about this?” Angel sighed. She ached for the day when her decisions didn’t have to be approved or disapproved by her brothers in everyone else’s eyes.
“Micah and Kyle know. I haven’t spoken to David about it yet.”
“And what do Detective Brady and Ivanov have to say about this?”
“They’re not happy. But this is my life, sir.”
“Brady, if I did you a disservice by having you go undercover…”
“Sir, this is not your fault. It’s not anyone’s ‘fault.’ It’s about me deciding for my future. When I look into the future I don’t see myself as a detective like I used to in the past. I’ve lost my passion for the job and I just think that now is the time for me to go.”
The captain sighed heavily. “You know, I knew your father since I was a rookie on the force. He was my FTO for a while. He taught me so much and by all rights, he should have had my job. Hell, he should have had the chief’s job. But he refused to be a ‘desk jockey,’ he said. He craved the action out there on the streets. Personally, it was never for me.”
“Sir…”
“Let me finish, Brady, please. This work is tough, especially the type of work you’ve been doing. It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. It wasn’t for me, but I knew if I waited it out and paid my dues, I could end up here. I’m forty-two years old and I can still be a cop without ever having to patrol the streets again, or get called about a murder at three a.m. What I’m trying to say here is that if you’re just tired of the bullshit on the streets or this gang life has gotten you burned out, there are other avenues for you, if you’ll just stick it out a few more years.”
She waited to make sure he was finished and then she said, “Sir, it’s really not any of that. Like I said, I’ve just decided that this life is not for me.”
“Well, I can’t stop you, as much as I’d like to. You’ve been an asset to this department and I’m going to hate to lose you. We’ll need to meet with the task force and figure out your exit from the club. Maybe we can have you introduce someone else, prior to your departure.”
Shit. She hadn’t even thought of that. She’d just assumed that after almost a year of nothing, the captain would be willing to give it up. The violence between the Sinners and Skulls was even in check, thanks mostly to Dax’s leadership and the arrest of about ten Sinners the day they collared Vince Miller. Grant Benning had since seemed to be taking the Sinners in another direction, dipping their toes into some heavy shit in the New York area. It got them out of the Skull’s hair, which was a good thing as far as she was concerned. The rivalry between the two clubs was more dangerous than anything either of them was involved with, in her opinion. Angel had given the information she had about the Sinners, which wasn’t a lot, to the task force. Micah and Sheriff Zandt had met with the leader of the gang task force in Queens and given that information to them. Best-case scenario, enough of them would get busted in New York to at least put the club on hold for a decade or two.
“Okay, sir,” she said at last. “But I’d like to do this as soon as possible.” She got another raised eyebrow in answer to that and then he said:
“I’ll talk to Detective Matheson and set up a meeting.”
Matheson was Chris Matheson. He had taken her father’s place as lead of the task force. It pissed Kyle off because he had expected to be lead. But Matheson had been working in vice for twelve years and the captain thought he’d be a better choice thanks to his experience on the streets.
“Thank you, sir.” Angel stood up and the captain followed suit. He shook her hand and walked her to the door and then said,
“Do me a favor, Brady. Before you do anything permanent, give this some more thought, please.”
“Yes, sir,” she said before going out the door. She knew that she wasn’t going to change her mind. Contrary to what anyone thought, she had given this a lot of thought; for months now it had been on her mind constantly. Then the day of the platinum coin fiasco…everything changed and her decision was cemented.
21
Five Months Earlier
Handsome had woken Angel up, banging on the bedroom door. Dax was awake now too and she was cursing herself for having gone to sleep after they had sex—before she’d taken photographs of the papers she’d taken out of the meeting room, and put them, and Dax’s keys, back where they went.
“Yeah, Hand, hang on a sec,” Dax said. He swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and reached for his pants. Angel sat in an almost frozen state as he did, waiting for him to notice that his keys were no longer in his pocket. He stood up to pull them up and turned around and grinned and winked at her. She wondered if that would be the last time. After he talked to Handsome, would he ever smile at her again?
She threw back the covers and got up too. “I’ll get dressed and go out to the great room so the two of you can talk,” she said.
He pulled on his t-shirt. “Thanks, babe. See if you can find me some coffee while you’re out there, will you?”
She smiled at him as she pulled on her shirt and reached down for her jeans. “I won’t come back without it,” she said. She danced around, pulling up her tight jeans, once again without underwear, as Dax went over to open the door. As soon as he did, Angel squatted down and quietly left his keys on the carpeted floor. He’d think they fell out of his pocket…hopefully. She had no idea how she would get the plans back in the meeting room if Handsome happened to be there to blow her cover wide open, but she could only worry about one thing at a time. When Dax pulled open the door and Handsome walked in, she was pulling on her boots. Handsome looked at her with his dark brown eyes. They were almost black, which gave him a hard, almost sinister look. They were made even odder-looking by the fact that his hair was white-blond like a Swede’s. He’d always been nice to Angel, but she got the feeling he was not a person you’d want to cross. Today he had a deep frown creased into his face.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, looking at Angel.
“It’s fine, we were just sleeping,” she said. “I’m going to use the restroom and then I’ll go get us some coffee.” She went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her before reaching underneath the cabinet and fishing under the towels for the plans she’d stolen. She sat down on the toilet and rolled up her pant leg. Then she rolled her knee sock down and curled the plans around her calf before pulling the sock back up. She stood up and prayed that this would work, if she weren’t sunk already. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and with a deep breath in and out, she stepped back into the bedroom. Dax and Handsome were gone. Her eyes dropped down to the carpet. The keys were gone. Fuck. Now she had to figure out how to get them again and get back into that room without anyone seeing her, if it turned out that there was even any point. Shit.
She willed herself not to panic. Until she knew for sure it was over, she was going to move forward as if it wasn’t. She g
rabbed her purse, fished out her phone, and went back into the bathroom. Taking out the papers, she spread them on the counter and took pictures of each one of them. She put them and the phone back down in her sock and zipped her boot up around them. She opened the bathroom door cautiously and was glad to see that at least Dax and Handsome hadn’t come back yet.
Angel left the room and went down the hall and out into the great room. There were a few people milling about but Dax and Handsome weren’t among them. She glanced over at the door to the meeting room. It was closed. She had no way of knowing if they were in there or not. Even if she had the keys still, she wouldn’t be able to risk slipping inside. She went into the kitchen to get some coffee and see if Dax was there. Instead, she found Callie Vickers, the veterinary assistant/club girl, sitting on the floor near a little mangy-looking dog.
“Hey, Callie. Who’s your friend?”
Callie looked up at her and smiled. “His name is Punky. He’s Michael Granger’s dog. He hasn’t been eating or drinking and he’s throwing up. I’m afraid maybe he has parvo. I’m waiting for Handsome to finish up some business. He was going to take us into town to my vet’s office.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Who’s Michael Granger?”
“Oh, he’s this kid the club kind of looks after. His dad was our vice president before Max.” She looked sad and said, “He died a few years ago and Michael doesn’t really have anyone.”
“Oh yeah, I met him at Beezy’s coming-home party, I think.”
Callie laughed. “I heard Dax ran him and his friends off. I don’t know why that kid keeps trying to act out. Dax either kicks his ass or threatens to every time.”
Angel went over and sat down next to Callie. She petted the little dog on the head. His eyes were open, but they looked lifeless. “What happened to his dad?”
“He was murdered,” Callie said, angrily.
“Yeah, Dax told me that, but how?” A few days after that party Angel had gone into the police database and looked up all the deaths of the Skulls that they had documented in the past few years. Benny Granger, or “Banger” as he was called, was found dead in an alleyway downtown with a needle in his arm. The coroner ruled it an accidental opiate overdose, but Dax and now Callie both said it was murder, so it intrigued her.
“He died of a heroin overdose.”
“Hmm…well then, wouldn’t that be accidental…or suicide?”
“No. Benny didn’t use drugs. I went to school with him my whole life. I grew up with him and Dax. Benny got his high school sweetheart pregnant when they were only sixteen, but he stepped up. All he ever wanted was to do right by his family. She was my friend back then…” Callie’s eyes had a faraway look for a few seconds before she went on. “Anyways, there were some rumors about three years ago that Benny’s old lady, Sophie, was seeing some guy from Hartford. Benny wouldn’t believe it, but one night he got home early after he and Dax had been out of town and he caught her with this guy. He beat the guy almost to death. He probably shoulda killed him, because the guy ended up in the hospital and the staff there called the cops and Benny got arrested. He spent a year in County. While he was locked up, Dax and the guys kept an eye on Sophie for him. They never caught her seeing that guy or anyone else, then. But two days after he got out, Dax got the call that he was dead. The police just wrote him off as an overdose even though Dax kept telling them he didn’t use drugs. It only cemented his hate for the cops.”
“That’s sad,” Angel said. “So they never found out who did it?”
“The cops didn’t even look, but…well, the guy Benny beat up was the younger brother of an OG from a badass street gang in New Haven. Dax had it in his head that it was them. The rest of the guys kind of thought if it was the street gang, they would have just put a bullet in Benny’s head…you know? They’d want to take credit for it. That’s usually how they did things.”
“So did the rest of them believe Benny overdosed?”
“No, but Handsome and Mad Max and some of the other guys thought it was Hawk and them, the Sinners.”
“Why wouldn’t they have taken credit for it?”
“Trying to start trouble between the Skulls and the street gangs was Handsome’s theory.”
“So did it? Stir up trouble?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. The guy Benny beat up never recovered completely. He was kind of a vegetable. Then after Benny died, the brother disappeared. After not doing anything about Benny’s death, the cops had the nerve to come looking for Dax when that loser disappeared…but they never found a body or even any evidence a crime was committed. Then not long after that, Hawk started trying to bring his business into the Skulls’ territory and all that trouble started, and it’s just been one thing after the other with them since. Sometimes I don’t envy Dax. He’s had to make some hard decisions.”
“Hey!” Handsome was suddenly standing in the door. Angel almost cringed, but he looked at her and smiled. His smile still looked sad, but he didn’t look angry, or suspicious. He looked at Callie then and the dog and said, “You two ready? I have to just drop you off and get right back. Dax is calling a meeting.” Something was up, for sure. Angel was glad that it wasn’t about her taking the papers, but it would be soon if she didn’t get them back where they went.
Callie picked up the little dog and tucked it under her arm. It was limp and looked miserable. “We are. I’ll see you later, Angel.”
“Yeah, I hope the puppy is okay.”
“Me too. Thanks.”
Handsome said, “Dax is out back if you’re looking for him.”
“Thanks.”
She got up off the floor and once Handsome and Callie were gone, she poured two mugs of coffee and went to look for Dax. She found him sitting on top of the picnic table out back, smoking a joint and staring off into space. Angel forgot her own predicament momentarily when she saw his face. He looked so sad. She went over and sat down next to him, sitting one of the steaming mugs down next to him before she softly said, “Hey. You okay?”
Dax held the joint out to her without answering her question. She took a hit off it. She was getting better at holding the smoke in her lungs without choking. She handed it back to him and they sat there in silence for several minutes. Angel was dying to know what was going on, but she knew better than to ask. Dax told her what he wanted her to know when he was ready, and she didn’t think he’d like her questioning him. Being patient had paid off for her before and eventually it did this time too. He finally broke the silence by saying,
“Handsome got a call from Scar’s brother early this morning. Scar was stabbed in his cell last night.”
“Oh no! Is he okay?”
Dax put his face in his hands. That was all the answer she needed.
22
Angel sat with Dax for a while after he told her about Scar and they’d sipped their coffee in silence. When he spoke again, he said, “I want to go back to my house and take a shower and then I need to call a meeting and let everyone know what’s going on. Damn, I hate this shit.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said again. Then she waited a beat and said, “Oh! Shoot. I left my phone in the guest room, I think. Can I use your keys to run and get it?”
“You locked the door?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, was I not supposed to?”
“No, babe, that’s fine.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her.
“Thanks, you need anything while I’m inside?”
“No, thank you. I need a hot shower in my own house. Oh, and maybe a blow job, if you’re interested.” Angel smiled. Men never failed to amaze her. Even grieving, they’re still horny.
“I’m always interested,” she said. She started to leave him there and go inside but stopped and turned back to give him a soft kiss on the lips. “I’m really sorry about your friend.” He grabbed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth, kissing her deeply.
“Thank you, baby. Having you he
re makes it better,” That was when the first big shot of guilt surged through her veins.
“I’ll be right back,” She hurried inside, and almost danced a happy dance when she saw there was no one in the great room. She went straight to the office, praying no one was in there. She found it empty, put the papers back—hopefully just as she’d found them—and locked the door behind her. Before she went back out to meet Dax, she also pulled the phone out of her boot.
As soon as they got to Dax’s little house, he led her into the bathroom. Pushing her bottom up against the vanity, he slipped his arms around her waist. Angel leaned into him and closed her eyes for a second as she wrapped her hands up around his neck. When she opened her eyes, he was watching himself in the mirror, running his hands up and down her back. He grinned at her and said:
“My hands look good on you.” Angel smiled. She loved it when it was just the two of them like this and she got to see a different side of him. The man who was also a boy. The one that a lot of people never got to see. She wished so badly that she could enjoy him, without being filled with anxiety and doubts.
“Your hands feel good on me,” she whispered, closing her eyes again and reveling in his touch. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, exploring her mouth like he’d never been there before, and he never wanted to leave. She loved kissing him; she could do it forever.
When he let go of her he smiled again and said, “Get undressed.” Then he went over and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature on his hand as she stripped off her clothes. Once he had the water like he wanted it and steam was curling up from the tile floor it was hitting, he turned and finished watching her undress. “Nice view,” he said, watching both sides of her as she stood in front of the mirror and took off her blouse and bra. He waited until she was finished and then he stripped off his own clothes while she watched. Each piece of hard flesh he exposed made her want him that much more. His body was a work of art and sometimes she thought she’d be content to just stare at it all day like a priceless sculpture. But then he’d touch her…and she knew that she was always going to want more.